Yes We Cran

Tasted a sample of this in store recently. It was warm and nice and very juicy – a definite autumn flavour. I’m not an enormous cranberry fan, so I don’t know that I would buy any for myself, but if you like that flavour it would definitely be a good treat. I would certainly take a cup if offered it somewhere.

This is far and away my favourite of the fall collection.

The in-store sample I tried was surprisingly iced – and even more surprisingly, crazy delicious. I haven’t tried it iced since bringing it home (I tried to the other day but I was out of ice.. so i had a double strong hot cup :p ), but I love it hot too. I do think when this one is hot its a bit more drying, in that cranberry tart way.

As other people have mentioned, and as my boyfriend repeatedly reminds me, this tea smells exactly like a craft store in the fall, or like a scented fall wreath or something. It weirds him out but it just makes me want to drink it more. =)

My first reaction to this deep purple/red tea, was Christmas in a cup! I know it’s in their fall line but this would have been genius for the winter collection. You know your stereotypical Christmas candle or potpourri smell? Well imagine that in tea form and that’s Yes We Cran. It’s not too tart like I was expecting and just has the perfect amount of spice. Just might repurchase this one.

My morning tea. I wasn’t quite awake and so I let it steep for three minutes instead of two and oh my lawd it is tart. Stupid hibiscus, I forgot you were in there. After a night of tummy trouble, this was not helpful.

I was unsure about this tea but was really excited when I got a sample of it during my visit to the store today. The cranberry adds a sourness to the tea as well as a very fruity note which is somewhat unexpected in a fall tea. I found it to be very similar to Kanpe tea which leads me to believe that it could also be really good iced. So far, this is the fall tea which I’ve enjoyed the most and which I’ve enjoyed the most. SPOILER ALERT: When I was speaking with the woman there today, she told me that they have two new pumpkin teas which will be released in the next couple of weeks (a rooibos and a black tea I believe). As someone who can’t drink pumpkin chai, I am excited for these! :)

Sipdown (131)!

Oh man. Wow. Fuck.

Ok, so any connection my stupid brain had previously made between this blend and eggnog is now long gone. To finish off my sample I made a hot cup, and I just have to say that the way my tastebuds are processing this cup is starkly different than the cold brew I first had. I mean, for starters, this is really bloody tart. The hibiscus? So noticeable. And very uncomfortable. I mean, there’s definitely cranberry flavour matching it in intensity – but it is not sweet cranberry; it’s tart cranberry.

This is pretty much what my experience with cranberries has been like my whole life eating them in things like jams or sauce at Thanksgiving; tart, unpleasant, and unforgiving. That’s why when I started realizing how much I like cranberry in tea I was completely mind blown; cranberry is just not a fruit I’d ever had good experiences with otherwise.

But all that tartness aside; I still get the pumpkin spices underneath it all and as weird as it is to say that I’m enjoying the spices, that’s honestly what kept this drinkable for me and stopped me from writing it off as Hibiscus overload and dumping it.

This just feels like a totally different tea then when I cold brewed it though. I still have no clue how I’m going to go about rating it! I’m so confused and I don’t know how to approach this one. So, I think I’m just not going to rate it – and I’ll just call this “it”. I don’t feel like I’ll be restocking this one at all; I’m baffled and still have very opposing thoughts on this one, but I’ve had enough. I don’t want to fight to try and understand it.

Honestly, I’ve not been so in love with all these fall teas. None of them are blends I plan on restocking. Not a single one, and that makes me a bit sad. I expected to fall in love with at least one of them…

I tried this without adding any sweetener and it is really delicious. It has a beautiful flavor for a tea without being too much. Delicious hibiscus tea without the bitterness that hibiscus can sometimes have.

I tried a lukewarm sample at DavidsTea today. It was… meh. Mostly hibiscus with some cinnamon.

I think it would be better as a cold brew, but I’m not impressed enough with the hot brew to want to buy some to try a cold brew. If that makes sense.

The pumpkin mug is ADORABLE, though. And we were told they’re doing a mini Hallowe’en launch on maybe the 25th. So that’ll be exciting. Oh boy oh boy I’ll have to go into the store before work once I know when it’s happening.

The spices are strong in this one. Pumpkin spice and cranberry. Nice but not anything mindblowing. Plus, I think DAVIDs really took Fall to heart because all their teas are pretty heavily spiced and I just don’t think I am ready to say goodbye to summer just yet.

I tried this as both an iced sample and a hot cup to go at my local David’s. Cold it had that tart cranberry bite I love, but with some sweet to balance it out. An average experience overall, but I don’t do iced tea much and generally don’t care for my tea being cold, so I needed to try it hot to fully render my judgment.

Unfortunately, that judgment is…well. There is a reason they sample this tea iced. Hot, any sweetness in this tea disappears, overtaken by the intense harshness that is the dark side of the cranberry. I ask you, friends: have you ever tried cranberry juice? Pure cranberry juice, with no clever blending with the juice of sweeter fruits like grapes and apples like most “cranberry juice” you’ll find in your local supermarket? If you haven’t, let me tell you, it’s not fun. It has gone to tart country and decided that this place is not hardcore enough, and it is going to liven it the hell up. The tartness is seriously dialed up into a very screwy kind of bitter. Any sugar in the berry has fled deep into hiding in fear for dear life. You’re left with an astringency of the kind that makes the juice very difficult to swallow. And hot, this tea tastes very much like cranberry juice, diluted in water in a desperate attempt to make it bearable. The attempt is, largely, not very successful. I can just barely taste the other flavors, desperately trying to get out and smooth things over, but they’re drowned out by the overwhelming force of the cran.

It’s a pity, because I actually have a deep and abiding love for cranberry. But cranberry needs to be carefully managed and subdued to really shine, and everything else in this blend just doesn’t seem up to the job. I ended up having to just give up and toss out the tea mostly undrunk, and that makes me very sad because it feels like such a waste.