DAVIDsTEA

Sipdown! This mostly got drunk as a work tea. It’s a solid floral. No weird edge or aftertaste, but also not the greatest jasmine I’ve ever had. Which is really the sweet spot for a work tea – good enough to be enjoyable but not so phenomenal that I want to pay more attention to the tea than the work.

You know, I’m never going to be a hojicha person, but I keep trying! I drink this with almond milk to try to help bring out the nuttiness, and mostly, I just taste toasty hojicha. The flavoring I’m sure is helping it be less aggressive than usual, but I wish I could taste more chocolate and especially more peanut butter! I do taste a bit. I think I like this more than any hojicha I’ve had before at least! I’ve had it a few times now, and I like it with whipped cream on top.

This was a bit too subtle for my tastes. I wasn’t tasting anything honestly

Sipdown! (3 | 109)

This was a pleasant enough blend, but mostly just tasted like a mild cinnamon and apple rooibos to me? Nothing really said latke specifically, and even the apple was a bit faint. So almost more like a cinnamon sugar pastry?

Still nice and cozy for the evening, but not something I would personally reorder, as I like my cinnamon apple teas to be more apple-y.

additional notes: Finishing up this sample — this time just whisked in a mug of cold water with a fork. It disperses quite well, even with just a fork! Yet still no peanut butter flavor here for me at all. More hojicha flavor here now in the water, rather than the milk. It’s mighty good chocolate hojicha though, if you can forgive the missing peanut butter aspect. I would definitely drink this again. It’s gone from the site at the moment though.
2024 sipdowns: 57

This is from an awesome package from Cameron B!  Thanks very much!  I love being able to try teas I would just 99% chance probably never get to try otherwise, if it wasn’t for samples.  I am very much a fan of chocolate peanut butter combinations.  And the promise of a houjicha powder base — even better.  This might be my first “houjicha powder” that I have tried?  I just mixed some of this in some cold milk. I just love the idea of this blend, however in cold milk it seems to me to taste mostly like hot chocolate powder.  There was a HINT of houjicha in one sip… I am making a note now to try the remainder of my sample in water — not milk — to get a better idea of the flavors here.  I’m sure instructions say to use ten teaspoons or something crazy per serving, but I’m not up to doing that. heh.  On a good note, the powder was fairly smooth.  I think the cane sugar used here, was the perfect sweetener and perfect amount (for what I added to the mug anyway.)

I almost made a coffee early this morning, but went to my sip down pile, instead. This was sitting on the top and it was leftovers from Advent season. I over brewed this with the intention of it having some age and likely losing strength. The aroma had some mild marshmallow and chocolate notes. The tea itself was like a watered-down hot cocoa. I understand that the sample is older, so I shall forgo a rating.

Bag saved from a TTB. With my usual chamomile treatment of milk and flavoring syrup, this was tasty! Plain, it tasted like a pretty normal chamomile. Not worth seeking out specifically, but not bad at all.

I taste the orange and some nuttiness. It’s not the most unique flavor combination, but it’s decent cold. It’s a refreshing combination, but there’s something I can’t put my finger on that I’d prefer tweaked a bit. Maybe I need to underleaf this one for my preferences. I just feel like I’ve had better versions of this tea.

Sip Down

I wasn’t ready for Fall, but this tea is getting me close to those cooler days, when the leaves change, and the hoodies find themselves getting pulled from the further depths of the closet. I do my best to avoid rushing the precious little time I’m granted in life, but I can’t deny my love of Autumn.

I always think of sweet potato fries with the brown sugar butter restaurants add as a condiment when sipping this tea. I dig it.

Cold Brew!

The last new cold brew of the year is here and it’s a flavour that I feel has been very, very long awaited. I mean, it’s kind of nuts to think that DT has been releasing cold brew tea collections for more than five years and we’re only just now releasing a coffee inspired flavour!

In terms of taste, I would call this most comparable to our Vanilla Cappuccino tea but there are a few differences. I find this blend a lot less sweet and creamy, though it does have some sweetness to it due to the presence of chocolate. It’s not a super chocolate-y profile, but that inclusion does sort of nod to more of the original mocha inspiration during development. Overall it’s very smooth with a coffee-forward flavour I find complimentary with the malty black tea base.

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 really like this iced! My favourite ever fake flavour is grape. It’s always the best flavour for candy, soda, etc. This doesn’t have much sweetness but has a crisp acidity to it. It’s good brewed strong (cold brew for 40+ minutes or brew hot and pour over ice) but should be served cold imo. Fruity, without being chemically, and quite refreshing.

Ros got me excited for this tea, and it’s rare a DT meets that threshold. I steeped this up and it looks just like black coffee. The scent and taste were akin to a Tim Horton’s vanilla latte (reminding me of days long past when I first started university), which I was a bit disappointed by. My preference would be for a ‘clean’ coffee flavour as opposed to a flavoured coffee. There was a pretty distinct black pepper smell and taste at the end of the sip — this isn’t listed in the ingredients, so I have no idea why that came through. A also got the same black pepper, so it didn’t seem to be a figment of my imagination. I happily enjoy coffee without concern, so I’ll finish this off, but won’t repurchase. For those who like coffee and want to try a caffeine-free (and coffee-free) option, you may enjoy this.

Sip down/ Backlog from Advent
This reminds me of Frosted Flakes/ wheat cereal. Maybe I imagine it, though. Anyway, I thought I enjoyed this tea before, since it’s a sweeter version of Forever Nuts, but the last cup of this was mildly disappointing due to a lack of flavor. I could taste the light tartness from the almond, but the rest of the tea blend was missing. I blame the fact that this is older and there were only “bits” leftover for the last cup. If DavidsTea brings it back to their collection for the holidays, I’d buy it again and try the fresher version.

TTB tea! This is super buttery. It’s tasty with sugar and milk, though not as great as other milk oolongs I’ve tried. I did a cold resteep, which might have tasted even more buttery and nice than the first steep.

Hot, this tasted like almost nothing. When it cooled down, I could taste technically a flavor, but it was so light. It’s from a TTB, so maybe it’s old and it used to taste better?

Sip Down & Backlog

I cold brewed a lot of this during the weekend (i.e. the rest of the leaf). I attempted to like this on a few occasions, as a hot and cold tea. I wasn’t a fan…however, I let this sit for a while; at least for 6+ months. That’s fine since that time allowed this tea to settle and lose some of the overly tart notes I dislike with hibiscus. It settled into a nice ¬_earthy_ sweetness, which was bearable. I drank the 32 oz container from Saturday through Sunday morning. The only issue was the black tea base, I think, made it have a funky aftertaste—like a little bit malt, which didn’t match the tart/sweetness of the rest of the blend.