Hot Chocolate

Aroma is creamy and chocolately. Aroma translates well to the flavour with light to medium mouthfeel. I am detecting the odd aftertaste of the added stevia extract. I am impressed with the chocolate flavour in this blend! It is creamy and sweet and reminds me of biting into an actual chocolate bar. I generally find DAVIDsTEA chocolate-flavoured teas to have a sort of soapy-artificial taste so this is a very welcome change. The addition of the stevia is very unfortunate. I seem to be extra sensitive to the aftertaste (gives my mouth a bitter topical anesthetic feeling) and I feel that the sugar in the chocolate chips and chocolate curls should be enough sweetness anyway (and then the consumer can add extra sugar/stevia as they see fit). I like the idea of combining chocolate and pu’er. I feel that this chocolate flavouring is more of a “milk chocolate” taste which would probably pair better with a black tea. A darker chocolate flavour would do better in this blend.

I don’t drink hot chocolate too often given that it’s overwhelmingly sweet, but this is the perfect balance for me. It is insanely good and offers a different take on the traditional chocolate tea with the addition of the earthy notes from the pu’erh. This would be a nice gateway tea for someone that is interested in trying pu’erh but doesn’t want to go the full monty. It’s present here but not despotic.

I was really impressed by the dry blend as well. Smells absolutely delicious and it has THREE sources of solid chocolate in it (chips, curls, nibs). I found myself babysitting the filter more trying to get as much of it to melt as I could but it’s worth the effort. Beautiful with some milk added.

No idea why I can never find this in the database; I have to look at my cupboard every time.

I love this tea. It’s a bit metallic for me today (likely more to do with my dental work healing than anything), but it’s so comforting… so earthy… so chocolately.. I love it.

Liked it! I’m more of a coffee drinker, but this satisfied my inner caffeine fiend & sweet tooth. It is the best chocolatey tea I’ve ever had and has a fudgy aroma.

It does not need additional sugar AT ALL. I’ve had it on two separate occasions and the second time brewed it twice. The second cup from that tasted more like pu’erh than the first did.

I didn’t expect to care for this but the pu’erh is really great with chocolate. I’ll be buying it again.

Thia is a pretty nice mix of dark chocolate and puerh tea, with some black tea thrown in too. You definitely get a strong chocolate note in this real chocolate. I don’t usually drink flavored puerhs but this compares well to the other chocolate puerhs I have had both from my local tea shop and from Lupica. I didn’t attempt to gongfu this. Don’t know how well the chocolate would hold up to multiple steeps anyway.

I brewed this one time in a 160z Teavana Glass Perfect Tea Maker/Gravity Steeper for 5 min with boiling water using 3 tsp leaf.

I am a big fan of Pu’ erh tea and this one is not bad…I prefer pure Pu’ erh with no flavour, but if I am in the mood for a bit of flavour…DavidsTea is the place to go. It has a nice hot chocolate flavour with a mild dirt taste that I love of Pu’ erh (like dark chocolate)

The pu’erh is what drew me to this tea because I don’t have any pu’erhs in my collection and I’ve never had it before. The description also sounded amazing.

Dry leaf: dark chocolate brown. You can see the chocolate chips, curls, cacao nibs, etc in the mix.
Liquor: dark chocolately brown.
This is basically a hot chocolate in tea form. It’s pretty sweet on it’s own, but it’s been pre-sweetened. I taste a bunch of chocolate and I also taste a slight amount of earthiness which is probably from the pu’erh. Overall I’m pretty impressed with this tea, it is pretty tasty! I didn’t really get much “milkiness” from this tea but maybe I didn’t use enough tea for my first steeping.

I’m confused about the caffeine content, though. Here it says medium but on my package it says it’s a stimulant (high amount of caffeine).

Edit to add: this tea definitely has a high amount of caffeine. It pumped me up enough to send my butt to the gym!

Second from the Winter Collection.

This is very, very sweet! I mean, you brew it up and you can instantly tell that it’s been presweetened. Personally, I really dislike when companies sweeten my tea for me: as someone who never adds sugar to conventional hot cups of tea (the only time I add sugar is when I’m making tea soda) it’s a big turn off. That said; I can’t taste Stevia at all so the addition of it here isn’t a massive turn off. It’s one of the reasons DT’s Blueberry Jam is one of my favourites – I’ve been apparently blessed with a Stevia immunity. Sorry Stevia haters: It didn’t choose this life, it chose me! I can, to some extent, appreciate why DT added sweetener to this tea hot chocolate is a sweet drink even if I don’t appreciate the act itself. Intentions can be quite different than the result of acting upon them.

Sweetness aside: the chocolate notes are also wicked strong which seems appropriate given what the tea is aiming to be. If you dislike chocolate teas, well, what are you even doing drinking this one? It’s obviously a tea made for chocolate lovers. And I mean lovers: there’s chocolate chips, flakes, and nibs. A trifecta of chocolate! It would take milk so well, right? Right.

Finally, the base: admittedly the Pu’erh base was what initially drew me into the blend. I’ve been trying to really ease in to drinking Pu’erh lately in whatever way I can. Flavoured, straight, blended, whatever. I’m doing my best to be open to it. Mostly, the base is covered up by the general sweetness and creamy, rich chocolate notes. However, there is a mild earthiness which I think only serves to keep this from crossing the line into cloying levels of sugary goodness. Instead of crossing it, it merely hugs it insanely closely. Like, creepy Uncle hugs that last too long and are too tight. That kind of hug.

Overall – I applaud the tea for tasting exactly like what it’s named after. I’d likely drink it again if I was really in the mood for something chocolate/sweet but there’s not a chance this will be finding a permanent spot in my cupboard. It’s too different from my normal tastes/tea drinking habits.

Day #5 of tea!

I reviewed this already, but I’m going to do it again, just to be consistent, haha. This is one of the few teas I’ve really got to watch the steep time with, as I have had some bad experiences with pu’erh in that regard before. I steep this for 5-ish minutes, add a splash of milk and mmmm, it’s the perfect treat on a snowy Saturday afternoon. I’ve still got some in my stash, but I may have to pick more up before the winter collection goes away, as it’s one of the few chocolate-based teas I like.

I picked this up because I liked the way it smelled and I liked the idea of it (I’ve had ripe puerh with chocolate-y notes before, so i figured the flavours would pair well), but it didn’t live up to my expectations. It does taste like watery packaged hot chocolate, and i probably wouldn’t mind it so much if the stevia weren’t so strong, but it is, and I can’t see myself getting this again.