17529 Tasting Notes
I was so out of it when I got home last night. I made myself a mug of this tea and drank maybe a third of it before just passing out for the evening. It was rich, malty and a little bit chocolate-y tasting, and if I had managed to stay awake I think I’d have loved it. I drank the rest of the mug this morning when I woke up, and it’s a lot more brassy and mineral tasting with this sort of autumnal and coppery note before dipping a little bit back into the chocolate and malty bread flavours. It’s fine, but was definitely nicer hot.
I saw a Reddit post a few days ago from someone complaining that Twinings had added little mint candies to this tea and, if you’re looking closely at the leaf in the tea bags, I can see where the confusion would maybe be coming from because there are super tiny white balls mixed with the peppermint. This is not candy, though. It’s actually encapsulated flavoring. Basically, a solid version of flavouring that “melts” into your tea as its steeped. Much less common than the liquid flavouring that’s usually added in tea production which then coats all the ingredients.
There are pros/cons to both types. Encapsulated flavouring is much less aromatic, so the dry leaf aroma of a blend could be significantly less impactful if this type is used. That can be a big deal for physical tea shops where customers might be smelling the tea out of tins before purchasing it. However, since this blend comes only in prepackaged boxes that seems like less of a concern. One of the pros to encapsulated flavouring is that it tastes much longer for any sort of flavour loss to happen due to aging. If I had to make a guess, I think that might have been why Twinings made the change? Regardless, to the best of my knowledge there has always been the same flavours in this blend and it’s just the format of them that has been updated.
Anyway, after reading through that thread I decided to pull this out and make myself a mug. It’s just so wickedly smooth and creamy/buttery with such a crisp, cooling peppermint. I love this blend a lot!
Interesting! But for a tea intended to be sold as loose-leaf, I would be apprehensive about the potential for settling-out of the capsules, producing inconsistent flavoring.
Very interesting to learn about encapsulated flavors, I had not heard of them before! I’ll have to keep an eye out to try them in a blend sometime. It doesn’t look like they are available to purchase in the private market yet, or I might be tempted to pick some up!
I guess that’s what the little white spheres are in Whittard’s Rose tea.
Okay, I found the rose tea… and have been reading everyone’s reviews. I’e never encountered these tiny spheres, myself, in any tea product.
http://steepster.com/teas/whittard-of-chelsea/87187-tea-discoveries-english-rose-teabags .
@ashmanra: “doll house potting soil” Ha!!
@gmathis: doesn’t everyone tear open their teabags to get a better look? !!!
I suspect Whittard couldn’t fit all their ingredients into a teabag without them rupturing (and was unwilling to use pyramid sachets). So they tried the encapsulated flavoring, and encountered problems with stratification when portioning. So they ground-down the solids to make everything closer in size, by which time they’d ended up with a very different product. Or maybe Roswell_Strange has further insights as an actual expert. But that’s a good lesson for folks sharing a TTB, to tumble the tin/pouch before withdrawing a sample, to ensure even mixing and representative sampling!
Yes, the Whittards blend uses encapsulated flavouring! But I highly doubt the cut size for the teabags has anything to do with not being able to “fit” all the ingredients into the bags – the way you go about formulating teabags is just typically much more different than loose leaf teas (based on presumed customer use cases). Smaller cut size = predicability/consistency in dosing out the saxheta during manufacturing, which is done by weight, and more surface area for the tea to steep which makes for a faster and stronger infusion, generally.
Also, yes, to TeaEarleGreyHot’s point – one of the disadvantages to encapsulated flavouring in loose leaf tea blends is that it does settle. To be fair, this happens to a lot of ingredients with smaller particle size and greater density, but it is one of the factors of why encapsulated flavouring is just less common in LLT.
**dosing out the sachets
Awesome insights, Ros, thanks!!
Speaking of how components in a blend may segregate in their bag, I today happened across this short youtube video that explains stratification (sometimes called “the brazil nut effect”) perfectly!
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=DOilqjKEhqo
This has been very educational!
In this past this has been one of my favourite blends from Paper & Tea, so when I was there shopping in person this past April I had to take the opportunity to buy a larger amount of it. Regrettably, I’m only just getting to sipping it now – I’ve been a little more focused on tasting through some of their newer blends that I brought samples back of. However, this mug was every bit as delicious as I’d remembered. Super full-bodied and brisk with a strong malty and nutty flavour. Like lightly toasted almonds, with a pleasant touch of astringency. Everything was rounded out by a little peck of honey sweetness. I love how modestly flavoured it is, and how rich the black tea is!
Cold Brew!
This was so smooth and jammy with the perfect juicy, ripe blackberry flavour swiftly followed up by lush, floral jasmine. Usually I find the blackberry dominates the profile of this tea a fair bit, but the jasmine seemed especially strong in this brew and it was kind of nice seeing those florals go toe-to-toe with the tart, sweet berry. Very yum!
Friendly reminder that I do not numerically rate DAVIDsTEA blends as I’m currently employed there and it would be an obvious conflict of interest. Any blends you see with numerical ratings were rated prior to my employment there. These reviews are a reflection of my personal thoughts and feelings regarding the teas, and not the company’s.
I probably should have let it rest since this tea mail arrived just a few days ago, but I got too excited and couldn’t wait to dig into this raw pu’erh. It was so bright and fruity tasting, though, like the sweet and sometimes honeyed taste of biting into a fresh, juicy nectarine or peach. It’s such a pleasant reminder of some of my other favourites from the zodiac series – like YOT Rooster!
And, as you can see, this is the ninth year I’m adding to my BLT zodiac cakes. Does it absolutely kill me that I’m missing the Year of The Monkey cake from Bitterleaf’s first year? Yes, it does. Very much. That smoking monkey wrapper artwork consistently lives rent-free in my head, and I blame my childhood of obsessively playing and collecting Pokémon for my “Gotta Cake ’em All” approach. Unfortunately, I can’t turn back time and make myself become a pu’erh drinker one year earlier than when I first discovered and fell in love with Yiwu production sheng… as much as I may want to…
Tea Photos: https://www.instagram.com/p/DLNxHYQSdqh/?img_index=1
Song Pairing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CXQJFPzHx_M&ab_channel=TheStupendium
Gongfu!
Yesterday, I steeped up BLT’s Year of The Snake sheng pu’erh, and today I’m brewing up its black tea counterpart with a session of their 2025 “Black Snake” Yiwu sun dried black paired with some juicy, ripe strawberries because it is berry season here in Quebec. This was a pleasantly medium to full-bodied tea with an almost syrupy, sweet tasting liquor – but I’ve not surprised because it’s made of the same material as the YOT Snake zodiac pressing, and that was a rather sweet tasting tea too. Definitely very honeyed in flavour, with soft floral undertones and a bit of a spun sugar sweetness to the backend of the sip. Pushing the steeps brought out a bit of a red fruit note, sort of a maple-y pecan kind of note, and a subtle creaminess. I’m sure I was influenced by my strawberry pairing, but I kept thinking of Eton Mess. Though maybe not QUITE that creamy.
Tea Photos: https://www.instagram.com/p/DLP_zOHRQUB/?img_index=1
Song Pairing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2QFIHPJKWU8&ab_channel=MamaDuke-Topic
Iced Latte!
I think one of the best things to come out of the crazy social media matcha boom and subsequent shortage is the acceleration of hojicha as a mass-adopted flavour/drink. It was already trending upwards, but that growth curve just got a whoooollleeee lot more aggresive. Fantastic news for people like me who adore hojicha and want to have more options readily available…
Now, that said, I did find myself a little bit “whelmed” by this particular hojicha powder. Don’t get me wrong, it was very smooth and nutty and though the roast level was a bit greener than I would have liked/expected it still made for a very pleasant and easy drinking hojicha latte. Was it a cookie flavoured hojicha latte? Eh, that seems like a bit of a stretch. I tasted a little bit of chocolate, but for the most part this seemed more like a lightly sweetened version of a standard hojicha latte. Still delicious, but not quite as fun or innovative tasting as it maybe could have been.
I do very much hope that B&B continued to release more hojicha powders though with different flavours – there’s soooooo much left on the table with hojicha waiting to be explored in the same way matcha has been.
Iced Latte!
I almost skipped this one over because it’s definitely less unique feeling to me, and the B&B matchas are fairly expensive when you factor in dollar conversion, shipping fees, and duties. However, I quite like B&B’s Buttermint Matcha and I thought maybe this would taste similar to that just without the mint. So, ultimately I bit the bullet and added it in.
While I wouldn’t say this was swoon-worthy, it was pretty good and there was that lovely buttery and toffee-like flavour that I do enjoy in Buttermint Matcha quite a bit. Just a little milder than I would have expected. I will try seeing what increasing the amount of matcha powder or adding a sweetener does, but based on this impression I was call this solid and safely enjoyable, but just lacking some of the “spark” and richness I would normally expect from a butterscotch flavoured tea.
Iced Latte!
I tried this as an iced latte because, well, I tried all the new matchas from B&B as iced lattes made in the same way. It was definitely pleasant tasting with a moderately sweet mixed fruit flavour that did feel aligned with other tutti frutti flavoured things I’ve had in the paste. If anything I would say notes of banana and pineapple kind of popped out to me? It was maybe just a little strange with the creaminess of the milk.
I feel like it would be a fantastic tea pop though, so I’m excited to try it that way next.
Iced Latte!
I recently placed an order with B&B to pick up a bunch of their new seasonal matchas and the hojicha powder they just released. I’m a little bummed I missed out on the Maple Pecan Matcha, but it had already sold out by the time I was ready to place my order.
This one was very delicious, though! I am always extremely skeptical of matchas that claim to taste like chocolate since I know first hand how challenging that taste is to convey using just flavouring (it’s never rich/distinct enough), but I think this blend gets it much more correct because it also has cocoa powder in it. Just chocolatey enough. The mint is also very fresh and mirrors the sweetness and creaminess of mint chocolate ice cream very well.
I can see this being a summer iced matcha latte go to for sure! It’s very nicely balanced and just a good break up from some of the fruitier flavours that seem to dominate summer.
