So, a few days ago at work I was trying to figure out if there were any teas currently available in store or online that I hadn’t yet tried for “Project Teawall” since I’m able to make a cup at work of anything being sold currently. I realized that there were a few, in fact, so I’m setting a mini goal of crossing those off…
The list was pretty small, but here’s what it included:
1. Butterfly Pea Flowers
2. Chaga Chai
3. Honey Black
Now, there are caveats to those last two. When it comes to Chaga Chai, the reason I’ve not tried it is because I’m allergic to mushrooms – obviously an issue with that blend. However, over the last two years my mushroom allergy has been lessening in severity and, according to my family physician back in Saskatchewan and all the scratch tests I’ve done over the last few years, I’m actually “cycling out” of my allergy. In fact, I’ve been able to eat mushrooms in VERY SMALL amounts lately with only really, really minor reactions (itchiness and a small amount of hives). I’ve also been encouraged to continue to push myself to have larger amounts of mushroom products to build up my tolerance? So, it’s very likely that I will be able to try Chaga Chai in the nearish future, since it has a VERY SMALL amount of chaga in it. With Honey Black, I actually have tried it, I’ve just never documented it here on Steepster. So that’s an easy one for me to cross off, as well.
As for this one? Well, obviously I’ve had butterfly pea flower in a number of blends from DT and otherwise – I’ve never really thought of what it might taste like on its own though, since it’s always just used for the colour. And true to that, when you steep this on its own it is a BEAUTIFUL colour – very intense, dark blue. Something that feels deeply like it should not be natural at all in a glass of tea, but that is – which is magical.
It honestly has like ZERO taste though. I mean, the dry leaf and steeping aroma is vaguely and weirdly floral – the sort of floral that I associate with wilting flowers? Not the most pleasant, but still REALLY light/hardly noticeable. Once steeped, though, this is basically just hot water. I guess it’s good there’s not a distinct flavor; butterfly pea flower, as I’ve mentioned, is used almost entirely to add colour to blends and if it had a distinct flavor then you would have to work around that taste in your blends and it would create a bit of a limitation in all the interesting things that you could potentially do with this flower as an ingredient…
Anyway; checked off the list!
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 regarding the teas, and not the company’s.
Odd, I have Butterfly Pea Flowers and they have a distinct taste which is very earthy and vegetal, slightly like brocolli.