Saigon Chai (Organic)

I got this as a sample with my last order from Davids Tea and finally decided to try it. The dry smell is very promising. Peppercorns, ginger, cinnamon with a touch of cloves, mmm nice strong spices. At first it tastes like cloves. Then of cinnamon and ginger with a touch of peppercorn in the after taste. This chai is ok. Nothing really special. I was expecting more peppercorn and ginger. Well in general I was expecting more from this tea. The smell was so promising, I am disappointed in the taste. Maybe next time I will steep it for longer. I have enough of my sample for one more cup, hopefully that one turns out a bit better.

Hmmm, I’m surprised by all the mentions of heavy cinnamon as I get more of a cardamom/ginger/pepper flavor from this. Also mine looks nothing like the picture – it’s all green cardamom pods with bright red peppercorns and long leaves. Interesting.

This is actually one of my favorite chais, I really like the flavor of it. Somehow the peppery cardamom blend just really pushes my buttons. It does taste better if you steep it a bit (maybe 3-4 minutes?), and it tastes great on the second steeping as well.

I’ve only had this tea hot and its delicious. I would recommend this teas if you like spice teas. the only problem with this tea is then you over steep it, the cinnamon overtakes this tea. this tea is great in the mornings when you want to wake up :)

Edit: I found this tea amazing and i will be re-purchasing this one :)

Day 79 of my 101 days of DAVIDsTEA challenge.

2.5tsp in my two cupper.

It smells SO FANTASTIC — like a spice cake. And this comes out a bit in the taste a bit as well. Buuut…. it oversteeps easily, and doesn’t resteep well.

I think that it would’ve tasted great if I’d had the first cup with milk in it — it was a little strong on its own, but it was too strong for the milk the second time. I’m going to have to try it again — perhaps as a milk tea and see how it tastes that way. I think it would be much improved.

I picked this one out of the three available in my local store because the pieces were whole, rather than … well, pieces. It’s a little bitter, so would probably go really well with some sugar and milk (or, as suggested, sweetened condensed milk). Having just added that, I like it more, but I’m going to experiment with the steeping time. It still seems a little too thick.

I’ve been searching for a loose leaf chai with this particular taste for quite a while and as much as I like the other chais available at DAVIDsTEA, they just haven’t quite managed to do it for me. This one, however, tastes just like the first chai tea I was introduced to.

I tried this one iced as their tea of the day and then ordered a sweetened one to go. The agave nectar added an extra taste to the tea that certainly didn’t go with the spice of the chai; definitely will be sweetening this one with sugar if I decide to add it to my collection.

An interesting chai. I love cinnamon and was looking forward to one that had that as the dominant note. My chais fall into a like, love, or loathe pile, and this one is firmly in the like, at least until I try it with milk. For my first sips I tried it black, and it was nice. Nothing memorable, but definitely not a chai that was dominated by the notes I tend to dislike, instead riding the cinnamon to a nice high. I added the sugar, and the notes intensified, but not unpleasantly. I’m curious now how the milk will affect it next brew.

It isn’t my favourite chai, but it also isn’t one that I’ll turn down. Fairly standard, which isn’t a bad thing.

This is my new favorite chai. Strangely I’ve always preferred the inferior bagged varieties (read:tazo) to loose leaf as I’ve never found the loose leaf brews up strong enough before going bitter. I like my chai to punch me in the face, so to speak, and the only place I could get that from was my box of tazo chai. This one has completely changed my mind. After a 5 minute steep it was perfect. A strong cinnamon base, but not so strong as to overpower the other spices, followed by an intense hit of the black tea flavor and the tingle from the peppercorn. Love.

I don’t know why, but I’ve always been weirdly intimidated by chai teas. I guess I thought they were just ~ too intense. ~ :P I decided to grab 25g of this from DavidsTea when I was there today, to see if I could handle it.

The smell is really nice. I actually picked this tea over the other ones because the scent was more complex. Steeped, the smell is still really nice – quite a bit of clove and cinnamon, but not scary.

I drank it with milk and sugar. I like to sweeten my teas anyways, and although I’m trying to wean myself off milk in tea I thought I’d try it the first time. The taste is quite spicy, but in a really nice way. The spices are all getting along well, and the cinnamon and clove kind of sticks around a bit.

This reminds me very much of Coco Chai Rooibos. Except well this is a black tea instead of rooibos and its also much harsher.

Just smelling the canister can overpower your senses. You would expect this to be somewhat weaker when its brewed but it isn’t. Once the liquor hits your tongue, the spices punch you in the face (I mean this in the best way possible). Its the sort of thing I’d expect a “rugged” guy to drink, and not what a nice old lady would.

I recommend drinking this in the morning. Especially if you can’t seem to keep your eyes open.