Category: Review

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DavidsTea’s Japanese Sencha

Japanese Sencha by DavidsTea
Green Tea / Straight
$9.98 for 50g

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First Impressions

Green tea and I have an interesting relationship, I find it to be a little bit fickle in terms of proper steeping because it can easily burn and oversteep and then you wind up with this bitter, sad cup of tea. It’s a love-hate relationship and often times I wish green tea was less picky about things like water temperature and steeping times, but I digress. Onto the review of Japanese Sencha!

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Japanese Sencha smells like a mix of grass, salt/ocean, and spinach. If you’re a fan of spinach, this might be a tea for you! The saltiness in the smell reminds me a lot of going to the beach and smelling that fresh salty air. It reminds me of seaweed and salt water. Japanese Sencha is made up of: “fine organic steamed Japanese green tea from Mount Fuji, Japan”. Mount Fuji, according to Wikipedia, is the highest peak in Japan, and is also a volcano that last erupted in 1707. I imagine that last eruption would have made the soil quite fertile on the mountain, which would make it ideal to grow on (albeit perhaps a little dangerous, although not having an eruption for 300+ years probably makes a person less worried).

Preparation

DavidsTea recommends steeping in 80°C (176°F) water for 2-3 minutes. Because it’s a green tea and I’m wary of oversteeping, I steeped for just two minutes – life is too short for a bad cup of tea.

First Taste

Japanese Sencha steeps to a very pale yellow-green with a very light scent to it. The taste of this tea is very smooth, the taste of the steeped tea matches the dry leaf very well. It tastes a bit salty, a bit grassy, and reminds me of spinach. The saltiness reminds me a lot of the ocean and seaweed snacks. No bitterness when steeped for two minutes, it makes for a very pleasant cup of tea.

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A Second Cup?

Japanese Sencha holds up pretty well for resteeping. I resteeped it twice (2½ and 3 minutes for each resteep). The tea itself taste the same, although it does begin to fade in terms of flavour in the second resteep. I would say that Japanese Sencha is good for a total of three steepings.

My Overall Impression

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I liked DavidsTea’s Japanese Sencha. It resteeps fairly well, and tastes great – if you like a bit of saltiness in your tea. It’s great plain, I wouldn’t add sweetener or anything like that to it (unless you really wanted to, of course, then go for it). My biggest advice for this tea would be to keep your steeping times low to avoid burning it (really though, that’s my advice for all green teas – don’t burn it!). It’s an enjoyable green tea though, and I quite like it. I’m not overly fond of the spinach-y flavour in the tea though, despite it tasting fairly good, so it’s not something that I think I would be reaching for on a regular basis. Still, it steeps well (and resteeps well), and reminds me of the beach, so it still ranks up there as a good cup of tea!

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PG tip’s English Breakfast

English Breakfast by PG tips
Black Tea / Straight
£1.00-1.99 for 100g (40 sachets)

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First Impressions

I’m all for a good, plain straight tea. I grew up on orange pekoe, so having a good plain tea makes me nostalgic. Sometimes it’s just better to have a nice plain cup of tea that isn’t full of frills and thrills in the flavouring. There’s a tea for every occasion, and the last several mornings I’ve been having PG tip’s English Breakfast. there are 40 pyramid sachets in this 100g box, which works out to be 2.5g of tea per pyramid, a decent amount. The tea itself smells a bit malty. The material of the sachets feels papery, I would say likely compostable although the packaging doesn’t indicate as such. While the sachets aren’t translucent, I can tell that the tea in the pyramids aren’t large pieces at all, there’s quite a bit of dust that is loose in the box.

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The ingredients are simply listed as being black tea. English Breakfast is traditionally a blend of black teas (Assam, Ceylon, and Kenyan), although the packaging for this English Breakfast tea doesn’t boast as such. What the packaging of PG tip’s English Breakfast does boast is the fact that they are Rainforest Alliance Certified, and that the tea farmers are paid a living wage and have access to things that you and I may take for granted, living in a country like Canada. Not everyone has access to education, medical care, and safe housing so it’s nice to see that the company is conscientious of things like that for their tea suppliers.

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Preparation

PG tips’ recommends steeping in “freshly boiled water” for 1-2 minutes. I’ve varied the amount of time I’ve steeped this tea for the last several mornings, opting to change it up and I find that 4 minutes is about the longest I would go before it gets to be quite bitter. The ‘sweet spot’ for me would be about 2½ minutes.

First Taste

English Breakfast steeps to a beautiful deep red and smells like toffee candies. I’ve got quite the sweet tooth, so having a tea remind me of candy is a good thing. However, it doesn’t taste quite like toffees at all, it has some maltiness to the flavour with a very mild astringency at the end of every sip. There’s a bit of a woody flavour to it that I find interesting, but not off-putting to say the least. I don’t really like English Breakfast plain though, and even PG tips recommends it with a splash of milk.

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I added honey and evaporated milk to mine and it tastes wonderful. I really enjoy it doctored up a bit and find it much more palatable when sweetener and dairy added to it, it cuts the astringency down a lot. While the astringency didn’t bother me, having the astringency toned down makes the tea even better, in my opinion.

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A Second Cup?

I attempted to resteep English Breakfast and it wasn’t very good at all – it made for a very sad and watery cup of tea that I didn’t even want to drink.

My Overall Impression

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I liked PG tip’s English Breakfast. I’m always a fan of having a nice, affordable tea in my tea stash. Having a solid, plain black tea fits into my tea stash quite nicely for when I’m in the mood for something easy on the tongue. My biggest problem with the English Breakfast is my ability to find it in Canada, at least the PG tips brand. I will have to see about trying other versions of English Breakfast if I want an easier to find version of it. Overall, I find English Breakfast to meet my needs of having a simple morning tea. It is caffeinated, so it’s not something I would drink throughout the day, but I find it to be enjoyable and I would definitely suggest to follow the recommendations of adding milk to it.

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DavidsTea’s Mango Madness

Mango Madness by DavidsTea
White Tea / Flavoured
$11.98 for 50g

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First Impressions

I like fruit, I like white teas, but a fruity white tea? Mango Madness came recommended to me by someone who worked at the DavidsTea that I so frequently frequent. It smelled amazing in store – very much like a ripen mango. The dry tea smells like mangoes, apples, and flowers. I cannot for the life of me actually smell the white tea base, but it’s supposedly there. Mango Madness is made up of: apples, white tea, pineapple, orange, safflower, strawberry, calendula petals, mango, stevia extract, and natural mango flavouring. Mango Madness contains sulfites (sulphites) for anyone who’s sensitive to them.

Mango Madness isn’t the nicest looking tea that I’ve reviewed before here on One More Steep, but it certainly has a heavy fruit to tea ratio.

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Preparation

DavidsTea recommends steeping Mango Madness in hot water for 4-7 minutes. Their website indicates that “hot water” is 75-80°C (167-176°F). The base of Mango Madness is a white tea, so you want to make sure that your water isn’t too hot or else you risk burning the leaves. I steeped my pot of Mango Madness for about 4 minutes for the first steep.

First Taste

Mango Madness steeps to a bright yellow that reminds me a lot of the colour of the inside of a ripe mango. This tea lives up to its name as it does smell like mango! The taste of Mango Madness is undeniably fruity. It has a sweetness to it that doesn’t require additional sweetener at all, in my opinion. I can taste the mango and pineapple, along with some subtle floral notes that are a bit difficult to pick out at times. The stevia/sweetener distracts from the natural floral notes in this tea blend.

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A Second Cup?

I attempted to resteep Mango Madness, it was quite watery and didn’t make nearly as much of a punch as the first steeping of Mango Madness. I would say that Mango Madness is only good for one steep.

My Overall Impression

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I loved DavidsTea’s Mango Madness. It’s delicious and lives up to the promise in its name – heavy mango flavour that doesn’t require anything extra. I tried icing the rest of the tea that I had in my pot and it does very well as an iced tea, I would say it would be good as a tea pop (tea mixed with soda water) or just on its own cold. It is quite expensive for a tea that doesn’t do well for being steeped more than once, so do take that into consideration – there are other teas that are less expensive that do equally well when iced. However, if you’re looking for a mango iced tea, Mango Madness will fit the bill!

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