DAVIDsTEA

This is my favorite decaf pumpkin tea. I have not had it in while I forgot how creamy and delicious it is. I prefer to drink this tea as a latte with almond milk and stevia. Yes it is sweet but it does taste like a pumpkin cheesecake.

Didn’t get much sleep after spending the night in the hospital because my SO has a kidney stone, so I just reached for something caffeinated that wouldn’t hurt my stomach.
I learned a while ago that the trick to enjoying DavidsTea’s flavored matchas is to set expectations. I initially expected them to be just flavored matcha with no additives, so the sugar would really throw me off. But once I started approaching them expecting something more like a chain-coffee-shop matcha latte drink, I found them much more enjoyable. With that in mind, this did the trick. It’s sweet, it tastes like honey with some lightly grassy matcha undertones, and I found that it was most enjoyable as a latte rather than with just water.

I had this a few nights back because, as excited as I’m getting for the holidays, it’s also nearly Halloween and I’m loving revisiting some of those teas right now too. This was a nice, rich mug with a beautiful warm purple cup colour. Definitely that sweet Jolly Rancher style of watermelon flavour which was exactly what I was craving with a richer feeling mouthfeel from the starchy sweet potato. So yummy!

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.

I was craving something sweet and fruity a few nights ago so I ended up making myself a mug of this tea. I don’t typically drink this tea hot, but I actually really enjoyed the mug. It was a very candy-like watermelon flavour in a similar way to a Jolly Rancher and the liquor itself had a bit of a more thick texture to it from the starch in the purple sweet potato. I felt like it made it seem all the more rich!

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.

It’s hard to believe we’re already at the point of the year where Halloween teas have been released but, welp, here we are. This is one of two new Halloween blends that DT has put out this year – personally, my favourite of the two.

As I think most people on Steepster know by now, Halloween is my personal favourite holiday – and typically I go prreeetttyyyy all out in my Halloween celebrations. As such, I’ve tasted A LOT of different Halloween inspired teas over the years – many just okay and many that were absolutely mind blowing. With all that in mind, I really wanted to challenge myself when thinking about the kind of Halloween inspired tea that I would want to make. I wanted a flavour that I had never seen before in a Halloween tea, but I also know that the “vibe” is just so incredibly important when it comes to holiday themed blends – Halloween in particular. So if I was going to take a stab at an ‘unusual’ Halloween flavour I knew I would need (pun intended) “infuse” it with some Halloween spirit.

So. Witchy Watermelon…

The taste is pretty straight forward for this one, and that’s definitely the point. Picture watermelon candies in a Jolly Rancher style and you’ll be pretty spot on with how this steeps. It’s juicy, sweet, very coating on the palate. I figured that it was actually kind of weird how few Halloween blends tend to have this level of fruity flavour given that fruity candies are typically handed out when trick or treating prettttyyyyy equally to things like chocolate bars and caramel sweets – which are way over represented in Halloween inspired tea blends. So why couldn’t watermelon be a Halloween flavour!? Plus, it’s good but it’s also sooooo good iced/cold brewed and I love a good versatile tea blend.

To keep it grounded in that Halloween vibe, I played around with the visual of the blend quite a lot. Purple sweet potato is an ingredient that DT has used a couple times now with blends like Maui Madness and Pink Papayadise because of it’s beautiful colour, and so this blend is just PACKED with purple sweet potato. This gives it a lovely pinky purple colour when steeped but, as importantly (if not more so), it means the dry leaf of the tea is SUPER purple looking. That alone wouldn’t necessarily make this Halloween themed, but with the addition of these gorgeous orange witch hat Sprinkles it creates this very contrasting orange and purple dry leaf visual that just screams old school/traditional Halloween colours. Plus, y’know, witches.

I’m excited to see what people think of this tea and if the balance of unconventional Halloween flavours with old school Halloween vibes has the same payoff for them that is does for me!

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.

Hmm, so I have a pouch of this that I got with a frequent steeper reward. I don’t generally buy DT teas, but I do buy teaware so I always have rewards to use up.

I don’t understand why this has such a high rating. I used a very heaping perfect spoon of tea and it still came out somewhat weak. Happily, it’s not overly sweet from the rock sugar, which I was worried about. I do prefer actual sugar to stevia, but I’d rather have neither. Otherwise it just kind of tastes like a watery coffee cake sort of black tea? I don’t really taste the pecan or anything suggesting sweet potato. Mostly just cinnamon and sweet and a bit of butter/cake flavor.

Going into my rehoming box, as clearly I’m in the minority on this one. :P

I taste chocolate, but it’s quite fake and plastic-tasting. With soy milk, it’s drinkable, but I’ve had a million better chocolate teas. There’s just too much candy in here. I don’t like this trend. I’ve had this a few times now, and I don’t enjoy it enough to have it again.

Thank you Kawaii433! I think this is the first time I have had a Davids matcha? I like this combination though! Sweetened with coconut nectar, I think this is the choice of sweetening matcha that is the most okay with me. Brewing it, I started with green tea temp water, but when I saw how much matcha was in the sample for a mug, as I was sipping, I just kept adding cold water to the mug. A LOT of water to dilute all that matcha. This matcha is MURKY. Like olive green murky. But tastes fine with this lovely mint flavor. A great combination of flavors. I wouldn’t mind trying more of David’s matcha like this… It was a nice change of pace for today! Now to steep up some puerh for the afternoon….
2022 sipdowns: 97

Somehow I managed to miss writing a tasting note for this tea when it first came out like a month back – oops! I’m really glad that we’re continuing with a gradual expansion of unsweetened matchas though – our first one being the coconut and now a version of our very popular Peach Matcha without the sugar.

I feel like this is pretty much what you’d expect it to be – it’s the same peach flavouring used in the Peach Matcha, though it does come off a little less intense/juicy without the sugar. It’s important to be mindful with unsweetened matchas that they will pretty much always lack the same intensity as a sweetened version because sugar is a flavour carrier and it makes flavouring seem much, much more intense even when the same (or in some cases more) amount is used in an unsweet version. The trade off, of course, is that you get to sweeten to your own tastes (or not sweeten at all) and the rich grassy umami flavours of the matcha itself are a lot more present too.

I will say, because I definitely think it’s worth noting since it’s noticeable in the taste, there is a light cream flavour used in this blend so it’s not really just peach. I wouldn’t go as far as calling this a “Peaches and Cream” flavour, personally, because it’s not anywhere near the same flavour level as the peach. The cream really helps round out the flavour though and gives just a bit more interest and nuance to the profile.

Overall, I like this matcha as lot! Probably more than both the unsweetened coconut and our regular peach. It’s great on its own, but my favourite way to enjoy it lately has been in an iced latte – nothing else added to sweeten it up. It comes off subtle but still really refreshing and distinct when prepared that way.

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 tea from Cameron :)

This smells amazing! Almost akin to one of those Swedish Anna’s cookies, but in a cinnamon version. The cinnamon is very subtle but complementary here against the lightly roasted oolong base. Overall a very tasty tea, and one I would consider getting this for the cupboard. The second steep still had plenty of subtle cinnamon flavour and I have a feeling I could’ve done a third steep.

Thanks for sharing Cameron!

This is quite similar to many other DT herbal Christmas blends, but I haven’t had them in a long time, so I didn’t mind the refresher. Hmm I don’t know if I enjoy this mixture of fruitiness and nuttiness. It sort of clashes. I tried to smooth it out with some milk, which kind of worked, but it still isn’t great. There’s just something off-tasting with this one no matter what I do.

Steeped this one up over the weekend as I just woke up with a strong craving for it. Very buttery and smooth with initial flavours of crepe-like cookies and a hint of coconut with a warming undertone of cinnamon. Finish showcases some of the other spices though, like fennel and allspice in particular. Really nice cozy, lazy Sunday afternoon kinda vibes.

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.

I don’t really have anything new to add here, since my last tasting note for this was soooo recently. I just wanted to make sure to capture, now that it’s actually released and I can write tasting notes for it, that I’d drank it again. It’s surprising, even to me, how often I’ve steeped this one up in the last couple of months.

Tea Photo: https://www.instagram.com/p/Ch95EfVO1NH/

Song Pairing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6JHLPVjW3-0

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 is the other new blend that was released yesterday!

I think, as it probably clear after my many years of reviewing teas, I’m a huge personal fan of when story telling is built into the concept of a tea – and in particular when the ingredients are deliberately selected as a part of that story telling. This is obviously more easy with “ethereal” profiles over ones that are recreating specific/tangible flavours and foods – but that idea of ingredient story telling was heavily on my mind when I was working on this tea.

So, I guess let’s break it down…

To start, I wanted to chose a pu’erh base as the foundation of this blend because of it’s Chinese origin. Now, before someone calls me out on it – I know that Fortune Cookies aren’t actually from China, but that association is still very much present. There probably would have been other complimentary bases, but this one had the richness and full body that I wanted to give this tea while having that nod built in as well.

As for the spices, I wanted to use a spice mix that wasn’t something as common in our other Chai – especially the seasonal ones that often return each year. The inclusion of cinnamon was still important, but it’s more of a warm and bakery-style cinnamon instead of a sweet or red hot cinnamon, specifically because it’s adding to the bakery/cookie flavour illusion. The rest of the spices are more heavily aromatic and warming – not anything earthy or spicy. I love hot the allspice in particular comes out in the infusion. More teas should use allspice – it’s sooo underrated.

Finally, the coconut. I don’t think the taste of the coconut is necessarily necessary to create the warm, buttery crepe-like cookie flavour of Fortune Cookies (though it’s certainly complimentary) but I REALLY wanted to represent the “fortune” in fortune cookies. I’m sure this is a detail that most people will never pick up on, but the visual look of the large coconut shreds in the dry leaf is very reminiscent to me of the strips of fortunes within the fortune cookie – and for me that full circle detail is the cherry on top of creating a delicious Chai profile that represents its namesake on every level – from visual to ingredient origin, and of course taste.

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 late night cuppa that I sipped on while writing out my Top 3 teas/fandoms for the year. This tea is a perfect balance of jammy fruits and cozy baked goods. Starting with a sweet, kind of semi-cooked down raspberry note and lots of buttery goodness, that smooth flavour finishes with a lick of lingering anise/black licorice on the tail end of the sip. Not a profile for everyone, but dang is it one that I enjoy!

We haven’t officially announced it anywhere, but I think this last season of Geek Steep may have been the last as, due to a mix of life situations, Marika and I haven’t had any time to work on or record the next season and probably wont in the foreseeable future either. We did get an incredibly sweet fan email from someone asking about it, though, and so we wrote back a letter explaining the situation and included our top 3 teas/fandoms since that was a holiday tradition that we had as part of the Geek Steep mini episodes.

So, I might as well put it out here for y’all just in case anyone is curious…

Top Three Teas (In No Particular Order)
1. Cranberry Yuzu – Rishi
2. Lemon Meringue – DAVIDsTEA
3. Tipsy Garden (Barrel #2) – Volition Tea

Top Three Fandoms (In No Particular Order)
1. The Summer Hikaru Died (Manga)
2. Chainsaw Man (Anime)
3. Dandadan (Anime)

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

A late night cuppa from this weekend! I was really craving fruitier teas and this is one of several I gravitated towards. Pretty raspberry forward as you would hope and expect, but in a very jammy sort of way. That flavour was met a buttery undertone that gave it a bit more of a pastry vibe, and the finish was very heavy on the sweet, lingering taste of anise. I know anise isn’t for everyone, but I personally really enjoyed it. It deepened the raspberry notes for me, creating more of this sort of “pie filling” like rich berry taste.

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.

Iced Tea!

Had this one a few days ago at work and really enjoyed it made iced. There was something about how the deeper, “low/bassy” coating sweetness of the anise mixed with the brighter raspberry that created a super dynamic, jammy raspberry flavour that made me think of the filling part of a raspberry danish or croissant. Less so the pastry itself, though that slight buttery element of this tea was still a bit present. It was very refreshing, and I appreciated that it was very fruity but not necessarily very tart. Plus just an overall different sweetness profile than a lot of DT’s other iceable fruit blends…

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.

Hello new tea friend!

DT released a bunch of returning fall favourites yesterday, along with two new teas – this being one of them. I love the name of this one – not only is the Queen reference fantasic, but I feel like the “Bohemian” in “Bohemian Raspberry” really speaks to the feeling of the blend as well!

To me, this tea is just an homage to delicious raspberry pastries. The raspberry is sweet but not sugary and it has that semi-cooked jammy quality to it in a delicate enough was that it makes me think of all kinds of different filling used French pastries. Plus, there’s a distinct buttery quality to this blend. Put those things together and all I can think of when I drink this tea is the really beautiful, romanticized idea of eating fresh raspberry croissants or danishes in France. Something a little off the beaten path though; like tapping into those quirkier hidden gem patisseries in a more artsy neighborhood. Bohemian, if you will (see – it all comes full circle).

Some things I will through out about this tea. I don’t think I would necessarily recommend it to someone who’s really anti the taste of rooibos. It’s not the strongest flavour here, but it’s certainly present and the natural red fruit notes and nuttiness of the rooibos are heavily utilized in the raspberry pastry flavour illusion of this blend.

Additionally, if you’re not sure about anise then maybe this isn’t the blend for you either. I think the anise is really beautiful and complimentary, and it gives a sophistication to the profile and nice complimentary sweetness to the raspberry in a way that adds to the fullness and jammy quality of its flavour – but it’s definitely present as a stand alone flavour too. Like the stevia, it’s not dominant with a shorter/more normal steep time (like, four minutes) but the longer you steep this then the stronger both of those notes will become. That’s definitely not for everyone, so I would maybe just be mindful of that.

Ultimately, I think this is a really nice seasonal addition to rooibos category and I find the raspberry taste itself super different than anything else we’re currently carrying. I’m definitely personally a big fan of this one!

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.

So when I made this for the bubble tea it was WAAAAAYYYY too floral but that was also due to the instant boba pack. So I’m giving it another chance in a hot latte that I made with a vanilla frothed sweet cream. Its so good!! A pumpkin London Fog that is just perfect! Creamy? Check. Vanilla? Check. Bergamot? Check, but not overly floral and not bitter or oily. Spiced? Check. Everything you could have wanted and more for an awesome Fall drink. Now I just need the cooler temperatures, changing leaves, and cozy sweaters to match.

I made this as a bubble tea and the cardamom pairs well with the brown sugar boba but there is a really strong floral note that is throwing this off. It’s more berg than expected bust also the floral doesn’t immediately read bergamot to me so I am wondering if there is a weirdness when combined with the bubble tea.

I was a bit skeptical of this one from the TTB. The name and description were appealing, but when I opened the package, it was all stuck together in a clump. But, it’s summer and there’s a gum in the ingredients list, so I figured that the weather had caused this clumping effect at some point. Squeezing and shaking the package de-clumped it fairly effectively, so I decided to try brewing it up anyway. And you know what? Credit where credit is due. The flavor here is on point! I added some oat milk and ended up with something that tastes very much like a mocha latte. Even my tea-averse partner commented on how the mocha smell wafted through the whole apartment. This turned out to be a really pleasant surprise, both hot and when it got cold. Others have mentioned stevia, but I’m not tasting any and there’s none listed in the ingredients of this formulation (thankfully), which makes me wonder if this is a particularly old bag.

Iced!

Made this earlier in the week with a few pumps of “Sweet Heat” syrup added to it it was honestly sooo good. Rich and juicy with that tart yet jammy cranberry flavour, but with a nice chili kick to the finish. Really complimented the subtle heat of the ginger that’s always present in this tea too. I’d 100% make this again – it was a very nice twist for this tea.

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.

Iced Tea!

Made this last week to both drinking during a longer afternoon meeting and because I just wanted to revisit one of my favourite blends! I definitely under steeped my concentrate by a few minutes because I was trying not to be late, but the cranberry and sweet soda-like finish were both still there – just without quite the same oomph I’m used to. The ginger seemed unphased. Still lively with a gentle heat, and a great offset to the fruit,

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.