Pumpkin Chai

So I ordered some of this last spring (always 6 months behind/ahead down under…) and waited to really get into it until April when it started cooling down here.

I find its a fine black tea. I don’t really get a strong pumpkin flavour, and despite being an Aussie, I have a good Pumpkin Pie reference – I did fall semester of uni in Ottawa 5 years ago, so got to have a proper Thanksgiving. The chai component is nice, but not as spice-y as I would’ve liked.

So nice, but I won’t re-order this one later in the year. Leave the supplies for everyone who can’t seem to live without it!

The guy at Davids called this “the key to a lady’s heart” when I went there to buy some, and I completely agree! Every woman I know who has tried this tea just loves it. Myself included.

It’s not my favourite, but when it’s cold outside and I want something sweet and comforting, this is what I turn to. I like it with cream and brown sugar to add to the indulgence. I indulge even more when I get nice and lazy and just leave the leaves in there the whole time. I’ve never had it go bitter or weird on me… there’s probably enough other stuff in there to hide my sins.

The only points off are actually for the smell, which I find a bit too strong. The caramel candy smell is delicious, but just a mite overpowering. It totally mellows out when brewed though, so I don’t mind.

Now, I’m off to have a mug for dessert, because it’s -21 out there!

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.

So even though I’ve more or less come to the conclusion that pumpkin tea is a). kind of a strange concept and b). not for me, I’d been curious about this tea for a while. Not curious enough to want to spend my meager tea budget and storage space on it – in addition to the pumpkin tea thing, I’m also a little weirded out by teas with sprinkles and similar – but curious nonetheless. So I was very grateful when someone at the NYC meetup – I think it was Teamore? – offered me a sample.

Onto the tea – I’m mostly getting cinnamon. There’s also quite a bit of sweetness. The black base is smooth and seems pleasant, but it’s overpowered by the strength of the cinnamon. I’m not tasting any pumpkin, or even what I’d consider a pumpkin pie spice blend – there’s no ginger or nutmeg, and in my book those are both pretty essential. Plus I just really like ginger. I am getting a strange sour aftertaste – I suppose this could be the pumpkin flavoring (which is clearly not working for me if this is the case), or maybe it’s the lemon peel? It’s not terribly strong, but it’s also not terribly pleasant.

For reference, I steeped this according to the instructions, no additives. I imagine I might be able to yield a slightly better result if I had enough of this to play around with, but I do not and don’t plan to buy more. Definitely glad to have been able to try this one, even if it’s decidedly not the tea for me.

I LOVE pumpkin teas and this one is amazing. I did a side by side with della terras pumpkin pie and really couldn’t compare them. Neither deliver on their name – I definitely would never consider this a chai nor would I consider Della Terra’s to relate to the pie.. But I love them both! in different ways. This one tasted less like pumpkin than della terra’s but was.. i don’t know. We all liked it slightly better.

I’ve never met a pumpkin chai that I didn’t like, so this one had it pretty easy coming to my taste buds. There is definitely more actual pumpkin flavor to this than chai spice, but that isn’t a bad thing, in fact it only helps give it a bit of character from any other pumpkin chai.

Over all a good tea, the flavor mix is actually one of my favorites. I can’t rant and rave about how utterly amazing it is though because DavidsTea “Toasted Marshmallow” has similar holiday spice notes and is EONS better. In fact… I need to go brew another cup of that now that I have finished this one…

Yet another sample from Bonnie!

This smells EXQUISITE! Like chai and pumpkin and autumnal goodness! I made this as a latte, and it turned out fairly well. It wasn’t quitte strong enough for the milk, but it did work out okay. It’s pumpkin-y and sweet, and reminds me of autumn. Overall pretty good, I’ll just have to try to make it differently next time!

EDIT: I did a second steep (just to see) for 10 minutes with boiling water and I didn’t try to make a latte and it’s pretty good! It’s pumpkin-y-er than before and slightly sweet, and it tastes all around stronger than before. Upping the rating, and I would like to get a full sized version of this so I can play around with it some more.

This tastes like a wonderful creamy pumpkin pie! More pie than chai.

This tea is friggin perfect. It screams fall like an October ride through Vermont to look at the foliage :) It is the perfect amount of chai and pumpkin, real pumpkin, not fake tasting what-so-ever. I feel like eating pumpkin pie when I drink this. Get it, you won’t regret it!

Alright, this HAS to be my last tea of the night. Last night I didn’t fall asleep until three in the morning because I just had to have those late cups (I thought I was playing it safe going with white tea). Anyways, this is a nice cup to finish off the day. Unfortunately, I think I overdid the cream this time so the tea flavor isn’t as strong as I would like it to be, but it’s still very good. To me, this tastes EXACTLY like a pumpkin spice latte, but that’s not a bad thing…I love lattes. And yes, I do drink coffee…I’ve tried to replace it with tea in the mornings but I’ve found that tea doesn’t come close to giving me the energy that coffee does. As you can see I tend to ramble off-topic sometimes. But anyways, I am enjoying this tea. As a side note, I love the little candy pieces and other assorted decorations that DavidsTea puts into their blends, it’s a little cheesy but it makes the experience a little more fun and I imagine buying from one of their stores would be like being in a candy shop of sorts.