85

So okay another one of these cult blends from Davids. We can pair this right up with Buttered Rum and the likes. At first, I had tried a small sample in store about two month ago, I wasn’t impressed. It tasted very weak and bland. Now reading the reviews on steepster seem to say otherwise and actually I was ordered by a friend to go buy some (and thus I did -50g worth of it).

The base of the tea seems very similar to the one they use for Glitter and Gold with a fairly crappy quality tea base but the core of the tea, with all that pumpkin themed stuff inside it that smells absolutely wonderful. The little candies and caramel pieces along with the pumpkin really make it look and smell great.

While steeping the tea, I noticed a few developments. The little candies melt and so does the caramel but not fully, this leads the brew to become slightly cloudy as those bits disintegrate into the hot water. David’s says there are no orange peels in there, but I’m pretty certain i saw one inside.. It was advised to make this as a latte with milk and brown sugar. I was too lazy to go steam up some milk, so i just added a small teaspoon of brown sugar inside. Generally I don’t like my teas sweet but I guess with chai’s it normally works out pretty well.

The tea tastes like pumpkin and cinnamon, which is pretty good (It had more taste than my experience in store). The thing about pumpkin, I’ve been having a crazy craving for this stuff especially in the pie format, and when I couldn’t find anywhere that sold pumpkin pie.. I decided to make it myself. MAN DOES IT EVER TAKE LONG. Cutting the pumpkin up, cooking up, separating it from the peel, squeezing the water out… it’s a fairly long process but I got my pie (which was pretty decent for a first shot effort) and roughly… the tea tastes quite similar. Which is good! Not as strong, but it does resemble real pumpkin pie. Awesome!

Now I do have a few issues with it, the unmelting caramel bits and also the rather weak “chai” part of the tea. I guess I was hoping for a stronger spicier tea like the Saigon Chai or something, maybe add some peppercorns in there as well. The cinnamon was sufficient but it lacked that spicy punch i wanted, which if you sweeten up becomes pretty good. I guess that’s a personal preference, so for a tea that tastes like pumpkin pie, I’m still pretty happy with the end product. I have become more and more drawn to the higher quality straight teas that now, most of Davids “new” teas that come out every other week don’t really interest me anymore. I would add though that this one was interesting enough for me to go and try.

Preparation
Boiling 5 min, 0 sec
Indigobloom

welcome back! you DID say you don’t drink much tea throughout the summer!

politicalmachine

thanks! i’ve been just focusing on drinking down my current stash right now so I haven’t been as active..

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Indigobloom

welcome back! you DID say you don’t drink much tea throughout the summer!

politicalmachine

thanks! i’ve been just focusing on drinking down my current stash right now so I haven’t been as active..

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Bio

Stopped drinking water, switched to tea. =)
(ok, this is a lie but still :) )

How I rate teas is pretty simple, different teas have different expectations based on quality and price. I’ll rate a tea based on how good it is for its category/price point. I think i rate pretty fairly, I’m not afraid to give a bad score to a bad tea, and it’s relatively hard to get perfect score (partially because i believe there are only so many that can attain such a title)

I like oolong/green teas the most
black, white, tisanes to a lesser part.

I re-steep EVERYTHING, as that’s how I’ve learned from my parents. Blacks teas normally to a max of two times.

I like it when the tea actually looks of quality (eg. whole unbruised leaves). I hate it when i get a tea, and half of it is cut up stems of the plant… give me leaves!

I drink all my teas black and occasionally with sweetener. I do drink coffee too, and love espressos and cappuccinos. Yup, I do my coffee black too. Guess, it is to say I like strong flavours.
My current way of steeping tea, is my french press which i just got a month ago. I love it (well maybe not my cheapy one; looking to get a bodum one day). I used to just dump leaves at the bottom of my cup..

Ok. Rating meanings…

0-49: Various degrees of suck. Either terrible value or just not good.
50-59: It’s drinkable. I’ll finish my cup.
60-69: Not bad… but not good.
70-79: okay to drink, nothing too special, will not be a re-buy.
80-89: Enjoyable cups.
90-99: Worth holding on to.
100: Um.. I’ll tell you when I get here.

About me?

University student, photographer, bartender..

Location

Montreal

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