New Tasting Notes

I pulled this one out to refresh my memory after talking with Courtney about this company earlier. Their winter seasonal blends are available now, and I’m planning on ordering a couple of things so I figured I would see how this is faring.

I really love this one. I will admit, it’s a bit annoying because the honeybush and apple pieces separate (as one would expect). So it can be fiddly determining the amount of apple to put in when steeping it.

The apple flavor is fairly light here anyway, because there is no added flavoring so it’s just up to the dried apple pieces. The cinnamon is delicious and sweet, and the honeybush base really does create the taste of pie crust or crumble for me. So it ends up being a lovely caffeine-free apple pie tisane, or maybe apple crostata or tart since the apple is lighter than the other flavors.

Nom nom nom. Bumping the rating. Do I need more…? It’s only available once a year…

Dittany tea from Crete, also known as dictamus or diktamo. Fresh and fuzzy whole leaf with random twigs and a chunk of dirt-encrusted wood. Used as a culinary herb, though I believe more often as a tea with medicinal benefits. Brought to our house this week from somebody who visited the motherland.

I’ve only ever had dittany in teabag form where the leaf was pulverized. This is so much more aromatic and flavorful. I brewed a pot for us, pretty strongly and it’s magnificent. Floated a dried lime slice in my own cup and it’s providing a hint of lime florality and tartness. Dittany is very soothing for me, with an aroma and taste much like Greek oregano: somewhat savory, mildly bitter and sweet, not as pungent or spicy… but also refreshing. It has that cooling feeling from thymol, which is a compound in other herbs like thyme, oregano and marjoram.

The small jar is going to go quickly. I wish we had enough for me to send out a few samples.

I’m not sure how to feel about this one.

There is some banana, and it’s perfectly pleasant. But I feel like it’s not enough banana, and the base tea is quite grassy and blah. I also don’t really taste any cocoa, though there were several shells in my brew basket.

I would say maybe it’s aged poorly, but I wasn’t terribly impressed with it when I tried it fresh either. I will say the licorice root, which I’m not usually a fan of, does give a nice little kick of sweetness at the end of the sip.

I have one more serving left of this one, perhaps I’ll try it with a lower temperature a longer steep to see if I can minimize the base tea and bring out more of the flavors.

Another of the tagalongs from my Dammann advent order. I’m not sure what possessed me to choose this one, I’m not one to order a plain peach black tea. I do enjoy peach, I just find it boring I suppose? Plus I already had a plum/peach tea in my order. It must have been the mention of apricot that drew me in!

The flavor here is somewhat light, but I’m really enjoying it in this case. The beginning of the sip is mostly the base tea, smooth and woody with a bit of malt. The peach starts appearing in the middle, and then I’m left with a lovely true-to-life peach flavor in my mouth at the end and in the aftertaste. It’s somewhere between fresh and stewed peach, a nice combination of the two. I think I taste some apricot, but honestly it’s hard to distinguish from the peach flavor. The woodiness of the base tea combined with the sweetness creates a suggestion of vanilla, even though none is there.

A lovely tea with a restrained peachy flavor, perfect for the afternoon. I can imagine this being served at a tea party, accompanied by scones and teacakes. I hope someday all of us Steepsterites can come together for a fancy tea party weekend or something!

Sipdown (274)

This is one of my older teas and even past its best before date.

I made it earlier and then dumped it into a travel mug when I decided to go for a walk with my sister. I then forgot it and am only getting to it now, hours later. The travel mug had a scent of a previous tea in it and I think that is impacting the flavor here.

It’s smooth and a little malty and then there is almost some smoke to it, which I have never experienced before.

It appears I haven’t posted a note on this tea, which I think is from 2016. I steeped 6 g of leaf in a 120 ml teapot at 200F for 7, 10, 12, 15, 18, 20, 25, 30, 40, 50, 60, 90, 120, and 240 seconds.

The dry aroma is of char, roast, wood, and grain. The first steep has notes of grain, cannabis, char, nuts, caramel, roast, minerals, and wood. The char becomes more prominent in the second steep, as are roast and walnuts. Molasses, oakwood, and an incense-type quality emerge in the next couple steeps, and I can really notice the minerals in the aftertaste. Steeps five and six are more roasted, woody, and mineral, and are a bit drying. I also get a tobacco note. The end of the session has notes of roast, wood, char, wet rocks, grain, and minerals.

This is a very enjoyable Da Hong Pao whose smoky flavours don’t detract from the drinking experience. I found that it gets kind of boring by the seventh steep, although this is a minor complaint. It’s a perfect tea for this cool fall evening!

It tastes just like chamomile. I like more flavors blended in my tea. Fine to drink if free but will not buy it again.

This is the only rooibos tea I’ve ever found that I truly enjoy.

This one is getting quite old, and I’m pretty sure Fauchon doesn’t even have this tea anymore (which is terribly sad considering I’d order it regardless of what the shipping may be).

This one has that rooibos base, but it’s not medicinal at all. There’s a lovely subtle hint of orange that mixes well with the base and hints of milk chocolate and cream as well.

I figured after my disappointing non-orange orange spice experience earlier, I would have this spicy tea to make up for it. Apple spice is close enough, and this tea isn’t as old so I knew it would still be yummy.

I couldn’t tell you why I like this tea so much, it is so sweet and I never sweeten my teas. It’s essentially Red Hots in a cup, unabashedly full of cinnamon candy sugariness. But I guess because it’s so candylike, it gets away with being a sugar bomb for me?

I’m not getting much apple from this cup, but I did just have Thai curry for dinner so it’s possible my taste buds are a little overtaxed at the moment. So it’s basically Hot Cinnamon Spice this time, which is equally yummy.

Comforting Red Hot cinnamon candy sugar bomb tea! Very fallish.

I figured since my other TeaSource blend had aged so poorly, I would try this one as well to see how it’s doing.

The orange is gone here as well, but luckily it still has a lovely creamy hazelnut flavor. It’s almost as if I’d added almond milk to the cup! I saw some clove in the leaf, but luckily I don’t taste it. It makes sense with orange but would be an odd combination with the flavor left here. So I’ll happily finish the remainder of this as a yummy creamy nut tea!

I packed some of this tea up for Sil who I swear I shared this with before and even read a tasting note by. However, that tasting note is gone and neither of us can recall if she liked it so I figured I would share (possibly again) since it seems like her sort of tea.

Once I had it out again, I decided to make another tea lemonade after the success I had a couple days back. Once again, it is really good. Like a mix of a creamsicle and an orange julius.

Geek Steep S1E6 – Spiderman: The Animated Series

Like I said in my tasting note for Ginger Lemon, which is the other tea I chose for my pairing this week, I actually chose two teas for this geek. I watched the first two episodes on one evening and the last one on the next evening which gave me a chance to improve upon things I thought could be improved with my first pairing…

I was trying to create a feeling of nostalgia surrounding my first ever experience with this Geek – and that was rooted in watching the show when I was sick and drinking Gingerale. So, I started with a tea that I consider a really good “sick tea” and while it hit some of those nostalgia buttons, it didn’t totally work for me. The areas of opportunity, I thought, were that it needed to be a bit “punchier” and more flavourful to better reflect the saturated colours in the animation and break neck pacing of the TV show…

I stuck with Ginger, because touching on those nostalgic roots was important to me with this pairing. There are probably a dozen other teas in my stash that I could have picked with a punchier ginger flavour that would have fit the bill, but I went with this one because honestly I really like it/wanted the excuse to brew it up. It’s a peach ginger, which is a slightly different route – but it still has the ginger I wanted. Plus, it’s called Peach Zing and that seems like the PERFECT “comic book action word”. Y’know – like the words that go in the jagged bubble/circle whenever any type of action happens…

Spiderman punches Green Goblin? POW!
Hobgoblin blows up the podium Fisk is speaking at? BAM!

So, why not a Zing!?

It was honestly the perfect pairing – I got the right intensity/flavour level for the tone/style of the show but still capitalized on the nostalgia factor I wanted!

Our Website: https://www.geeksteep.com/
(FYI – usually Marika write the blog post for the week, but this time it was me!)
Our Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/geeksteep/

Listen to us on Buzzsprout:
https://www.buzzsprout.com/1286036/podcast/website

DB topic:
https://steepster.com/discuss/42133-geek-steep-a-new-tea-and-fandom-podcast

If you want to get caught up on the Geek of The Week for next Thursday, the spoiler for our explored fandom is at the bottom of our latest DB post!

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.

This one is definitely a bit past its prime.

I know at one point this was an orange spice sort of tea, but now it just tastes like clove with a bit of cinnamon mixed in. I’m not the biggest fan of clove to begin with, so I don’t see any reason to keep the remainder around.

Sorry, tea! At least you were inexpensive.

I should look into getting another orange and spice type of tea, it is a lovely combination.
Any recommendations?

Geek Steep S1E6 – Spiderman: The Animated Series

This is one of two teas that I paired with our Geek of The Week because, well, this is the first Geek we’ve done so far where I watched the episodes over multiple nights and thus got the chance to “do over” or “improve upon” my first pairing.

I wont give you the full background on why I chose this tea because I’ve gotta save something to get y’all listening to the episode – but the simple background is that I was trying to create a feeling of nostalgia surrounding my first ever time watching the animated series, and that sense of nostalgia is/was rooted around my binging the show while sick.

This is a go to sick tea for me – I love being able to just rip open a teabag, dump it in a mug and fill it up with boiling water and lemon/ginger is the sick tea flavour that I like the most. It just makes me feel comforted and secure, and it nice on both the throat and tummy. For all of those reasons, this sort of capitalized on the nostalgia that I wanted. It didn’t get me all the way there though, so I did my best to improve upon it with the next night’s pairing…

Really though, this whole week’s fandom was basically a nostalgia trip though!

Our Website: https://www.geeksteep.com/
(FYI – usually Marika write the blog post for the week, but this time it was me!)
Our Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/geeksteep/

Listen to us on Buzzsprout:
https://www.buzzsprout.com/1286036/podcast/website

DB topic:
https://steepster.com/discuss/42133-geek-steep-a-new-tea-and-fandom-podcast

If you want to get caught up on the Geek of The Week for next Thursday, the spoiler for our explored fandom is at the bottom of our latest DB post!

GeekSteep S1E6 – Spiderman: The Animated Series

This is the tea that I drank during the recording for this week’s Geek Steep episode! While it’s not really a sappy episode in any way, this is probably one of the most “personal” episodes that we’ll ever do – it basically covers my introduction to Spiderman and how that became what is probably my all time favourite fandom. Certainly my favourite Super Hero, by a landslide. However, as you’ll discover if you listen to the episode, this is basically my “geek origin story” because not only was it my intro to Spiderman but it’s the first fandom that I ever was introduced to. Or, at least, the first my basically infant brain can remember…

There’s no deeper meaning for why I chose this tea for the recording. I pretty much just liked the clever word play of having a tea with “conversation” in the name to sip on while having a conversation. My chimp brain sometimes just gets amused by stuff like that.

Our Website: https://www.geeksteep.com/
(FYI – usually Marika write the blog post for the week, but this time it was me!)
Our Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/geeksteep/

Listen to us on Buzzsprout:
https://www.buzzsprout.com/1286036/podcast/website

DB topic:
https://steepster.com/discuss/42133-geek-steep-a-new-tea-and-fandom-podcast

If you want to get caught up on the Geek of The Week for next Thursday, the spoiler for our explored fandom is at the bottom of our latest DB post!

This is such an odd tea, but I like it…

I definitely get the biscuit, and I get caramel – I assume from the fenugreek? I’m not sure I really get chocolate, perhaps a hint if I really look for it. And the cardamom is such a strange addition, with nothing to do with the inspiration.

And yet, I like it. I suspect I might like it even more without the cardamom, but you can’t always get what you want. ;)

Just finished my full length blog review of this tea (scheduled to go live late next week), and figured I’d reiterate my thoughts here.

Pumpkin Pie Tart has a very warm, inviting scent to it. Though once steeped, the flavour doesn’t exactly translate the way I would have hoped. It has a light to medium body and tastes a lot like sweet, spiced apple, at least for a majority of the sip. It finishes with a pleasant creaminess and more of the pumpkin spice. Because it doesn’t totally scream pumpkin pie in my mind, I likely won’t be re-purchasing it, but it’s enjoyable enough that I’ll have no issues finishing off what I have left of it!

A share from VariaTEA – thank you!

This is alright; the mango flavouring is actually pretty nice. It’s distinctly mango and, while I know that not everyone feels the same way as I do, it has that mild pine-y/turpentine sort of note that I actually really appreciate in mango teas. If it weren’t for the green tea base, which tastes like lawn clippings to me, I think I’d be all over this blend.

Had this earlier in the day during a meeting, and to be totally honest I kept getting distracted in my meeting because the tea was sooo good! As soon as I opened the sample packed I knew it would be, because the aroma was so richly lemon curd, pastry, and cream cheese! The cream cheese was sort of shocking; to be honest I think the “cream cheese” part of 52Tea’s assorted “cream cheese danish” teas is typically the weakest part of the blend – and that’s not on them specifically, it’s just that that sort of sweet and creamy cheese with a “tangy” quality is soooo bloody challenging to capture in general. You see it all the time too with cheesecake blends that don’t taste like cheesecake, and its consistent across multiple vendors…

This was probably the best “cream cheese” I’ve experienced in a tea to date.

The lemon was excellent; fresh and sweet but with the acidity/high notes of a lemon curd type of pasty filling and it only made the cream cheese better. Honeybush as a base is brilliant; it lends the needed sweetness and nutty/graham style notes that work for pastry inspired dished. Everything just clicked, and I loved it.

My sample remnant of this is actually from Lot 712, but there is no entry for that and I don’t want to make one just for my pitiful note, and I’m not going to rate this anyway. Steeped this Western-style in a big mug.

I’m going to agree with what derk said about this a few days ago, the roast is too strong and it overpowers any other flavors. I remember Gui Fei I’ve had in the past being much more complex, with honey, fruit, and floral notes. This one is mostly just the roast.

That’s not to say that it’s not pleasant to drink. It has a comforting houjicha-like flavor of autumn leaves and roasted grain. I catch a bit of clear sweetness and perhaps a suggestion of honey coming out at the end of the sip, but otherwise it’s rather one-dimensional.

Sipdown (275)

I was doing my random tea generation to help pick a tea and this was the one I ended up pulling out. It’s another Floragold so like all others, it’s from Roswell Strange! Thank you!!

First off, I walked past my BIL with this tea and he commented how good it smelled. Because it does smell good. It tastes nice as well though the coconut is a little past it’s prime as this is a touch lotiony. Also, ginger was like a subtle warmth in the mug but I found myself wanting more. So this one was good but not great, partially due to age though.

This smells just like Fanta! It has a lovely orange smell! I steeped this hot. When I drank it, I did not get much of the ginger. Maybe it has a slight ginger note? However, it tastes mostly like a lovely, warm orange tea!

I love sweet orange teas. I am not a huge fan of rooibos, but I do not taste the red rooibos at all in this! Which is wonderful for me. Although I liked the blood orange cider more, I still enjoyed this tea.

Overall, I think where Deb excels is her citrus flavours! And this tea was no exception; a nice and refreshing drink. I wish it was a tad stronger on the ginger note, but I still loved it!

It’s just before noon here now and I have a class Zoom for ecology in an hour. I am so excited, but also my anxiety is taking over haha!

I made this one to enjoy beforehand, then I’ve got everything prepped to make my favourite and most anxiety-reducing tea: Yuchi Wild Mountain for the actual call. Woot!

My homemade creamer was gone, alas, I had to use the simple syrup and regular old almond milk in this today. Nonetheless, still tasty!