Pumpkin Pie Flavored Black

grabbed this instead of the caramel pumpkin cheesecake and although this one is very good I prefer the caramel pumpkin cheesecake :D

YIPPIEEEEEE! I BOUGHT A STEEPSTER SELECT ITEM! Now that that’s out of my system here’s the confession. I haven’t got the first clue what pumpkin tastes like. Or smells like. Or anything. Pumpkin pie even less. In Denmark we get little bitty pumpkiny things for decoration in variating colours and shapes and big ones that people make pumpkin lanterns out of. It’s not something we really eat a whole lot of.

Therefore I’m not particularly concerned when everybody seems to complain about their various pumpkin pie teas not tasting all that much like pumpkin. Because… I wouldn’t know anyway. After the vanilla date debacle this probably ought to worry me a bit. I mean, what if it turns out I don’t like pumpkins at all?

Well, the smell of the leaves is sort of dark. It’s a dark smell. I can find the cinnamon but mostly it’s dominated by this other smell that I don’t know how to describe. Kind of spicey but not. Sweet but not. I’m reminded a bit of fennel which I suspect I shouldn’t, but it’s the closest I can get to a description.

It brews up a sort of dark golden. A bit like a dark liquid honey. The aroma is a bit like the loose leaves, but the tea itself is shining through, making the whole thing sweeter, less spicy (but not) and less of the fennel.

Okay, I oversteeped this a bit, I think. It’s got a very notable astringency like Indian black teas tend to get if you overdo it. I can’t figure out how to rate it because of this, as it’s difficult for me to look away from it.

I’m not going to give it a rating yet. I think I’ve ruined this pot. sigh Oh poot!

For those of you who are interested in the Soccer World Cup (I am not really, but the boyfriend is a soccer fanatic, which means that I get an Ecuador Jersey and watch all the games with him…), yesterday Ecuador played against Argentina. Argentina has Messi playing for them. Ecuador has Valencia playing for us. Ecuador sorta got devoured by Argentina… 4 to 0. Yeah, we were terrible on the field yesterday. Soccer is the most popular sport here, so, in other words, today we have an entire country depressed. On a positive note, I decided to start my day with something delicious. This!

I love, love, adore Pumpkin Pie. It is on my top 5 list of desserts… So, after loveing the Pumpkin Cheesecake blend I had to try this. It isn’t quite as delicious as that one, but still very, very good.

The dry leaves actually do smell like pumpkin and the spices are just right, I even get some creaminess. The dark leaves with yellow petals are perfectly appropriate for the fall motif. I sniffed and sniffed… Why isn’t it November? I could use some real pumpkin pie right now…

Brewed it smells like cinnamon and nutmeg with a hint of clove. Pumpkin and condensed milk hanging out in the background. Mouth watering…

It tastes pretty good, it is just a tiny bit lacking in the creaminess. I get the pumpkin and the spices, but I get no creamy deliciousness. It is a tiny bit astringent. Of course all of this can be fixed by adding latte mix or milk, but I rather have it plain.

All in all I really enjoy it, but it doesn’t live up to Pumpkin Cheesecake which actually is creamy and delicious. I am surprised a lot of people don’t really like it. I really enjoyed it! : )

A lot has been changing quickly, my lovelies!

(1) I have more tea than I know what to do with (Golden Moon sampler, Harney & Sons tins, two series from Damn Fine Tea), and t-bags are the love of my life.

(2) Got that internship at a big NYC museum that I thought I’d failed miserably at? Herp a derp?!

(3) Still am too upfront for most men in this modern age or will become an old maid; both are distinct possibilities.

But, to the tea. I have had this tea sitting around since mid-winter, and still haven’t said a word. The first few weeks, I was a bit enamored; and found it quite comforting in soggy, dreadfully, miserably snowy and chilly Ohio. But as the days become warmer, I think my heart has changed a bit. Captures the pumpkin, but not quite the spice or baked creaminess. More watery than I remember, and not particularly strong even when I use more than the proper serving. Gets a bit bitter without sugar, and I recommend trying it with half and half. Or put a pie in the oven.

Tried this with t tsp coffee mate creamer and it tastes like creamy cinnamon water. :/ not having a good chai/spice tea night. If anyone would like some of this to try I have two ounces left. I’m just not getting much from it. Maybe I’ll mix with the Vanilla bean cheesecake chai.

My first sniff of the dried leaves smelled just like canned pumpkin with a little additional spice. But sniffs after that were more… pumpkin cider. And then more of a sweet chai. I’m missing the sweet bit that I had on the first sniff. All brewed up, I get more pie spice still, but the pumpkin is back a little. I’m expecting this to be very chai-like.

The taste isn’t a strong as I expected actually and after I swallow, a few pauses later I get an expanding taste of the tea base. Also a little warm spiciness is left on my tongue. There is also a distinctly different spice taste at the front. So each sip goes sweet spice, warm spice, nothing, spicy spice, pause, pause, pause, tea. Honestly, it’s the nothing that’s throwing me off. I can’t seem to taste anything when I hold the tea in my mouth. Even swishing it around, all I taste is just a spice aftertaste. Once I swallow, I get more spice but when the tea is in my mouth, I just get the post-warmth aftertaste. It’s really really weird.

I’m wondering if the sweet taste I get at the beginning is pumpkin. Or maybe the nothing taste is really pumpkin. Either way though, it’s overpowered by the spice when I sip so I just can’t get my tastebuds to it. But it’s weird because none of the tastes seem to blend. They are all separate. Standing there independently, not glancing at or even acknowledging the other tastes there.

With half a cup left, I put a little sugar in to see if that helps any. I’ve probably put too much sugar (maybe a quarter teaspoon) so I imagine at the very least this will be sweet now… And sugar did it no favors. Sure, now there is an underlying sweetness that attempts to mush the uncooperative tastes together but having that added sweetness makes the spice and the tea flavor at the end show up as bitter. Yes, I added sugar and I taste bitterness now.

Okay, before sugar, this cup was weird. After sugar, this cup is unpleasant. But I’m going to rate this on the better of the two tastes and go with the unsweetened cup. Which means instead of being gross, this cup was just… confusing.

This tea is from my very first 52Teas order and the bag has been siting in my tea cupboard, unopened, for months because I already had so many teas open at the time and I didn’t want any to go stale. It was today that I had a look at my collection and decided “Yeah, today’s a good day for something new.”

I remember being excited about this tea when I purchased it – I love pumpkin pie, and it seemed like such an unusual tea flavour (of course since then Frank has come up with many more odder and more fascinating ones). It certainly smells wonderfully spicy in a way that can’t help but remind me of autumn and Thanksgiving. Unfortunately the flavour itself is rather underwhelming. I can taste the spices – mostly cinnamon – which oddly enough taste quite similar to Frank’s Apple Pie a la Mode. Actually I think they worked better in that tea than in this one; here they don’t have the creamy-sweet vanilla flavouring to take the edge off the spices and they come across as a little harsh. I can’t taste any pumpkin flavour – granted pumpkin isn’t a particularly strong flavour to begin with, but this is basically a spice tea…and nothing else.

From the reviews I’ve read of other pumpkin pie-flavoured teas, 52Teas isn’t alone in failing to meet people’s expectations. I wonder if it’s just that there’s simply no way for the tea industry to accurately replicate pumpkin flavour in a reliable way.

Backlog:

OK so it surprised me that I hadn’t tried this tea from 52Teas since I’ve tried just about everything that Frank has created for at least the last couple of years (with the exception of the dog and kitty teas and possibly one or two of the peanut butter teas), and when I saw that this one was maybe going to be removed from the “permanent” collection, I wanted to try it before it disappeared.

I’ve tried a lot of Frank’s Pumpkin blends, and enjoyed most of them (can’t think of one right off hand that I’ve disliked). And I like this one too. I know that some people had their issues with this blend, but for me, I tasted pumpkin pie, and I was loving it! Sweet, pumpkin-y, with just the right amount of spice. A splash of milk gives it a nice creamy note that is really yummy.

This one is from Janefan! Thank you thank you! This is the black tea base I like from 52Teas. This is a delicious blend, but as pumpkin pie it kind of fails. I’m only seeing cinnamon and cloves on the ingredients list. These are nice (and would actually make for a nice non-ginger chai) but that doesn’t mean these ingredients make pumpkin pie. I really didn’t get any hints of pumpkin, sadly. These poor pumpkin teas: Della Terra’s has them all beat because they add dehydrated canned pumpkin (I think?) to their blends which is just perfect. I wish everyone who attempted a pumpkin tea would do that (though I’m not sure how easy it actually is to do that.) I also had to add some of the rock sugar that Janefan sent along with this.. it certainly made it tastier (and maybe even a little more pumpkinish). Even if this blend isn’t actually pumpkin pie, it’s still very tasty for what this is!

Does anyone else hoard pumpkin tea so they can enjoy it all year round? Well this is the last pots worth of Pumpkin Pie tea from 5 Teas that I have at home with a few cups worth left at work (for emergencies). I still have some of the caramel pumpkin pie tea left which I prefer but that still leaves me a little sad to say goodbye to the original.

I was also sure I did a review for this but Steepster tells me otherwise. Shame on me, my mistake. I can put that right.

In raw form this tea has small cinnamon stick pieces amongst the black tea leaves and it has a wonderful thick, earthy pumpkin scent. Smelling it takes me back to Halloween.

Once steeped this dark red brown liquid has a cinnamon pumpkin aroma that warms my soul by just smelling it’s warmth.

Imagine a slice of pumpkin pie sprinkled with cinnamon on top and that is pretty much what this tastes like. It’s dark and rich with little sweetness but enough and a large cinnamon kick adding a warm spiciness. A little of this tea goes a long way in essence of flavour and if anything were to receive negative marks it would be the mouth drying after taste.

Certainly not something to drink to quench ones thirst but more to indulge in a late Autumn feast. Like a time machine that can change your surroundings by the click of a kettle and submersion into hot water.