Author: Michelle

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DavidsTea’s Tea Filters

Being able to make my own tea bags out of any type of loose tea to take it to go is a really nice concept. It makes it easier to remove the tea leaves when they’re done steeping, and to also make it easier to travel with as I can make the tea bags in advance. I’ve been using the DavidsTea brand of tea filters. There’s often a package of 10 filters in some tea collections, and they also come in boxes of 20 or 100. I opted for the 100 count box because it worked out cheaper ($5 for 20 or $10 for 100).

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The packaging mentions that the filters are “made with biodegradable, chlorine free, compostable manilla hemp”. Having it be biodegradable is important to me – I go through so much tea that it just makes sense to be able to put the entire thing into green waste when I’m done with it, rather than having to separate wet tea leaves from a filter bag.

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The back of the boxes show the simple 3 step process – pour tea into the bag, pull the drawstring, and then steep the tea. It’s a fairly easy process.

Some things I like about the filters:

  • Clean design, they’re easy to use
  • I really like that they are compostable and will biodegrade rather than sitting in the landfill

Some things I don’t like about the filters:

  • I tend to set my tea bag aside in a small dish when I’m done steeping (and I will often resteep tea leaves shortly after the cup is done), but the moisture from the wet tea leaves will wick up the bag and up the string, leaving me with a wet string to touch. I know it’s science and DavidsTea has noting to do with the law of capillary action, but it still bugs me.

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Teavana’s Peach Momotaro

Peach Momotaro by Teavana
White Tea / Flavoured
$18.98 for 2oz

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First Impressions

Another tea that I got from Teavana thanks to the Starbucks rewards program, I picked up this one the same day that I picked up Blooming Pineapple as I was curious about their blooming teas. At $19 for 2oz, this is not an inexpensive tea. With the free rewards, I picked up 1oz of this tea, which wound up netting me 5 balls of the Peach Momotaro tea. What really drew me to this tea is the fact that it smells exactly like fuzzy peach candy. They’re quite well made balls, with a little peek of flower petals through the tea leaves.

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Peach Momotaro is made up of: white tea, marigold flowers, and artificial flavouring. And the smell is amazing. I can’t smell any of the white tea base though, but this really makes me want fuzzy peach candies.

Preparation

Teavana recommends using 1 ball and steeping in 82C (180F) water for 3 to 4 minutes until it blooms. It took almost the entire 4 minutes for my ball of Peach Momotaro to bloom.

First Taste

First off, the tea looks really pretty when it’s fully bloomed and it stayed pretty well intact. The tea itself steeps to a lovely pale yellow and it still smells like peaches but it’s not as strong as it was when the tea was dry. It’s not an overwhelming flavour at all – the peach taste is very light and not as strong as I expected with the great peach candy fragrance before. The tea itself is very pleasant – it’s not bitter at all and very smooth. I added a bit of sweetener to the tea and it does brighten up the taste of the peaches quite a bit and makes it more enjoyable.

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A Second Cup?

I resteeped the Peach Momotaro and found that the tea did fairly well for the second steeping. The peach aroma is less pronounced, but I’d chalk that up to the fact that it’s the artificial flavouring that was added. A bit more sweetener helps to bring out that peach taste though and it tastes lovely. It resteeped well for the third and fourth time as well.

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My Overall Impression

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I loved Teavana’s Peach Momotaro. I just really enjoy blooming teas, and found this one to be really nice. I was a bit disappointed by the peach taste in the steeped tea compared to the dry tea, but that was something that could be remedied by the addition of a little sweetener. It is a very pretty tea to look at when it unfurls in the tea pot, if there was ever an argument to get a clear glass teapot, blooming teas would be it. I think it’s very enjoyable and resteeps very well – don’t forget to add more time with each resteep! Peach Momotaro is the more expensive side, especially when you consider the fact that if you were to buy 2oz, you’d get 9-10 balls only. But it does resteep, so you get quite a good number of uses per tea ball. It’s definitely a nice treat though, so if you have any Starbucks/Teavana rewards to use, this might be a good one to try out before committing to use your money to purchase a bag of it.

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Zhena’s Gypsy Tea’s Hazelnut Chai

Hazelnut Chai by Zhena’s Gypsy Tea
Black Tea / Flavoured
$8.99USD for 36g (for the entire sampler)

This is a review of a tea that I received for my birthday in  2015. I won’t be doing too much digging into the costs of the gifts that I’ve received.

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First Impressions

Hazelnut Chai comes it a really cute stacking sampler set, along with Chocolate Chai (herbal red tea), Coconut Chai (black tea), and Caramel Chai (herbal red tea). Each section fits well with the section above. For the most part, they can be rearranged, but Hazelnut Chai has to be the one on the bottom because it doesn’t have a bottom lip that can connect to another section of the tin. Each tea is represented by “4 eco-friendly tea sachets”. Each tin section comes with some information about the tea it holds (caffeine level and ingredients), as well as some general information. For the Hazelnut Chai section, to use fresh spring water that is brought to a rolling boil, and then infuse the tea sachet for 3-5 minutes. There are also some additional instructions for making an iced tea (doubling the amount of tea used) and to make a latte (by adding steamed milk).

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The Hazelnut Chai smells lovely, but it smells more heavily on the Chai side (that rich, aromatic spicy fragrance that many Chais have) rather than hazelnut. The tea sachets are round, so no string which means having to utilize a spoon in scooping it out (not a big deal), and each tea sachet contains 3g of tea. Which doesn’t actually make sense since the entire sampler (of 4 teas) contains 36g of tea which results in 9g of tea per type of tea, but there are 4 tea sachets per tea (which means it should be 12g for each tea, making it 48g total in order to have 3g of tea per tea).

Like the rest of the teas in this sampler, Hazelnut Chai is organic and fair trade certified. The ingredients are: organic and fair trade certified Indian black tea, cinnamon, ginger root, licorice root, natural flavouring, cloves, cardamom, nutmeg, black better, and organic vanilla bean.

Preparation

Zhena’s recommends using boiling water that is poured over one tea sachet and to steep for 3 to 5 minutes. I opted for about 4 minutes.

First Taste

Hazelnut Chai steeps to a very pretty reddish brown colour. It’s clear, and has a beautiful spicy aroma to it. There is a bit of an oily mouthfeel to the tea that I noticed on first sip. There is no hint of hazelnut in the flavour, which I wasn’t too surprised with due to the lack of hazelnut fragrance in the dry tea sachet. There is a really nice balance of spice to with the black tea base and makes for an overall very pleasant cup of Chai.

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A Second Cup?

I am always a bit wary of resteeping tea sachets, because most companies that produce tea bags often use lower quality tea leaves or teeny bits of tea leaves. Unfortunately, Hazelnut Chai does not buck that trend. I tried resteeping it and the balance of spice is off, it’s not as strong as it was with the first cup.

My Overall Impression

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I thought that Zhena’s Hazelnut Chai was just okay. As a cup of hot Chai, it has a really nice flavour profile but it is sorely lack in the hazelnut department. I think it would make an excellent latte though. I tend to enjoy my Chais as a latte, so I’m going to be trying this tea again with the addition of milk. I do plan on reviewing the rest of the Chai varieties in this sampler first as hot teas, and then trying them all as lattes and posting an update on if I think they’re good as lattes.

Curious about the cup rating system? Click here to learn more.