DAVIDsTEA

Went for a cold brew of this one today. Took 0.75 tsp of this tea in my 12 oz cup and let it brew in the fridge for 2 hours. The dry tea was mostly small chunks of various fruits (apple, pineapple, and papaya being the main three) with a bit of hibiscus thrown in for colour and tang I’m guessing.

First thing I noticed with this tea is that it didn’t come out the pretty pink like in the picture. That’s probably my fault though, because in my smaller scoops, I didn’t end up with much hibiscus in the basket. The tea ended up a pale yellow colour – almost apple juice colour, but slightly lighter.

The taste too is faintly of apple, but you can also taste some other sweet fruits coming through, though I’m unable to differentiate them individually by taste. I also enjoy that it’s not the acidic apple taste that I was getting from the Just Peachy flavour of DavidsTea, but a nice sweet, mild apple taste.

I feel as a cold brew, I should probably up my volume on this one because it did end up quite weak with my normal 0.75 tsp. It’s not bad at all, but more reminds me of those flavoured bottled waters you get at the store. Next time I try this one cold I’ll up my measurement to 1 tsp and see how that goes.

Would also like to try this one hot.

Cup count from my 27g pitcher pack: 1 (Plenty left to try in the future)

I’ve had this twice now….hot and cold and there is something weird in the taste that I’m not a fan of as a hot brew. I’ll probably use the rest of this as a cold steeped tea because I hard a hard time getting over the taste hot. Cold it’s a lot more coconut where I’d prefer the pineapple to be the dominant note. But it’s a nice fruity, creamy cup.

I love this tea. It’s a longer steeped tea for me, which is just fine as I tend to like teas that I can steep for a long time and not have to worry about oversteeping. I don’t like to fuss about with my teas. Although, Oolong teas are worth the fuss! But I digress, onto the hot chocolate review!
I steeped it for the duration of my cup and while it was lovely on it’s own, it really felt like a cup of earthy hot chocolate once I added a pinch of sugar and a dollop of cream to it. Then it was the chocolately treat my heart desired! Creamy, chocolately without being too sweet, with an earthy charm from the Pu’erh. It was simply heavenly and claimed it’s spot on the favourites shelf.

the first sip or two was completely hibiscus forward. I almost dismissed it out of that. I’m not a big fan of hibiscus forward teas (I’m looking at you, blueberry muffin!) but the longer it steeped, the more of the spicy almost peppery flavour of the Tulsi came out and the hibiscus faded into the background to be a supporting and enjoyable player. Well done tulsi tranquility.

The newest tea from DT! It was the lone new tea in the recently announced batch of teas.

I want to be careful not to over hype this tea, because I would truly hate for people to see how excited I am for it and buy it based on that only for it to not live up to their expectations. However, that said, I loveeeeeee this tea! I think all my Steepster friends here know that I’ve basically been looking for my perfect “Caramel Tea” for years now. It’s my White Whale, if you will. I believe that caramel is one of the hardest flavours to capture in a tea because you need density/richness and thick flavour but you also can’t just have generic and “one note” sweetness because that’s not what caramel actually tastes like. It’s a creamy sweetness, with caramelized sugar notes and sometimes hints of molasses or fruit. Like, in the range of “sweet flavours” caramel is surprisingly nuanced and full of depth! The majority of caramel teas I’ve come across are simply not rich enough or too generic/flatly sweet. I also really don’t want caramel/chocolate – I think those blends can taste nice (ex. English Toffee from DT) but that’s _not_a “true” caramel tea in my opinion…

So is this my mythical “perfect caramel tea”? Well, no. I think the perfect caramel tea would be a black tea base – however this is SO CLOSE to checking all the boxes that I want in a caramel blend! It’s probably the best one I’ve found so far. There’s only one other caramel tea that comes to mind as anything close to what I like about this tea, so if this is not the best then it’s the second best!!

I just think it has the perfect level of thick, rich sweetness while also having that creamy note that good caramel has, the hint of fruity flavour that rounds of that sweetness, and even a tinyyyy hint of that molasses-y quality that adds so much dimension of caramel. I also do like the oolong base – it’s not really the forefront flavour, but the gentle floral notes aren’t totally lost either. The salt level is solid too – I could live with or without salt in my perfect caramel tea, but what I do appreciate about it is that salt is a flavour carried so it does add an extra bit of “oomph” to the blend, and dimension to the flavour. I taste it softly in this tea, mostly in the finish. So, if you’re wondering if you can actually taste the salt, then my answer is yes – a bit. With milk it’s pretty masked, though.

I guess the other ingredients that people might have thoughts on are the carob and the chicory. I like carob, personally. I think it has a pleasantly sweet flavour that compliments the caramel really well here and adds a subtle and less detectable layer of depth to the caramel – anything to keep from a generic or flat/one note kind of sweetness is a win in my opinion. I actually wish we used carob in more teas. I don’t personally love chicory, but I appreciate that the use here is to also add a bit more depth and lean into that caramelized sugar type of quality. I don’t actually taste it on its own, but there are people who are much more adverse to its flavour than I am so I don’t know how much it might stand out to them.

Overall, I do think this is a real win for caramel tea lovers so I hope it does well enough to stick around for a while! There isn’t anything else on the wall right now that really tastes like this, so I’m excited for people to try it and happy to have such a nice caramel flavour in my own tea rotation now!

Photo: https://www.instagram.com/p/CEepa02g2Xh/

Song Pairing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sfGMS0M8aFo

Friendly reminder that I do not numerically rate DAVIDsTEA blends as I’m currently employed there and it would be an obvious conflict of interest. Any blends you see with numerical ratings were rated prior to my employment there. These reviews are a reflection of my personal thoughts and feelings regarding the teas, and not the company’s.

Another returning tea for the fall!

This one is a total blast from the past, and feels reallllyyyy old school DAVIDsTEA to me. In fact, I’m not even 100% sure if I have a tasting note up for it because it might be so old that it’s from the time period where I wasn’t logging the teas here on Steepster that I had only tried in store samples of…

I do remember this one from when it was originally carried though! I don’t think I liked it very much at the time, and it’s still not really a tea that I enjoy/fits my flavour interests. However, what I appreciate about it so much is that it’s quite a simple/straight forward blend. The teas that launch now from DT are usually have ingredient compositions that are a lot more complicated than this blend. Sometimes that plays to a blend’s advantage, but I also think that it can occasionally over complicate teas and muddy up the flavours…

So what does this taste like? Well, it’s a lighter to more medium bodied profile and leans slightly thin tasting to me. The green tea is very present in the infusion, and is complimented by a soft baked apple type of note and hints of cinnamon. Even ignoring the green tea, which is an automatic turn off for me, I think I just find the flavour in this tea to be a little bit too thin for me to personally enjoy and I wish it had more of a buttery quality to sell the “pie” component of the blend.

That’s my personal impression though, and honestly if I wanted an apple/cinnamon profile with more flavour and no green tea there are other teas on the wall to suit that desire. So do I love this? No. Am I happy it’s back? Yes! Not everyone wants a super sweet tea or a tea with densely packed in and rich flavours – sometimes a soft, milder flavour is a “complete” profile to people and I think it’s important to carry teas for that type of tea drinker. So I’m glad that this very different feeling DT throwback blend is making a reappearance.

Friendly reminder that I do not numerically rate DAVIDsTEA blends as I’m currently employed there and it would be an obvious conflict of interest. Any blends you see with numerical ratings were rated prior to my employment there. These reviews are a reflection of my personal thoughts and feelings regarding the teas, and not the company’s.

Went for a cold brew of this one today. Used 0.75 tsp of tea for my 12 oz cup. Put it in the fridge cold and let it sit for an hour and a half. Came out nice and flavourful after this, looking a dark amber in colour. Did need to add a touch of sugar to cut the slight bitterness though, but I also did so in the hot version so not a big surprise there. Just be careful when adding sugar, because I can see this getting too sweet very easily.

I think the cold brew might have preserved more of the lychee flavour (not positive though because I do not know what a lychee tastes like), but the mango isn’t quite as prevalent in the cold version as it was in the hot I previously tasted. It’s pretty close in flavour though, hot or cold, and both are pleasant enough to drink, so I guess I don’t have much of a preference and it’s more dependent on the weather or my mood for which I’ll choose.

Updated cup count from the 27g pitcher pack: 2 (Still lots left to play around with)

Also, upped my rating of this from 70 to 72 because I like that I can enjoy this fairly equally both hot or cold.

This tea smells moderately strongly of strawberry in the pouch, but not overwhelming. Definitely a sweet smelling tea though.

To prepare I used my standard 0.75 tsp of tea for my 12 oz cup. Steeped at slightly below boiling (95C) for 5 minutes (I was aiming for the mid range time of the 3-5 minutes that was recommended, but I got distracted lol…)

After steeping, the tea came out a dark amber colour and smells strongly of fruit, but not so much of strawberry anymore, so maybe that’s the lychee I’m smelling now? I’ve never had lychee before, so I don’t really have anything to compare it to.

The hot tea isn’t as bitter as I thought it might be due to it being a black tea, but the ingredients do list sugar and stevia extract, so that probably has something to do with it. Also, the black tea was the less prominent part of the dry tea mix. It does get a bit bitter though as it cools down, so I ended up adding some sugar partway through while drinking.

As for flavours, the flavour that’s coming through strongest to me is mango, not the strawberry like I’d been hoping for. Mango is the third ingredient after apple and black tea. The flavour is very reminiscent of a mango juice I used to drink years ago from a can.

Would I buy this one again? I don’t know. I’ll still have to try this one cold, but as a hot drink, I’m pretty neutral towards it. It’s okay, but nothing spectacular.

Cup count from the 27g pitcher pack: 1 (Plenty left to play around with)

Thought I’d give this tea a try hot today since it was a bit chilly out – used my standard measurement of 0.75 tsp of tea for my 12 oz cup. Steeped at 95C for 10 minutes.

Checked after 5 minutes of steeping, but noticed the yogurt pieces hadn’t dissolved, which I found curious since I thought the hot water would melt those away in no time. Hoping they would dissolve, I gave the tea another 5 minutes to steep, but this didn’t help even after taking my spoon to the yogurt pieces so I gave up and just went with what I had.

I have to say that this tea was definitely better cold to me. Warm it’s okay—even without sugar, but it loses that nice raspberry freezie taste. It could just be that I oversteeped it, however, because the hibiscus was definitely more present in this hot version than it was in the cold.

Might give this drink one more attempt hot at a 5 minute steep to see if it’s still as hibiscus heavy, but right now I’m thinking cold is the way to drink this.

Updated cup count from my 27g pitcher pack: 2 (Plenty more to play around with)

Not sure what possessed me to try a cold steep of this on a cold day, but here we are.

The dry tea in the bag smelled super strong and my nose was not pleased. It’s not one that I could just smell in the bag and enjoy the scent of. Fortunately, the smell during and after steeping was much more pleasant and doesn’t overwhelm the senses to the point of almost gagging.

As for preparation, steeped 0.75 tsp of this tea cold in my 12 oz cup in the fridge for 90 minutes and now have a tasty pinkish red drink. Very reminiscent of a raspberry freezie or snowcone while cold, though less sweet than a freezie and slighly tart—like very slightly. Plenty sweet enough to drink on its own, but leaves a lingering artificial flavour. Refreshing is a good way to describe this drink.

Also worth mentioning: I took a peek after around 1 hour of cold steeping and noticed the yogurt pieces weren’t quite dissolved, so I dipped the infuser basket a few times to break up the pieces and put it back into the fridge for the extra 30 minutes. Seems to have done the trick. Not really sure if I taste the yogurt or not though.

Cup count (12 oz) from the 27g pitcher pack: 1 (Lots more to play around with)

Would I buy this one again? Maybe, still want to try it hot too, but I do prefer this to their Just Peachy flavour I tried yesterday.

Thanks to tea-sipper for the sample! The flavor is light and fruity. The green tea isn’t my favorite, but the fruitiness is nice on top of it. I wouldn’t say that the flavor is clearly guava, but it’s definitely close. It was tastiest cold. I don’t think I would buy this one myself since the green tea was more present than it usually is in DT blends, and I’m just not a huge fan of the base tea itself. Probably not the tea’s fault, just a personal preference.

Decided to try a cold steep of this one using the same amount of tea (0.75 tsp) for a more direct comparison to the hot version I made yesterday. Steeped it for one hour in 12 oz cold water in the fridge.

The colour is about 3/4 as dark I’d say of yesterday’s drink and while the scent of fuzzy peaches candy is still there, the flavour is still more of an peach/apple mix.

I do think that cold brew is my preferred taste of the two, however, because it does preserve more of the peach flavour than the hot brew had after it cooled down and the cold brew drink tastes less acidic and more sweet.

Several reviews of this tea I’ve read talk about steeping this cold overnight, which does sound like a great idea for future attempts. An hour was all I was prepared to wait today, however.

Upping the rating to reflect this slightly better flavour profile I’ve found: 65 to 67.

Updated cup count (12 oz) from the 27g pitcher pack: 2 (Lots more to play with in the future!)

Just got in my order from DAVIDsTEA today, so I was very excited to try something new. I purchased 10 of the iced tea pitcher packs because I love fruity drinks and they were on sale. Decided to make it hot and by the cup instead of as a full pitcher cold. As I didn’t really want caffeine at the moment, I chose Just Peachy from the five fruit infusion options I had.

The smell of the dry tea is to die for. Very similar smelling to the fuzzy peaches gummy candies that I love.

As the instructions on the packet are for a pitcher of cold tea, I looked to the website to find out how to prepare the tea hot. It suggested steeping the tea 5+ minutes in 95C water, so I went with that. The packet, however, says you can steep it to 20 minutes if you want for extra flavour, so that’s certainly something to try.

After 5 minutes of steeping, the tea still looked somewhat light, so I left the tea to steep an extra five minutes for 10 minutes total. The tea didn’t really darken, however, and ended up almost an apple juice colour, though slightly darker.

As for the dry tea, I used 0.75 tsp because that’s been my standard amount and I wasn’t really sure what “one to two perfect spoonfuls” was all about. Though I tend to use about 1/2 the recommended tea in most cases anyway… so half of one to two spoonfuls? That’s still quite a wide gap there.

The finished tea smells quite nice—definitely still has that fuzzy peaches smell to it, but not as in your face as the dry packet. Sipping it while very hot, the flavour is a mild peach—a tiny bit of tang and not overly sweet (I am a sweet tooth though, so take that how you will).

Definitely juicy, but the more it cools down, the less sweet it tastes and the more it starts tasting like an apple/peach mix. Not bad, but maybe a bit undersweetened for my tastes once it reached room temperature. By the end I felt like I was mostly drinking undersweetened apple juice.

Cup count (12oz) from the 27g pitcher pack: 1 (Tons left in this pack for future experimentation)

Would I buy this again? I don’t know. It’s okay, but it makes me think I’d rather go for a hot apple cider blend next time if the final result is approaching apple juice.

I’m very glad I haven’t gotten sick of flavored teas yet.  I don’t think I ever will.  Flavored teas just mean a billion more options.  I can’t imagine halving my options and only drinking straight teas.  This is a fun blend I nabbed primarily because it was on sale.  I don’t hate it – definitely don’t hate the flamingo sprinkles.  The flavor is sweet and even though the cup is definitely flamingo pink, I’m not tasting an overabundance of hibiscus.  To be honest, it does taste a little bit like Flintstones vitamins, but only slightly, and if I can get past that, the flavor is fruity enough.  I paired this one with Teavivre’s lychee black and it was a great pairing.  I’m usually sipping two different teas side-by-side with caffeine throughout the day, then the re-steeps in the afternoon and one no-caff herbal at night, so it’s really lovely when my two daytime choices actually complement each other!
Steep #1  // 1 1/2 teaspoons for full mug // 40 minutes after boiling  // 2 minute steep
Steep #2  // 20 minutes after boiling //  3 minute steep

So turns out, Cereal isn’t yet a flavor on Steepster!
Anyways, I absolutely love this tea. I usually make it iced, sweetened, and with 2 tbsp of half and half (basically like a latte without making a concentrate). And….Yeah, it tastes like Frosted Flakes and cereal milk. Which, I love for some odd reason. It has a nice strong flavor on its own, but somehow doesn’t play well with others. Tried adding a little black tea for some caffeine in the morning and then, that was all I could taste. I now take my cereal tea after dinner!

I really really enjoy this tea! Thanks to the magic of some decent strength artificial/natural flavors and complementary ingredients, they really nailed the french toast taste, even the eggy flavor. David’s is known for getting rid of teas, even well-loved ones, so I’ll be stockpiling this whenever I get a chance.

Last one from the collection!

This is probably one of my favourite tea names in a while, excluding the teas that I’ve named recently (because of course I’m biased about that). I think it’s fun and quirky in that almost “old school” DT kind of way, but also really captures the overall “vibe” of the blend to me!

Y’all know that I have a major soft spot for DT’s Blueberry Blends so is it a surprise at all that this is one of my favourites from the collection!? I doubt it. Probably my second favourite, but it’s so close with Peach Zing in my opinion. What might surprise you, though, is that I didn’t originally like it – but it grew on me a lot over the last year or so of waiting for it to release…

For people looking for other DT blends to compare this to, the ones that I would probably say are closest (for different reasons) are Pomegrateful, Cherry Lucuma, and Blueberry Muffin. I see elements of each of those blends in this one. The blueberry and the pomegranate flavours in this tea are pretty equal in terms of taste to me, and that might be why I didn’t love it at first – I have a hit or miss relationship with pomegranate flavours despite a deep love of blueberry teas. I think that DT’s pomegranate often just tastes like sweet red fruit and not actual pomegranate – that’s sort of where I land with Pomegrateful. I know so many people enjoy that tea and I don’t dislike it but I find it a little boring. That’s kind of how I felt about this one at first.

However, the unique combination of that distinct blueberry and red fruit/pomegranate note kind of grew on me in a sneaky sort of way and one of the things I like a lot about it now is that it’s refreshing and while it has elements of sweetness and tartness it’s not overly either of those things – instead, it’s quite refreshing. The other thing I love about this is the floral undertone, which suits the oolong base really well too (which has a slight woody note). It’s not overly floral like the other “Fruity & Floral” oolong tea from recent memory (Grapefruit Rose Starburst) but that sweet kind of violet note does still come through and as far as I’m aware it’s the first violet tea from DT. I’ve explored violet teas off and on for over a year now from other companies and I’m thrilled that DT has one now too – violets are such a delicious note in tea, and really unique from the other florals that have been explored. Even if you don’t think you like floral tea, I would really encourage you to try and sample this blend if you get a chance because it’s refreshingly different from other floral teas!

There are currently no primarily fruity oolong teas in the DT core collection, and I personally think this would make a really good addition to the assortment so I’m very much crossing my fingers that people are intrigued enough by it to purchase it and that they then love it.

Friendly reminder that I do not numerically rate DAVIDsTEA blends as I’m currently employed there and it would be an obvious conflict of interest. Any blends you see with numerical ratings were rated prior to my employment there. These reviews are a reflection of my personal thoughts and feelings regarding the teas, and not the company’s.

Second to last of the new Freshly Picked tea collection reviews…

In terms of “ranking” this is another that’s about in the middle for me, but if I had to divide the collection in halves I think it would be on the bottom half of the ranking.

It reminds me a little bit of Orange Blossom, if anyone remembers that older DT blend? It’s been so long since I last had Orange Blossom, but I think that one was more light in terms of overall flavour strength and a bit more vanilla/currant. I miss that blend…

My enjoyment of this tea seems directly proportional to how much turmeric I get in my measured out tea leaf. Without a lot of turmeric, it’s definitely a bright and sweet orange note without a bit of tangyness but not a lot of acidity. Combined with hints of vanilla and white chocolate, is has a slicker/oily mouthfeel but can be quite rich and creamy and inline with what you would expect for a “Creamsicle” profile – which is really what this is, but Creamsicle is a trademarked word.

The thing with the turmeric, for me, is that is adds such a gorgeous bright colour and sunny type of feeling but when you get too much of it in a scoop it really has this earthy notes that exaggerates some of the minerality of the rooibos to me and which pulls me out of that Creamsicle fantasy. It’s pretty small cut, which means that it steeps out quite quickly (due to exposed surface area) so a lot of those pieces in a scoop means a more prominent flavour. In a dream world, I would personally have dropped the turmeric from the blend composition – but I will say that I know someone who likes the earthiness because it keeps the rest of the blend from being too sweet and “sticky” tasting to her, so I feel like this might end up being a polarizing ingredient inclusion and one of those examples of just a small personal preference one way or the other.

Friendly reminder that I do not numerically rate DAVIDsTEA blends as I’m currently employed there and it would be an obvious conflict of interest. Any blends you see with numerical ratings were rated prior to my employment there. These reviews are a reflection of my personal thoughts and feelings regarding the teas, and not the company’s.