Pumpkin Toffee Dragonwell

A huge thanks to Dinosara for sharing this with me in a swap bag I just received today. So excited!

I can smell the pumpkin in here, very much the same flavoring as Frank’s Ginger Pumpkin Cheeesecake Honeybush. This one however, I only smell the pumpkin… oh wait, there’s the flavor a few seconds after the sip. Well, I do get buttery, I do get pumpkin, I’m missing a bit of toffee, however with a touch of sweetener, that may change. A nice, light cup.

thank you CHAroma! for sending a sample of this my way. Even being sick i risked drinking this one since i have a thing for franks pumpkin flavouring. I quite like this one. Not enough to feel the need to buy a whole bag for myself but it did reinforce that i still love the pumpkin flavouring that he has. Paired with the green base (not usually my preference), it’s got a nice creamy feel to it. Thanks CHAroma!

Ahhhh, snow! We just had a brief snowfall here… perfect day to stay inside and huddle with blankets and tea.

So, I broke my don’t-buy-52teas rule and bought this tea. I have not have much success with them, and they are often just not to my taste. I have bought pumpkin teas from them in the past because I want them to work for me, but they never do. This one got through because dragonwell. I don’t like their black tea base, but this is dragonwell! And maybe it won’t cover up the flavorings so much.

The dry leaf, of course, smells AMAZING. They always do. Like pumpkin and spices and toffee. Brewed, I still get a good amount of pumpkin and spices from the scent, with perhaps a bit of buttery toffee, and the dragonwell base comes out.

It’s interesting. The dragonwell is an interesting choice of base because it is buttery, but it’s also green, so I feel like it lacks a bit of heft I might want from a pie tea. That said, the pumpkin is nice here, and I actually taste it as pumpkin, which is saying something. Pumpkin itself is often lost in pumpkin spice teas. I normally wouldn’t sweeten a green tea but… I think this one would really be awesome with an added hint of sweetness, which might bring out the green tea. Overall I am reasonably happy, although my mind isn’t blow or anything.

Backlog:

I loved the idea of a pumpkin toffee tea … I love pumpkin … I love toffee … what’s not to love! The toffee notes are portrayed really nicely in this tea. Sweet and spicy from the pumpkin spices, creamy. Delicious.

The toffee tastes buttery and accentuates the pumpkin really nicely … not a flavor combination I would have thought of but it works. I love that Frank chose a green tea base here instead of black tea, I think that the black tea would have obscured some of the tasty nuances of the toffee and pumpkin.

YUM!

CHAroma shared this one with me :)

I’m actually quite enjoying this blend. The pumpkin is really lovely, though I’m not really getting toffee. I don’t generally go for greens, but I’m looking forward to a resteep.

The dry leaf aroma has bite! It’s spicy and pumpkin-y and downright scrumptious smelling! The brewed tea aroma is calmer and the taste is calmer still. Don’t get me wrong; this is tasty! But I wish the taste had the same bite as the dry leaf aroma.

The green base comes through strong and in the forefront of the sip. It’s not thickly grassy as I would expect a dragonwell to be, but that’s actually to my advantage. Next comes the pumpkin spiciness (think Thanksgiving pumpkin pie with nutmeg). And at the end of the sip, there’s a sweet, caramel-like, toffee finish. This is delicious! Not quite as potent as I’d like the flavors to be but delicious nonetheless.

I know this isn’t a cheesecake tea…but I swear I can detect tanginess too. Overall, I’m not floored by this blend as I have been in the past with some 52teas’ creations. However, I’ll happily drink the rest of this and even share it with my husband. I have a feeling this is exactly the type of tea he’d love. Green teas are his favorite. :)

I enjoy a good dragonwell tea and seeing that this was the base for this blend — I thought, perfect! There is something about the pumpkin spices that really bothers me. I can’t put my finger on what it is… the ginger? The clove? Nutmeg? Either way, it’s not something that I want in my tea. I actually don’t mind pumpkin spices when they are mild or mixed with something as in a pumpkin pastry or pie. I think that pumpkin spices are quite comforting around this time of the year, it’s just when I can isolate one of them that ruins it.

This tea tastes mostly like pumpkin spice with a very faint green tea in the background. I do like the base and think it would be a nice tea on its own, if given the chance to be sipped without the addition of other flavors. All of the spices come together to create an outline of a pumpkin flavor, but it’s not truly pumpkin. I continued to sip even though I had a pretty good grasp on what this tea was all about.. it’s just not what I want it to be. As for the toffee? Can’t taste it at all — it’s all about the spices.

Mastress Alita’s sipdown challenge Tuesday, October 26th: National Pumpkin Day Tea #2

additional notes:  Another of Frank’s blends that I forgot that I had, so I thought I would steep this up for pumpkin day as the neglected option.  Not much flavor now but it’s buttery.

Merry Christmas everyone! This is the first of the 12 days of tea 2014 set.

I drank it blind at first, without scratching the panel, and assumed some sort of pumpkin white tea. I brewed it accordingly, at a fairly low temperature (no way to check exactly here at my parents’ house), and still found it very astringent and drying after only a couple of minutes of brewing. This surprised me when I scratched the panel and found out it was a green, so theoretically should have been able to take the temperature much better than it did. Next time I will try only brewing it for 90 seconds.

The pumpkin flavour comes through very well, and tastes pleasantly natural, which I think is helped by the dragonwell base. I do think, though, that maybe a different base would have helped the toffee come through more, which as it is I get only as a faint butteriness, and only after I’d read the name and discovered that I was supposed to taste it. I did quite enjoy it, despite the astringency, and think I might actually really enjoy it after a little bit of tweaking.

Happy holidays, everyone! (:

My first day of Christmas tea from the 52 Teas Christmas Box.

This should have been logged yesterday but I forgot the in-laws were coming by to see our new house. It’s the first time they have been down to see us as they don’t drive and live in another city. That meant major cleaning and clearing on my part, trying to make a 2 week lived in house perfect. That didn’t happen but I tried my best. So yes this was yesterdays tea but I’m tasting it today to make up for yesterday.

The raw blend has a strong clove and cinnamon scent, very spice mix and perhaps a little like pumpkin though nothing sweet nor toffee like. The dragonwell was rather a dark green with large yellow discolouration, so low quality though I suppose that compromises on it being a unique blend. I only mention the quality as Long Jing is not a favourite of mine unless the quality is crystal, otherwise I find it much too harsh to drink.

After a guess-timated steeping time I pour the tea. The same clove spice mix fills the air, though while nice and Christmas like it’s starting to remind me less and less of pumpkin or toffee.

The flavour is of a good strength though I am getting a lot of dryness in the after taste, I always do with low grade Long Jing. It is highly spice flavoured with clove dominating with a touch of cinnamon in the background, though as mentioned they are rather dry. It tastes of synthetic pumpkin, in other words it meets my expectations as what to expect from a substitute. If you’ve tasted Franks other pumpkin flavoured teas then you know what I’m talking about. All said and done there is no toffee, nothing remotely sweet or candied. Also the green tea aside from it’s dryness is not noticeable in taste, the spice dominates over it rather strongly.

So you get synthetic pumpkin which is hit or miss and no toffee to speak of. Nice try but this is not what it claims, at least to me. However, it is a fairly nice Christmas like blend, clove may not be my personal choice to mix it with Long Jing but this does pair together well. Albeit not perfect for me (as a hater of low grade Long Jing and of clove) but it is pleasant enough to drink and mildly enjoy. So this is more of a Christmas Clove Dragonwell than a Pumpkin Toffee Dragonwell.

But oh well, a nice start to the box. Plus I’m in a pleasant mood after my faith in humanity has been restored a little, before I went to make this tea I passed by the front door and found a small business card sized envelope on the floor. I picked it up and saw it had no name, so I went into the living room and opened it to find a small Christmas tree card which is addressed inside to my house number from a neighbouring house. A neighbour that I have never met nor seen but one that is definitely getting a card back tomorrow. All these years since I moved out and in none of my previous three homes did any neighbour give us a card, or even a thought. Considering that we bought this house and intend to be in it for potentially the rest of our lives it’s very comforting to know we have at least one friendly neighbour. :)