Dragonfruit Devotion

Sorry all, I’ve been off of Steepster for the past few days. I was finishing my essay for paleopathology (all done aside from my bibliography!). I have to admit that I am not feeling my best; headache, neck kink, can’t sleep, feeling dizzy atm and it’s probably just because I’ve overextended myself. So this cup is here to relax me!
After having so many wonderful, cheaper herbals from Adagio I’m not sure if I’ll be purchasing this one again. It does bring to play a very unique flavor that I really enjoyed. But the price tag kills me! I’m hoping that this gets discounted later this year because I would be purchasing a large amount. I am also wondering if I should attempt to steep this for a much longer time, similar Adagio herbals. Overall this tastes like lemongrass, lychee, and strawberry. Pretty good for days where you are avoiding caffeine.

this is a great blend BUT this review actually rates the potential it exhibits when mixed with another teavana creation named ‘weight to go’.

today was ridiculously hot. 29 degrees? on vancouver island british columbia? we’re surrounded by ocean, we have ocean currents that are supposed to whisk the heat away! oh, wait, maybe it was the nutty humidity that weighed it down? you’d think we lived in ontario!

rant aside, apparently pervasive miserable heat and a fierce need for tea fuels the machine of invention. it was too hot to drink my conventional mugs today. i did try, i have heard that when the temperature outside soars that a hot cuppa can actually kick your internal homeostatic (today’s big word of the day) mechanisms into high gear. after today i am going to call B.S. on that theory by the way. i quit drinking it hot after two cups going quite red and feeling like i was running a fever.

tea! i wanted tea! wait….. isn’t there a thing called cold steeping? time to try it. so, the kick of and oolong/puerh from ‘weight to go’ (because sweet tea isn’t sweet tea without caffeine) and lots of fruit from ‘dragonfruit devotion’, 8 hours of peeking and sniffing at my experiment…. brewing up my signature simple syrup…. it was an amazing colour! (that had to be a good sign, right?) a brilliant fushia, smelled like strawberries and tropical fruit and flowers… i really hoped my ratio was right. please let me detect the caffeine? please? (alot please).

i am pleased to announce IT WAS AWESOME! and hugely refreshing. i am very refreshed and a tad bit proud… okay, maybe a smidge more than a tad, lol. not bad for a first attempt!

Sipdown! I thought I had already finished this, but when I was re-organizing my stash I discovered one more cup’s worth in the tin. This was a favorite for a while, but then I found the better and cheaper version at DAVIDsTEA. Their Pink Passionfruit tastes nearly the same but without the slightly perfumey note in the aftertaste. When and if I decide to replace it, that’s the direction I’ll be headed in.

So now you can get a “free ounce of tea” with a Starbucks reward but this actually means you still have to get a minimum two ounces and pay for one. Whatever. Aren’t you surprised that something involving Teavana wasn’t fully revealed?

I actually had no idea then what to get…not that I knew what I wanted in the first place. So with that on top of my 40% off I decided to go for four ounces of this once I smelled it and saw the ingredients. Hell, it smells so good this girl who was waiting for a prepared cup of tea had to get some too and she wasn’t even directly in the path to have the lid fanned at her!

Most of my glasses anymore are these free beer glasses I keep acquiring somehow. I got two two days in a row. Technically the other one was $12 but it paid for beer and a donation to a non-profit but yeah, they’re the perfect iced tea glasses if you get one that’s more like a pint. This tea just makes way more sense iced and I was having it with dinner, which was homemade pizza, so good choices all around.

I actually don’t think I have ever had a dragonfruit, but I think this tastes more of guava and there is something oddly floral about it. I assume that’s magnolia. I know the floral flavor of rose or jasmine but this was just very different.

I ended up resteeping the same tea and having it iced again and that toned down the floral aspect of the tea while keeping the fruitiness. It was just a bit much in a full glass of tea and I don’t think I could have handled a second.

I think this ended up being like $2 an ounce for me so that’s awesome.

This tea smells lovely. The dry tea smells just like the description, I smell dragonfruit, guava, strawberry, and rose. It smells sweet, like candied fruit.

The brewed tea tastes very similar to the dry smell. I get mostly guava, then dragonfruit, followed by undertones of strawberry, and a very light rose flavour. It does not taste as sweet as it smells, but to me, the sweetness level is perfect for this tea.

Very delicious, looking forward to try as a cold brew. This is one of the first Teavana teas that I have tried that tastes like what the description says.

I’ll admit that this would be better iced. I’m drinking it hot and have the feeling it’d go nice mixed with a green tea. It’s sweet, a tad tart, but sadly it leaves a sugary aftertaste in my mouth that I’m not really liking right now.

Dragonfruit is an exotic flavor—for me, anyway! I’m not even sure that I know where they grow. (The tropics, I presume?) The flavor is well-represented in this complex fruity concoction from Teavana, Dragonfruit Devotion.

As usual, in preparing the infusion, “I did it my way,” which means using twice as much of the stuff as anyone else. I really dislike insipid brews, and what with the lack of any tea in this blend, I knew that if I did not double up, I’d end up with a hot Vitamin Water-esque beverage, wan and uninspiring.

Brewed double strength, I was pleased with this mixture. The dragonfruit definitely dominates, but there is a lot more going on here. I was sure that there must be ginger or black pepper implicated, because the infusion had a real zing to it! They’ve included just about every fruit under the sun: guava, strawberry, apple, orange, mango, peach… and then there’s a healthy dose of lemon grass and also hibiscus, which calls to mind Tazo Passion (of which I’ve imbibed easily 100 gallons iced during summertime!).

What makes this blend unique is the dragonfruit. Which means that if you know that you do not like dragonfruit, you can be pretty sure that you won’t like this. Dragonfruit aficionados on the other hand (and after all who else would buy a blend by this name?), should be pleased.

second infusion: there was so much fruit involved, and it plumped up so much during the first infusion that I decided to try a second round. Predictably, it was weak, as the vibrant red color had ceded to pink. This infusion was potable but not nearly as good as the first round. Probably this is what it will taste like to everyone who uses a normal amount of the dried blend. Too weak for me.

Well, the first thing I can tell you is that after drinking the first cup of this new tea, I had to make a second one immediately. I am a fan of yummy fruity teas and this one has a lovely blend of light and sweet dragonfruity goodness. I taste the rose and the peach. The rest of the fruit blends into a very pleasant background of lipsmacking goodness. No astringincy or aftertaste here. It is also a beautiful rosy pink color…Pinkalicious would like this one.

I so want to like this tea.

Dry, it smells wonderful. Steeped, it gives of a great aroma too, and is a very pretty dark pink/purple color. Fruit tastes are refreshing, tropical and exotic. I just can’t get past the heavy aftertaste of what another reviewer called perfume. Usually I don’t mind rose, so maybe its the artificial flavoring. I’ve tried blending this with other teas, but have not found the right match.

Maybe if I steep it at a different temperature I can get the fruit without as much rose/floral.

This one was much more than I expected it to be. It smells heavenly from the moment you open the bag and the taste follows the expectations that the smell tastes. It is my favorite teavana tea of those I have tasted so far.

It has a specific taste which I imagine must be dragon fruit, I haven’t had the priviledge of trying it. The lemon grass was surprisingly present as was a bit of a spice at the end.