Sticky Rice Oolong

Give me all the milk oolong — and all the sticky rice oolong!

I only asked for a cup-to-go of this – as I was curious. It was one of the few new DTs that isn’t over-saturated with sugars and artificial everythings. The idea of a rice flavoured tea that was different than toasty genmaicha got me interested!

I thought it was yummy. Reminded me intensely of rice pudding – YUM – the smell was absolutely boiled sweet rice, or yes – rice pudding. It was a unique, simple tea and I wish DT stocked their shelves with more like THIS and I would visit far more frequently.

~I am wanting to try Wha-Cha’s sticky rice tea as I have heard the cost is far less prohibitive.

Given the various shuffling around DTs has done with its Frequent Steeper program, I wasn’t sure whether the birthday cups of tea were still offered. I have not been patronizing DTs much since their boom of imitation flavours and massive sweetener additions to the dry leaf itself. Not to mention the dramatic price hikes—ouf! The overhaul of the FS/ loyalty point program was the nail in the coffin for me, so to speak. I was done.

Nonetheless, I popped in to see if there was still the FS birthday free cup of tea for me as I am still celebrating my birthday month. And yay, there was.

I chose this one because frankly, it is the only one of theirs that am curious about. And a tea fren was kind enough to send me a What-Cha sample of the same which I look forward to exploring this week.

My lovely DTs server was kind enough to pop my teaspoon of tea into a teabag and into an empty cup for me so that I could steep it up at proper temperature and enjoy it at home rather fight my way through rush hour traffic on public transit with a dripping teabag hanging out of a paper to go cup. Good choice that was.

This tea truly is intoxicating in both scent and flavour. I am on my fifth steep. The sweet sticky rice and the floral oolong flow into a lovely balance of flavours. I predict that I can still get three more flavourful steeps out of this. Let us see.

edit—Yup, still flavourful at eight steeps. Very much enjoyed this one.

I’d like to have this in my cupboard and would if the price were not so prohibitive. Still, it was nice to have the opportunity to spend my day with this.

I would rate this between 90 and 100 based on taste and sipping experience, but based on price, I am lowering that rating.

Just went on their website to check prices and this tea is no longer listed, so I guess they are phasing it out, but based on their other oolongs, 100 grams of this tea would be between 20 and 22 dollars plus tax, so something along the lines of 25 dollars (which for Americans, is approximately 3.5 ounces).

Oh, and it’s a sip down!

When I was growing up, my mom used to make plain stickyrice as a side to almost every meal. I’ll admit right now that I hated it; it was bland and unappetizing and when you had it almost every day well. That said, I really wanted to try this tea anyways; see how it stacked up in comparison.

Dry, it just smelt a bit like an artificial milk oolong. /Brewed/ though. Yup, that’s sticky rice. The aroma and even the taste, light, sweet, vaguely pudding-like. As an oolong, it’s an interesting and different experience, but dang if it doesn’t give me nostalgia vibes. I hated the rice because it was always a big scoop of gelatinous filler, but this was a nice treat to try anyhow.

While it was still hot, you could make out the light vegetal oolong, but as it cooled the rice dominated.

Steep two (done several hours later) smells just of strongly (if not stronger) of white rice. As it cools, the taste is coming through just as strongly.

Not bad but not great this time. Going to try 4 tsp, 195 degrees and 4 minutes next time. I didn’t finish drinking this one either :(

I like sticky rice and Oolong so I was intrigued. I like the sweetness the sticky rice flavor adds. Nicely balanced – the sticky rice flavor comes through well but doesn’t totally overshadow the Oolong flavor. Good one.

I redeemed one of my FS rewards on this one, since it’s a bit pricey otherwise. I don’t know what sticky rice tastes like, but this is really tasty with honey in it! It’s a nice oolong with almost a rice pudding taste. I like.

Someone lost the cap to a carton of soy milk at work yesterday, and so rather than tossing out the carton of soy milk the whole staff just made their daily latte a soy latte and we finished off the jug. For most of them, that’s not a big deal – but I kind of hate the taste of soy milk. I mean, nut milks? Hell yeah, I’ll drink that over normal milk any day. Other soy based foods don’t bother me at all either, but soy milk is just such a no go for me. I’m a team player though, so I did my part.

I did, however, load this up with SO MUCH cane sugar to try and help mask the taste of the soy. I probably over did it by quite a lot. In fact, I definitely over did it. However it was still drinkable and I definitely didn’t pick up on the aspects of the soy milk I’m usually not into. What I ended up with was a drink that tasted exactly like the sugary sweet milk left over at the end of a bowl of Rice Krispies cereal. Tasty, but maybe not something you want a FULL cup of.

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.