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I was in the mood for something fun and citrusy, but also minty so I decided to mix these two DAVIDsTEA Herbal teas. For my mug I used a heaping teaspoon of the Pink Flamingo and a level 1/2 teaspoon of the Peppermint Amour. Since this is an experimentation I’m going to try to be be fairly thorough in my documentation of it.

Just smelling my little tea ball with the mixed dry leaf, I still get all the juicy citrus notes from Pink Flamingo (especially the smell of oranges and grapefruit) but it’s accompanied with a pretty strong smell of mint that makes it seem really “fresh”.

As it’s steeping I can smell Pink Flamingo, but the Peppermint Amour is getting buried under all the citrus and I can hardly smell it at all! The colour of the liquor is a much lighter pink than I’m used to seeing with the Pink Flamingo.

I ended up steeping the tea for almost exactly six minutes, and now that it’s done steeping I can smell the peppermint a little bit more, but the Pink Flamingo is still the dominating scent.

First few sips and immediately I’m tasting tangerines and oranges and a pretty strong note of hibiscus (that’s ok, I lie hibiscus). However, on the tail end of the sip and in the aftertaste I get my peppermint! It’s a lovely taste that leaves my mouth feeling cool and fresh. This was a good decision! The Peppermint compliments the citrus really nicely. It’s sort of like that sensation of peppermint in your mouth after you’ve been chewing a really strong peppermint flavoured gum.

This would be a great tea to drink in the summertime and so far it’s been really relaxing (and since it’s all herbal teas it’s caffeine free) so it’d probably be a nice cuppa before bed too. As soon as I finish of the pitcher of iced tea already in my fridge I’m excited to cold brew some of this.

I’d offer some to my roommate but he’d likely just dump a bunch of sugar in it and this combination is one that really doesn’t need a sweetener at all because the peppermint really helps to cancel out any unwanted tartness. So no tea for him.

Had this as my breakfast tea this morning before family showed up! Re-steeped it and found that it still tasted pretty good, although the taste of raspberries was hardly discernible at all. Didn’t save the leaves to steep a third time – I find most teas to be pretty weak after being steeped more than twice with few exceptions to that rule. Maybe that’s because most of my favourites are black teas which many people, including myself, seem to agree don’t re-steep well.

When I first discovered DAVIDsTEA (Birthday cake was the first one I ever tried; and I discovered when I was searching for a birthday present for Skylar, my best friend Taylor’s girlfriend. Skylar is a tea enthusiast and I thought Birthday Cake would be the perfect birthday present for her) this is one of the teas where I was like, “Damn! I need to try this!”. I love caramel. LOVE IT. In all varieties. It is my kryptonite, and so I was shocked to see that teas came in flavour other than “fruit” and the sort of tea names I’d just heard growing up like “Chai”, “Earl Grey”, or “Chamomile”. It’s one of my first purchases from DAVIDsTEA and since I’m pretty new to Steepster I haven’t had a chance to log it properly, so I’m gonna do that now…

The dry leaf smells like really rich caramel. It sort of reminds me of Werthers chewy caramels, but with the obvious addition of black tea leaves. It could probably sit on my couch all curled up and just sit and smell the dry leaves for hours, and I’m not gonna rule that out as something I wont do in the future. I remember when I first saw it I was shocked that there were honest to goodness, actual, real bit of caramel in it; it wasn’t just an added flavouring (some days it’s really hard not to just pick the caramel bits out).

With this tea I have a tendency to over steep (if you steep the full 7 min. it says to on the tin it just doesn’t taste right, in my opinion) so I’m just going to steep it for 4, maybe 5 minutes. The liquor is a golden, sort of ambery brown and, because of the steeper I used (I should really invest in a better one) there are lots of little bits floating around. For this one I always steep it and then pour it through a more fine strainer a second time before drinking. It also gets an oily sorta ‘skin’ that forms on the top, though that doesn’t really bother me a whole lot.

Through experimentation I’ve found that this tastes pretty good with just a touch of milk or cream (I never add a lot; I don’t like adding things to my tea). If I had rock sugar (maybe Butiki’s Brown Crystal Sugar) I might add just a touch of that – but I have no qualms drinking it without added sugar.

Crap! I still ended up steeping this one longer than I wanted to – I’m really bad for that. At least it didn’t get the full 7 minutes; more like 6 this time. The smell is still caramel – rich, gooey caramel. My apartment smells lovely too! I swear, unless I’m making tea the place has this sort of permanent smell of “Maple Sugar Oatmeal”, heavy on the oatmeal… It’s not bad smelling exactly, but this smells MUCH better. I don’t really get the “salted” part of the tea, but I’m not going to complain since my only real “caramel turn off” is caramel with large bits of salt… Lightly salted caramel? Sure! Heavy on the salt? NO! I am NOT a salt fan at all (in general, not just in regard to caramel).

The black tea base is really present on the first few sips, but it’s quickly followed by the caramel which just suits it really well. Smelling it now, my roommate asked if there was something chocolatey in it. I don’t really get that from this tea, but it makes me curious what would happen if I added in a little bit of chocolate to it (maybe some of the chocolate chips from my Love Tea #7?). I bet that’d taste really good.

I just can’t get the caramel taste out of my mouth though! After even a small sip it lingers for what feels like forever, which makes this a really good tea to take my time enjoying; no need to gulp it all down at all.

I’m really enjoying this one!

Adding this in because I find it entertaining (and also sort of bothersome): right now my roommate is enjoying a cup of DAVIDsTEA’s Hot Lips that I made for him (which is one of the few green teas I actually like), and he just drowned the cup in about 3 tablespoons of sugar. I have no clue how he can douse a perfectly good cup in so much sugar and think it still tastes good. I’m not sure if there’s a single tea he’ll drink without adding sugar…

Peppermint tea has always been a staple in my tea collection, and this is definitely one of my favourites that I’ve tried which is good because I’ve got about 100g of it at the moment which is enough to make A LOT of peppermint tea.

I made a small iced pot of it last night with the intention of filling my water bottle today so I could have some tea at Robyn’s (she, unfortunately, left her steeper at home before she moved into her dorm so for a few more days at least she’s going to be “tealess”).

I put a whole bunch of leaves into the pot since I like my peppermint teas really STRONG (I threw in probably three tablespoons of tea leaves). I can’t stand teas with a more faint and subtle note of mint; in my mind mint is meant to be a more dominating flavour.

Regardless, the tea was really, SUPER good iced so I’ll likely be making some more of it really soon. Since I now know that not only is this tea absolutely amazing hot but can also hold its own as an iced tea I feel really good about logging it and giving it a killer rating. Next thing on my list to do with this one is to try mixing it with a couple of my other teas (maybe something with citrus).

Decided that I’d have this today for my breakfast tea! I’m probably going to need the energy boost since I’ll be venturing the public transit system to the University today to see Robyn! It’s not that I have anything against public transit (I depended heavily on it over the last year for work), it’s just that I have know idea what any of the routes are since this city is new to me. This is the only Mate tea I have stocked right now (but I’d love to find a few more), so for a guaranteed energy boost I have fairly limited options.

The dry leaf of this one reminds me of late nights spent camping; something about sitting around the campfire roasting marshmallows and making s’mores then lying under the stars all curled up in a sleeping bag. It smells earthy, but a nostalgic kind of comforting earthy smell – if that makes any sense. The raspberry is definitely present in the dry leaf, but it doesn’t take over and instead compliments the mate really well. I’ll be honest, I don’t really distinctly smell the almond, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing and I’m sure it’s contributing to that ‘camping smell’ in its own way. My roommate hates the smell of this one, but that’s alright: it just means more for me.

Steeped, the liquor is a clear red/brown colour (or, at least, it would be clear if it weren’t for all the little bits and leaves that managed to get out of my tea ball – bleck!). My whole kitchen smells comfortingly outdoorsy (I should point out that I HATE the outdoors, so it takes a lot for something to smell ‘comfortingly outdoorsy’ to me). I can still smell the raspberry, but it’s more subtle now. I’m also smelling chocolate. Delicious.

Before I take my first sip I have to do something about all the extra leaves floating around, so I pour my tea into yet another mug, though this time through a strainer. My first sips remind me a little bit of an earthy coffee, with a lingering raspberry note and a bit of a chocolate taste. I know it’s not going to take me a long time to finish my mug this morning – which is good because I’m sorta in a rush to get ready (don’t want to miss my bus to the university).

It’s not the best tea in my cupboard; but it’s good and there’s a reason I keep it stocked! Definitely a nice start to the morning.

I’ve never tried resteeping this one, so I’m definitely going to try to remember to hold onto the leaves to resteep it later today. I’d also love to try it iced eventually, though I have a feeling this is probably a tea that I’m only going to enjoy hot.

This is one of those sort of generic “Superstore” type teas that I keep stocked up on for when I have family or friends over who don’t really drink tea too often or who aren’t familiar with loose leaf teas (especially some of my more “odd” flavoured ones) and would prefer a more ‘basic’ type of tea. I hardly ever drink these teas (the exception being my Stash Moroccan Mint and Riverblend Plantation Saskatoon Berry Black Tea), so it’s been a long time since I had this one; long enough for me to apparently forget just how awful it is.

I decided on this one for my “bedtime tea” tonight because: A) it’s caffeine free, and B) for whatever reason I was craving lemon, which was unusual since I don’t really like lemon as a flavour unless it’s in baked goods, and I don’t actually own any loose leaf teas with a prominent lemon flavour.

The bagged dry leaf doesn’t actually smell that bad, but as soon as it had started steeping the whole kitchen just stank of this sort of medicinal lemon scent – it kind of reminded me of Neo Citron. I took a small sip, and immediately knew that if I was going to be able to finish the cup I had to load it up with sugar.

I added about five teaspoons of sugar to the cup, which just BARELY makes the tea palatable. I find I’m drinking the cup in large gulps with the goal of just pushing through and finishing it off. The aftertaste of this is just horrid – even after adding all of that sugar it’s still pretty tart and awfully bitter. And there’s still that nasty sort of medicinal quality to it.

To think that this is my Grandma’s absolute favourite tea! Bleck. Oh well, I guess I’ll just hold on to the rest and, as she comes to visit, she can drink it all up. I don’t think I’ll be having any more for quite some time.

Another tea that I didn’t intend to buy – but the lovely sales lady convinced me otherwise by promising it would taste as good as the dry leaf smells. The dry leaf is intoxicating; simply put it smells like really good rum, but you can definitely pick apart the individual ingredients as well such as the coconut. It’s rich and buttery and each time I smell it just makes me want to have a nice big mug while cozied up on the couch watching a good movie or TV show. The dry leaf also reminds me of those hard, Lifesavers butterscotch flavoured candies. YUM.

I’ve literally just started steeping it and already the liquor is a rich brown and my apartment is filled with the intoxicating scent coming off the cup. The smell is definitely reminding me of butterscotch.

All steeped now, and it just smells absolutely delicious. There is an oily sheen on the surface of the liquor, but if it tastes anything like it smells then I don’t really care. First sip and I’m not disappointed in the slightest. I can taste the coconut really strongly, but it’s not over powering. The black tea base is still coming through nicely as well, and I swear I really do taste those butterscotch Lifesavers as well. And it’s amazing, because even though there’s no actual rum in it all of these flavours are coming together in a way that really truly DOES remind me of rum. Mmmm.

This is probably one of the best black teas that I’ve bought from DT. I’m excited to resteep the leaves and see if I still get this full range of flavours. Not something I’d add sugar, honey or agave to, but I can see it being really good as a latte. Yum.

Decided to try the Red Velvet Cake I got from DT today. First tea of the day, and I was definitely in a dessert tea sort of mood. Unrelated note, when I bought this one it ended up sitting in Kevin’s car for a couple of hours while we went shopping at Comic Reader’s, Tramps, and then out for Thai food at Tre’s restaurant – basically all of my chocolate chips melted. Hopefully that won’t affect the taste at all.

The dry leaf is really decadent and sweet smelling – perfect for what I’m craving. It reminds me of Birthday Cake, but with the obvious difference in the tea base, and the addition of chocolate. As it’s steeping it still smells really rich. Unfortunately while I was focused on brewing the perfect cup I forgot about the bagel I had in the toaster; by the time I noticed it my poor cheesy bagel had been burnt to a crisp. I slathered it with some strawberry cream cheese, but I think it’s a lost cause at this point.

First sip, and I’m trying it without anything added. The liquor isn’t really red at all, but more of a light/muddy brown. Perhaps it’s the taste of burnt bagel in my mouth, but I don’t really taste the chocolate at all. It’s not nearly as decadent as the dry leaf smells, which is kinda disappointing.

About half the cup has been consumed now, and I’m adding just a bit of milk and sugar; hopefully that’ll bring out the flavour some more. Few more sips; it’s better with the milk and sugar but still just sort of has a generic sweetness to it. Maybe that’s the artificial flavouring in the tea.

Overall, I’m pretty disappointed. Definitely not what I was expecting, and while it certainly wasn’t a bad cup of tea it was nothing phenomenal either. I’ll give it another chance though – I’ll have to remember to fiddle around with the steeping time (maybe it should have been steeped longer), and I’ll make a cup for Tre later tonight with the leaves from my cup – maybe it’ll taste better re-steeped?

Last time I was in DAVIDsTEA was with Kevin during my last day in the city before ‘the big move’ to S’toon, and I stalked up on 10 different teas because I knew I wasn’t gonna get a chance to go to another store in a while. This was one of the teas that I bought; I was kinda wavering on getting it but the really kind salesperson sold me on it.

I ended up getting 100 g, which was a completely full tin (damn, I hope I like it, because I sure got a lot if it)! The dry leaf smells quite strongly of peppermint, chamomile, and licorice root in my opinion – I’m not really getting the goji berries at all. Steeped, the liquor is a kind of yellow colour. The scent it gives off is pretty unremarkable; it smells… good. Just, a generic sort of good. And I’m definitely not smelling the licorice that I’m craving.

I started with a big gulp and my first impression was just… meh. Really, it was nothing special at all, and I was sorta disappointed in my purchase. But after swallowing and waiting a few seconds I was hit with a wave of licorice. There; THAT’S the licorice that I was promised. Seriously, the after taste here is just AMAZING. I ended up savoring the whole cup, taking small sips and waiting long amounts of time in between sips for that punch of licorice to go away. Whether the liquor was hot from just finishing steeping or cold from my taking my time to drink the cup the aftertaste was still one of the best ones I’ve probably ever had. I definitely have to say I’m pleasantly surprised.

Adding in that I tried re-steeping the leaves; second cup was really weak, and the licorice punch that made this tea worthwhile just wasn’t there. How disheartening. Still, it’s something I’ll buy again when my 100 g are all used up, though likely in a smaller quantity.

One of the first DAVIDsTEA’s that I purchased. I was hesitant to get it because I’m not really a fan of most green teas, but this one smelled really good and I loved the “novelty” of it (buttered popcorn, eh?) because I worked at a movie theatre for over a year. I must say, I wasn’t disappointed.

I steeped this a little bit longer than the max. recommended steeping time. The smell was exactly like buttered popcorn – not the theatre kind that I’m used to working with (that kind is really overloaded with salt), but the good, home-popped stuff. Tasting it, I definitely tasted the apple a bit more than I thought I would, but it didn’t taste bad at all and there was still a really strong buttery note to it.

The tea tasted better hot than cold – I’ll have to remember next time to either put it in a thermal mug so it doesn’t cool down as fast or drink it a bit faster.

ADDING IN: My mom tried some without reading the ingredients list before hand, she said it tasted like “something butter, popcorn perhaps?” Didn’t taste any apple in it.

Also, I took the “challenge” on the tin maybe a bit too seriously, and I brought some with me into the theatre when I went to watch Mortal Instruments, this time in a thermal mug. Tea was phenomenal. Movie was mediocre.