Pecan Pie

My tea from greenteafairy arrived! Woohooo! Apparently when your parents ask you who the mail’s from and you answer ‘green tea fairy’ you get some pretty strange looks.

I was going to leave this a day or so to settle but the scent through the packaging was just so heavenly I had to make a cup almost immediately (almost because I was still drinking my previous cup). Now I did ask for a sample of this because I’m trying to find a replacement (or as near to one as I can get) for my beloved Maple Pecan Oolong, and greenteafairy did warn me I’d be disappointed because she’s on the same mission, so I was a bit wary. She was right about me being disappointed as a replacement for Maple Pecan Oolong, but since I pretty much expected that already I wasn’t too disappointed with the tea overall. It’s pretty tasty! I’m a huge fan of nutty teas in general, and this is about as nutty as it gets. My issue lies with the name, and I have the same problem a lot of others seem to in that out of all the nuts in the tea, pecan is probably the least prominent and yet it’s the one they chose to name it after. If this was called ‘nut pie’ I have a feeling it would have a lot fewer disappointed customers. Aside from that it really is a very nice tea! The flavour is a little strong and perhaps slightly on the chemically-tasting side, but it’s not much and I can live with it. I brewed this at boiling, and was worried about astringency because the recommended temperature is 195, but I was pleasantly surprised to find that it has no astringency whatsoever! I could happily drink this plain. I didn’t, though, because I wanted to try it with additives as I usually do the first time I drink a new tea before settling on how I like it best. With or without sugar, the almond flavour is most prominent, followed by the pistachio. I expected this from the scent, which was strongly marzipan-like. I added a splash of milk and the two flavours almost reversed, with the pistachio in the front of the sip and almond at the end. This became more pronounced as the tea cooled, too, and I’m thinking it might be to do with pistachio being a creamier flavour than almond. The pecan, which was nowhere to be found when I was drinking it black, peeks out a little at the very end of the sip with a pie crust sort of flavour that wasn’t there before either. It’s a really lovely, relaxing dessert tea, especially for a nut-lover, but it’s just not pecan pie. Thanks for the sample, greenteafairy!

This tea is totally misnamed. Pecan pie is a lie; it’s all almond. Actually, there is a hit of pistachio in the aftertaste, but it’s mostly almond. It’s quite sweet, but in a marzipan way—there’s no caramel or pastry going on here. I was hoping for something a little closer to my beloved Butiki Maple Pecan Oolong (despite this not being an oolong), but this is decidedly something else. There’s that same thin Ceylon base DF seems to use for just about all of their flavored blacks, and, as with a bunch of others, I feel like Pecan Pie could’ve benefitted from something a little more robust. All that said, this is a very pleasant tea. It probably won’t be a restock for me, but I’m glad to have the chance to try it—yay group order!

Advent Calendar day 1 ! (3 days late)
so, i’m watching Fantastic Four. yes! the most hated movie of 2015 haha.
and i think its bad yes. and dumb. it’s pretty dumb.
wheeee!
i also have to go to a 4 yr olds bday party in 20 min and i’m really not interested.
procrastination!

i ordered a bag of the pecan pie when i ordered the advent calendar. i don’t hate it but i wish i liked it more.
i suspect it will grow on me though. you know how that can happen with a tea.

Advent Calendar Day One

Hooray; it’s finally time to start drinking my advent calendar teas! This is the first year I’ve done a Tea related advent, and I’m super excited that this is the one I’m doing as I’ve admired this one specifically ever since I got into tea in the first place.

And this is a wonderful choice for the first tea as well because, when I placed the order for the advent as well as other teas, this was the one tea I didn’t order that I was REALLY back and forth on. So now I get to try it anyway! Can’t complain about that.

I really enjoyed this one a lot; but there was definitely something about it that missed the “Pecan Pie” mark for me. I did taste pecan notes, for sure, but more than anything else this one reminded me of almond/marzipan and pistachio. Actually, a whole lot of pistachio in particular. That really sweet nutty note was delicious but in my opinion is sort of lacked the almost “maple-y”/caramel sweetness that the filling of a Pecan Pie has or any of the bakery/confectionery notes you might see in a tea in order to replicate the flavour of the crust.

Though, this wasn’t completely devoid of nuance. While it didn’t do much to strengthen the idea of pecan pie in my mind I did feel like there were some more general warming spice undertones beneath all of the almond/pistachio sweetness. The kind of spice notes you get naturally from tea though, and not the sort that would result from added spices like cinnamon, etc. Still – it was a nice added layer of flavour.

As a “Pecan Pie” tea I think maybe this one is in need of a little bit of rebranding? I just don’t get that flavour drinking it – but as a nut melange sort of thing, I think it was really quite nice and smooth. I enjoyed the cup a lot! It was a really lovely way to start off the calendar…

I bought this tea a while ago, but I never wrote a review for it. It is the first tea in my Dammann advent calendar this year, though, so it seemed like a good time to do it.

This is pecan pie, but it’s really more a melange of nut pie. It smells a lot like almonds and hazelnut, and a bunch of other general nuttiness. I like this one better than the standard almond one because I think the other nuts give it depth. There is maybe a hint of custardy flavor, but it’s mostly all nuts all the time. Pretty tasty all in all.