Sweet Harvest Pumpkin

I bought this for 84 cents at the commissary, because A BOX OF TEA FOR 84 FREAKING CENTS. It was a seasonal sale. :3 Anyway, it sat on the shelf for a while, until my husband brewed it up one morning and let me try a sip. First of all, it was CLOYINGLY sweet. Like, the taste in my mouth was like I’d just taken a spoonful of molasses. Then I looked at the ingredients label and saw it: chicory. Don’t get me wrong, chicory is a great ingredient in the proper applications. It was just W-R-O-N-G for this tea. It added that way-too-sweet-and-vaguely-spicy flavor that was a big turn off. It completely took over whatever pumpkin flavors might have been there. Yuck.

Well, I did go back and get another box of Sugar Cookie Sleigh Ride. I like it too much not to. There were two other seasonal teas on sale as well (this one and the gingerbread one), so I grabbed those too.

One thing this has going for it is actual pumpkin in the ingredients list. And I can taste it, too! Very happy about that. Not so happy about the intense fake sweetener taste. This smells like a pumpkin pastry of some kind but tastes like dipping my tongue in a bag of stevia. Hmm. I get the feeling if I brewed this with extra black tea it’d be better. The pumpkin flavor is very nice, but I wish that fake sweetness was gone.

From the EU TTB – Round 3

Sweet is the key word here. It’s a little odd, because it doesn’t smell sweet while brewing. It smells of pumpkin, with a touch of spice. That’s probably why I wasn’t expecting the instant hit of sweetness I got when I took my first sip. It only took me a moment to realise that this has stevia in it.

Subsequent sips, once I was expecting the sweetness, were actually okay. The pumpkin flavour is pretty accurate, with that distinctive smooth, almost savoury “squash” flavour. The spicing is relatively mild, but well blended, and helps to connect the sweet overtone of the stevia to the savoury pumpkin. I went back to the kitchen and added a bit of milk, and that helped things along still further. NOW it’s pumpkin pie filling!

I wasn’t at all sure about this one at first, but I warmed to it as I drank it. It’s a very pleasant autumnal tea, but you’ve got to be down with sweet. Fortunately, that’s okay with me.

Ack! So I read the reviews before buying….but I like sweet so thought I’d be ok. I get a very nice spice smell with the dry leaf and after brewing. I don’t think it tastes like it smells though. My first sip was actually pretty nice! The more sips I took though the more I disliked it. I’m guessing the stevia is giving it a weird aftertaste.
Oh well, not a huge loss money wise so I’ll just pass this on to friends to try.

Sipdown, finally!

This is one which is so cloyingly sweet I couldn’t drink it often. It’s actually better now, several years old, than it was fresh because the overpowering flavours have mellowed out enough to be somewhat enjoyable. For my final cup I wanted to try something unusual, maybe something a bit weird. Something a lot of you will probably judge me for. I used my final teabag as the base for a homemade pumpkin spice latte. I brewed it up nice and strong, then added coffee, milk and a drizzle of toffee sauce. The tea is actually so strong that it overpowers the flavour of the coffee, but other than that it’s actually not a bad approximation. I think if I wanted it to be more accurate I could just add more coffee. Part of me wants to get my Moka pot out and brew up some super strong coffee to add to it, but I’m pretty sure I would have finished the mug by the time it was ready. It’s nice enough anyway, something a bit different, and I’m satisfied that I used these teabags in every way imaginable to use them up and actually discovered some pretty tasty options along the way.

221/399

I really wanted to love this tea. I do like it. It is warm and spicy and sweet, and it cannot be oversteeped. However, the taste might actually be almost too sweet. I’ll cite stevia for this cloying sweetness. But not bad.

Taken from the EUTTB return of round 2

The blends raw scent is of cinnamon bark, dry pumpkin and ginger.

1 bag, boiling water for 4 minutes.

Steeped scent is thickly and sweetly cinnamon stick with a touch of clove and ginger.

Flavour is super sweet (like 10 sugars sweet) with a dry cinnamon and clove taste. It’s sweetness is too sweet for me, compared to it’s spicy tones it’s refreshing, brings out the clove. So sweet cinnamon and clove…not quite Halloween but rather reminding me of Christmas. After half a cup it gets sweeter and becomes harder for me to drink. I love strong cinnamon teas but it’s the pure sugar sweetness I can’t handle.

For pictures please view my blog
http://www.kittylovestea.co.uk/2014/10/31/halloween-tea-showdown-2014/

No kidding about the sweet part! Since I almost never sweeten my teas, it was a little startling just how sweet it is. Luckily, I don’t mind the taste of stevia and got over it pretty quickly. I WILL be trying this with a little almond milk as soon as I get some because I think that’s going to bring out the pumpkin-ness.

I saw this on clearance yesterday so I picked up a box! My first steep was much better than this one! At 4min. the stevia becomes very overpowering. At three minutes I was able to taste more of the spices. I’m not sure this is a great boxed tea, but I’ll have to try it a bit more! I actually think it would be a bit better if the black base was more evident. It would balance out this sweetness a lot.

Sometimes, in the morning, I need something a little stronger. This was a good fit. It is pretty dark, and the cinnamon flavor is quite nice. My only major complaint was the “sweet”. I taste no sweet. It actually took me a couple drinks to read the label and realize there was even stevia in it. I still need two packets- my same amount for unsweetened teas. Over all, its a solid, kickmybuttfirstthing kind of tea.