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In my bag from last fall I didn’t quite have enough left for an entire mug of this so I cut it with some Caramel Spice from last fall’s collection. The resulting franken-tea was Caramel Pumpkin Chai. Oh heck yes.
It was mostly the Pumpkin Chai that I know and love, with a tiny bit of that caramelly, orangey, spicy warmth from Caramel Spice. It was seriously fantastic.
I seem to have timed it right to use up my Pumpkin Chai bag, because I see it’s now re-released! I’ll have to place an order for that and a bag of Toasted Marshmallow.

Got a tiny bag of this (16g) just because I’d never tried a puerh and this one smelled the best to me (plus I like mates, which are coffeeish at times so this seemed like a good bet). It certainly has a distinct scent from other teas. “Earthy” and “roasty” come to mind and it kind of reminds me of the maltiness of like….rich soil. Not that it smells/tastes like soil. But it has the same rich, malty qualities. Oh lord, this is what happens when I try to explain things…
So I brewed it for 4 minutes with near boiling water and it was VERY dark. Coffee dark, which was nice. It did taste coffeeish, but reminded me very distinctly of the kitchen of my late grandmother who was a heavy smoker. Sort of like…stale coffee and old cigarette smoke. There was definitely a stale, ashy stagnance to it.
Needless to say that while I appreciated the trip down memory lane, I am not a fan of puerh, which is why I didn’t give this an awful rating. I think its hard to accurately rate a tea when I just don’t like the tea type.
It does have a lot of flavour and is quite robust, so I imagine that it would be quite good if you do like puerh.
Glad I got to try it in a small quantity, because now I know and I’m not out a chunk of money with a 25g bag kicking around.

Went on a short end-of-summer holiday (we realized we’d done nothing all summer and decided something needed to be done about that) and got to go to an actual DavidsTea store for the first time!!! I think I sniffed at least 40% of the teas from the shelf, but the sales associate was so enthusiastic and bubbly and didn’t make me feel like a pain in the butt. I loved it, there was no upselling or pressure, just enthusiasm for tea. Great experience, I REALLY hope we get a DavidsTea in my city. Even the SA commented that she was surprised that there wasn’t one.
Anyways, ended up with a bag of this (and got one iced for the drive home). Iced I found it a tad bitter, but I suspect it was just because of the way they make iced tea there- concentrated over ice. I usually like to cold brew my iced teas, but for obvious reasons they can’t do that in store.
Tonight I tried it hot with a tsp of agave and it was delicious! Very berryish without being artificial tasting. I’m not even a huge blueberry lover and this was delicious. Nice balance of tea and berry. I was afraid that since summer is drawing to an end that a berry tea would be too summery, but I think this will do nicely in fall as well; the berry isn’t the tart artificial overpowering kind but more the juicy, deep, real kind that doesn’t take over too much. I really enjoyed this and am glad I got a full bag of it. I’ll have to try cold brewing it, although who wants to with fall right around the corner and it being so yummy hot.

Mate and I are friends, and chocolate and I are best friends, and I can’t say I have any complaints about raspberries either. This was destined to be good.
Even though its 30 degrees out, I made some of this and enjoyed every sip. Tastes exactly like you’d expect- chocolate raspberry. Chocolate is the initial flavour, with raspberry following towards the end of the sip. Mate adds some roastiness.
This tea screams to be drank in the afternoon. It’s tasty and fruity and will get you through that point in the afternoon where you seem to lose steam.

So the first time I drank this, I made steeped it in hot water, double strong, and then poured over ice. It was not good at all, very floral. It actually reminded me of the way one of my Lush bathbombs smells.
Since it had such good reviews here, I tried again. This time I cold brewed it in the fridge for 12 hours or so and added a little agave. Took it to work and drank it all day, and it was delicious! No floral notes really, just fruity apple and tart berry refreshingness. It was sweet, light, and tasty and I’m so glad I tried it again. I will never drink this one hot or brew it hot again because this one seems to love cold brewing!

I’ve been hankering for iced tea, so I made a big glass of this using 2 sample packs from DT. I like strawberry and ginger, so this sounded good. I cold brewed it for 9 hours.
Dry: Smells fruity and delicious. Yum, can’t wait!
Brewed: Deep reddish colour, from hibiscus probably. Very pretty. Upon it actually hitting your palette though, there’s this initial bitter/tart/burning sort of taste. I think it’s a combination between ginger and rose. Rose is a very predominant flavour in here for me, although reading the reviews no one else seems to think so. The noise that escaped my mouth after the first sip was something like “WLAUUUGHHH”.
Later on I asked the mister to try it. He immediately said “Tastes like grass…and…ROSES?! Ew!” He couldn’t detect any strawberry, although for me there was a nice flavour of sweet strawberry in the aftertaste.
I also had better luck getting this down when I only let it hit the back of my tongue; the initial bitterness was less pronounced that way. Keep in mind that this was also sweetened with a tsp of agave (which helped a bit, but oh man).
Ultimately though, between this being so hard to drink and being a free sample, I’m going to dump the rest and try again.

I love dessert teas and I love black tea. This one sounded promising and it delivered.
Lots of nice dried berries and bits of toffee in the leaf. The first time I brewed this it was a tad bitter, but I realized it was from using too much leaf and oversteeping. The second time I made it, it was perfection. This one really develops as it cools a little. The strawberry flavor comes out and the sweetness from the toffee is present. I added agave nectar because you can’t very well drink a dessert tea unsweetened (well I mean lots of people probably can, but I can’t). I really enjoy this one and am glad I have a bag, even if its only 25g.

Just catching up on some ratings, I’m so bad about doing them on the days I actually drank the tea.
I was certain that I’d like this one because its fruity and has jellybeans. I’ve only made this one once, and I think maybe I used too much leaf (okay fine, I was digging around for jellybeans and used extra leaf in the process). I also may have oversteeped it just slightly because I wanted the whole jellybean to melt. It didn’t.
Bearing these brewing errors in mind, it was not bad. The flavouring was nice, but didn’t seem to mesh well with the earthiness of the rooibos. The rooibos was very strong in this one (likely because of overbrewing/too much tea), and it almost had a sort of sour note to it. Not fruity-sour, more like…earthy-sour. Fermented. Not my favorite, but I do plan to re-try this one brewed properly. I suspect that maybe I just don’t like the taste of red rooibos, because Birthday Cake has the same earthy-sour/fermented note and has a red rooibos base.
At any rate, I’m not going to give up on this one yet because I didn’t make it correctly.

I cold brewed this for about 7 hours, and once it was finished I added a couple spoonfuls of agave to the pitcher.
Also, I picked out the little hearts before brewing because of the “real carmine”, which didn’t sound appetizing. They were kind of whimsical though, I would have liked them had they not had crushed beetles in them.
This definitely does smell like pina colada. It was a little jarring because its BRIGHT yellow when poured into a glass. It’s refreshing and coconutty. Maybe a little pineappley. There was something though, and I can’t put my finger on what, that I just didn’t like about it. Like, it’s not something I would ever crave and it’s not something I could just sit down and drink a big glass of. I finished what I had made, but was glad when I was finished with it.
This one seems like it might be a strange one to brew hot because its so fruity, so I didn’t try it that way. Maybe I should have.
For me the issue may have been the coconut. I haven’t met a coconut tea that I’ve liked, so I think coconut just isn’t for me. This came in my summer tea set though, and I wanted to give it a shot.

TL;DR version: Just okay. Not bad at all, but also not good.

I had the worst day at work yesterday and I was feeling generally bummed about the fact that I have a degree and make minimum wage. It was just one of those days where you feel like the world is trying to screw you over. After downing a pint of Ben and Jerry’s (yes, seriously) I decided that tea would be perfect. I decided on a warm comforting one, and reached for pumpkin chai. Sweetened it with a little agave, and I’ll be darned if it wasn’t the best cup of tea I’ve had in months. It was SOS perfect