Cheeky Lychee

One of my other recent lychee tea acquisitions. This one I bought myself a few weekends ago when I stopped by the DavidsTea store in the city. I have been interested in trying this one for a while but keep just missing it during swaps and such, so I bought a half ounce to try.

The dry leaf on this tea is potent and smells of a fairly flowery lychee, somewhere between a fresh fruit and lychee candy. I love both, so that’s fine with me. Steeped up, the liquor smells really nice, but the flavor isn’t as strong. Also the base tea is somewhat boring and doesn’t contribute much in my opinion. I will definitely try this one again with more leaf to see if I can boost the flavor, but there are a lot of lychee teas out there and this one doesn’t really compare flavor-wise.

I pronounce it “lee-chee”, how do you pronounce it? :D

Yum! I’ve been waiting to try a Lychee flavoured black, and this one is just what I was hoping for. It’s one of my favorite crazy fruits, and I love it’s flavour in anything and everything.

This one doesn’t disappoint! The dry smell is a little misleading, it smells a bit faint and almost musty, but the liquid flavour is .. mm! Juicy! No musty taste that’s for sure.

It’s not terribly strong on flavour, but an increase in leaves can change that.

I think that if I had a choice, I would buy a cheaper Lychee black elsewhere if I could (I think harney’s might be cheaper? But then I have to factor in shipping price..) so I dunno! That’s just me. Enjoy!

Cold brew of the day!

This was a sample from Kittenna that I was excited to try, since I’ve had lychee candy and fruit but never tea, and I heard that it was quite floral. I love floral teas. Looove them, even if they taste kind of like perfume. I guess I’m just weird like that! This steeped longer than usual because I put it in the fridge too early last night and woke up later than expected, so it got about 16 hours. Well, it still turned out well!

It’s so sweet and fruity, kind of like drinking fruit juice. Refreshing for sure! The floral element is nice and strong, similar to rose but more subtle. It’s balanced well with the fruit, so it’s not too fruity or too floral (and now I feel like Goldilocks). I’ve been cold brewing so many greens and whites that I kind of forgot what iced blacks taste like: it’s a more traditional iced tea for sure, reminiscent of the sun tea my mom used to make as a kit. And cold it’s fantastic, probably better than it would be hot. I have enough left for another big cup, so I might try hot-brewing it… but it’s so good this way I just want to make more iced!

Thank you DaisyChubb for sending me some of this tea.

This is really a remarkable lychee flavored black. I enjoy many lychee flavored black teas, but I do think this one is (deservedly so) the best one I’ve tried. The lychee isn’t overly aggressive or perfume-ish, instead, it is a sweet, delicious fruit note that doesn’t overpower the black tea. The black tea is the strongest note here, and that is how it should be.

Really good.

Thanks Daisy Chubb!

Not sure how many of you remember my story about the first time I tasted a Lychee so here it is again…I peeled it open and sucked out the juice and it smelled and tasted like PAINT THINNER…wtf? Anyhow…this was my first experience and let’s just say I didn’t try one again for a good-long-time!

Anyhow…

As for this tea…it doesn’t smell or taste like PAINT THINNER…thank the tea gods! It actually doesn’t have much of an aroma considering the flavoring…it’s pretty subtle.

As for the taste it’s OK…again not overly flavored but I think that seems to work with this ok.

I don’t hate it but I don’t love it. It is better than some lychee flavored teas but I can think of about 2 or 3 others I have liked better.

I am glad I got to try this one tho! Thanks again DC!

It turns out the new HR manager at work has a daughter who works for DAVIDs. When I first met her, in the staff room, I had no idea who she was, what she did or anything at all. She caught me looking at a box a bagged tea in the cupboard and she started a conversation with me based on that. Next thing I know we’re in there talking about tea for 30 minutes. She ends the conversation by saying “anyway, I have more tea than I can drink, I’ll have to bring it in”. True to her word, this morning there are several bags of DT in there, some of then unopened.

This here is one of the teas. Not overly flavourful or aromatic but one could tell that there is, indeed, lychee in the tea. I wonder what this would be cold steeped. Maybe it would surprise in the flavour department, just like the Blueberry Jam did?!?

1.5 tsp, near boiling water (no thermometer at work), 3 minutes. I put a hefty amount of sugar in there to bring out some flavour and now I have some really sweet lightly flavoured black tea. The base is not too strong, not astringent at all but not much of anything going on.

Maybe I’ll pinch a teaspoon worth and cold steep at home in a tiny jar.

Sipdown! 198/365!

I think this tea has lost a bit of flavour since my last sampling of it, but that might actually be for the best – I think it tastes better now! Less potent, but still thoroughly floral lychee. Too floral/perfumey for me, but that’s how lychees are, so I have to say this is a pretty accurate tea. I’m even getting some base tea flavour here which is malty and pleasant. Not what I expected, in a good way! Leaving the rating where it is, though, because it shouldn’t take 6 years for a tea to be tasty.

This was much better than the disaster that was Cherry Cola. This is nothing fancy, but it a nice floral, lychee scented black tea. The base tea does come through, but not in an unpleasant way. The lychee blends with the base tea to make for a very pleasant classic black tea. I was really impressed!

So I went into this tea a little blind. I had no earthly clue what lychee tasted like.

This tea, to me, is mouth-wateringly juicy…however, the juice tastes like my grandmother’s rose handsoap smells. Yeah, it’s just not good to me. I don’t know if I don’t like lychee or if I just don’t like this tea, but this is not one I’ll be replacing.

Lychee-flavoured things are always attractive to me. I remember when I first discovered SoHo at the ripe age of 21, and couldn’t believe I had been missing out on such a delicious liquor during my underage drinking days. I also love those lychee jelly desserts found in the ethnic food aisle of the grocery store (I don’t even want to know whats in them, they’re so weird but tasty).

So when I heard that DT had a lychee black tea, I was intrigued at first. Then the tasting notes on this page made me put this tea on my “maybe when I’m really bored of all other teas” list. But recently, I somehow I decided to pick up 25g of this blend while stocking up on Midsummer Nights Dream, Pink Flamingo and Mango Diablo. I didn’t think I was going to like this dusty smelling tea, but once I brewed the first cup the choir started to sing.

This is a really light, floral lychee essence that grows on me with every cup. The black tea blends so nicely, and normally I like my flavoured blacks to not taste like black tea. I’m odd like that. But the black tea compliments the lychee exceptionally well, imo. I can also smell the lychee in the dry tea now. It makes me swoon! The little bag of tea I bought is all gone, and now all I can think about is when I can get another fix.

twitch

(Good for 2 steeps at 3 and 4 mins apiece. Very good iced)