Toffee Dream

I need to up the rating on this. It’s consistently good, even if I only steep it once (it’s rare I steep a white twice, especially a flavored one). As long as I keep that temperature down, it’s pure toffee.

My Zen Tea order came in like, what, a week ago or something? But I kept putting off trying anything.

Dry, this smells like a pleasantly mild toffee. It has a drier scent to it in the background too.

First steep is pretty good. Like a watery toffee, quite inoffensive. It’s the second steep that’s really meh though, almost like cardboard. I think most of the flavouring was leached out the first time around and now I’m left with that dry tone I can smell in the background in the dry leaf.

It had a good start. I appreciate that it’s not overwhelmingly sweet, no crazy oil scum ring like you can get with some flavoured teas out there. Just wish the base was better, I think. I’m sure that’s the main problem here.

Toasty, nutty, sweet but not cloying.
A nice white toffee flavored tea.
I have found I am not IN LOVE with the white teas lately … I don’t dislike them but I’m not craving them.
With that said … this one is quite enjoyable!
The flavors are not artificial tasting and there is no cloying sweet or artificial yuck flavor left behind.
Definitely getting the nutty toasty flavor from the toffee.
I like the look of the leaves – some large ones, some rolled like ones, its pretty to look at.
Good job Zen Tea so far I like everything I have tired!
:)

Woot! all the family is gone! Life is mostly back to normal post wedding, I just have lots of cleaning and laundry to do! Oddly, the wedding gift I’m most excited for is the new vacuum and steam cleaner from my dad – he said for the vacuum the commercials showed it can suck itself onto the roof, Swwweeeet! I can retire the Roomba that gets stupider each time I use it.

Before that, I need to try a new tea to feel like things are normal. .

DRY: melty butter toffee smell, delicious! The toffee chunks are little cubes that seemed to of moved to the bottom of the bag – make sure you mix the bag before making a cup! Beautiful looking tea too! I love the blue flowers!

STEEPED: Slightly buttery sweet smell over gold coloured tea. Annoyingly my 2 toffee bits did not melt that much in my steeper. I cheated and after my steeper strained to my tea pot, I dug out the toffee and tossed it in. Sadly, at the end of my pot, they still aren’t fully dissolved.

TASTE: Nutty, smooth, creamy mouth up front, taste of crisp toffee, then delicious white tea. Slightly sweet as well. The nuttyness is great and natural tasting.. reminds me of walnuts I think. The toffee and nuttyness reminds me of those honeycomb kind of toffee, but very light and less artificial.

WHO SHOULD TRY THIS TEA: someone looking for a nice light dessert tea – especially if you like creamy/ nutty or tired of fruity white dessert teas.

COMMENTS: This is the last of the Zen Tea samples I have at the moment, and I gotta say this one is the best. The combination of flavors is nice, the nuttyness was very good – and I wasn’t excepting nutty as I thought it would just be basic sweet/cream over white tea. Very tasty Zen Tea!

Thanks to Zen Tea for a sample.

Toffee tastes great, but isn’t so great for my teeth. Plus all those nasty bits get left in your mouth and just.. ick. So I mostly stick to toffee flavored things, if I can help it.

When I saw this white tea I was very intrigued. You really don’t see too many candy flavored whites. I’ve seen berries and fruit flavors for whites, but this is definitely the first toffee I’ve seen. I was curious how it would go.

And you know what? It works. The white base really gives a nice smoothness to the toffee flavoring. It’s delicious without sweetener, although I bet the flavors would pop even more if I added some sweetener or milk (which I didn’t). I drank this hot, but as it cools off, it’s nice as a cool tea too. Overall it’s a nice solid white tea that’s good for anyone, as long as they like toffee flavoring. It also makes a great desert tea, especially for people who are not fond of black base.

It’s like early Christmas! I feel like I’ve been on a sorta-tea-buying-hiatus for a while, and suddenly I’m getting samples and expecting packages and creating orders…. so exciting! Anyhow, my samples from Zen Tea arrived today, thank you! Although I wanted to try them all, I’m exhausted from a long day of work and only allowed myself to brew up one new tea requiring a review.

The dry leaves instantly reminded me of DavidsTea’s Checkmate, which I thought was quite interesting. Perhaps it’s something to do with the base tea? Either way, it would be awesome if it was that tasty!

Unfortunately, I oversteeped this one quite severely. However, I don’t think it really suffered, as astringency is still quite low. That said, something in this tea is tasting plasticky too me. Like, artificial flavouring. I can kind of taste a bit of toffee sweetness and nuttiness, but it’s overshadowed by this strange flavour. While it’s possible that it’s an artifact of my extended infusion, I suspect it’s more likely a flavouring issue. I have lots of tea left in the packet to sample, so I’ll give this another shot somewhere down the road!

Although I appreciate the chance to try this tea, I unfortunately don’t particularly care for it as I’m quite sensitive to artificial-tasting flavours :(

ETA: Damn, I am the only person to have a negative review here. I’ll definitely have to see if a shorter infusion as recommended makes a difference. For now, removing rating.

Thank you to TheTeaFairy for a sample of this. I used the entire 2-cup sample. I have to say I am not getting a lot of toffee. It’s an ok tea but I sweetened it with honey and so I’m getting mostly honey flavour. I tasted it before the honey went in though and it was slightly … toffee. As in, if I try really hard and someone whispers to me “toffee”, then I’ll be like “yes, yes, you’re right, toffee!”

My first Zen tea. Didn’t make a whole lot of impression.

Finally getting around to trying this sample from Zen Tea. I am sorry it took me so long to try it! But I’m really thrilled to be trying it now.

This is really tasty. The white tea is soft and vegetative, reminding me a bit of the taste of the air around the hay and alfalfa fields after they’ve been cut. Sweet and green with notes of hay. The warmth of the hay really complements the flavor of the sweet toffee flavor in a very pleasant way.

A really lovely cup. My full-length review will be published on SororiTea Sisters on the 12th of November: http://sororiteasisters.com

Help me, lovers of this tea. It has such a high rating but I haaaate it. It tastes like cardboard. I have 50g.

So! any tips? haha

Sipdown, 259. I know, I know. Over 70 of these are samples. SAMPLES! So now that things are organized, sipdowns must occur.

This is a tea I keep passing up when I order from Zen Tea. Smelling it steeping told me that was probably a good idea. MissB gave me just enough to try, which is good!

It smells sickly sweet. Definitely a toffee/caramel smell, but with no black tea to hold that sugar down, I’m not really attracted to the bouquet. Drinking the tea, I get some white tea base during the sip, but then a mouth full of sugary toffee.

Objectively, yeah, I can see this as a good tea – something that people would like. Sadly, I just don’t care for it. I’ll probably keep sipping on this cup for a bit, but I won’t be able to finish it all. Sorry, tea. It’s not you, it’s me.