Category: Review

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Teavana’s Silver Yin Zhen Pearls

Silver Yin Zhen Pearls by Teavana
White Tea / Straight
$22.98USD for 2oz

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First Impressions

Teavana packages their loose leaf tea in these paper bags with a shiny plastic interior and tin tie for closure. The packaging is fairly simplistic, but does the trick. The back of the Teavana bag has information for recommended steeping time and water temperatures, and even includes the differences for hot water versus iced steeping, as well as some trouble shooting tips. After getting filled, the bag gets a little label to personalize it with the name of the tea, the type of tea, and some steeping instructions (amount, water temperature, and steeping time).

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The first time I smelled this tea, I thought to myself that it smells very sweet and floral. The tea pearls are evenly sized throughout, and you can see that each pearl is duo-coloured. The hand rolled pearls are light, and smell fantastic. The only ingredient for this tea is white tea – Michelle finally reviews a straight tea! I love smelling this tea, it just smells so good.

The funny thing about the name of this tea (Silver Yin Zhen Pearls) is that Yin Zhen is ‘silver needle’ in Mandarin Chinese – which means that the name of this tea is really Silver Silver Needle Pearls. A bit redundant!

Preparation

Teavana recommends steeping Silver Yin Zhen Pearls in water that is 79°C (175°F) for 4-5 minutes. I steeped it for about 5 minutes.

First Taste

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Hand rolled pearl teas are beautiful in that they unfurl in the hot water and expand – a small amount of pearls turns into an amazing amount of tea leaves! The colour is beautiful yellow colour, clear and smells very floral. It’s fragrant and made me that much more eager to try it. First sip and it’s smooth. No bitterness, no astringency to be noted. It’s a very light and just amazing. It’s a little bit sweet, but not overly so. It has a pleasant aroma and an all around good quality tea. I quite like it! Given that it’s quite a bit pricey, I’m eager to know if it well resteep well.

A Second Cup?

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Straight teas tend to resteep well, and Silver Yin Zhen Pearls did not disappointed. The leaves didn’t further unfurl as they were mostly done the first time around, but the flavour is still incredibly good – same great colour, aroma, and taste.

My Overall Impression

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I loved Teavana’s Silver Yin Zhen Pearls. It’s a beautiful tea that tastes fantastic. It resteeps well, which adds a bit more bang to its buck. I do wish it was cheaper as it is a fairly expensive tea given that 2oz is only around ~50g. But it does taste amazing, and it’s quite fun to watch the pearls unfurl and do their thing. I do wish that I could buy smaller amounts of this tea because it is fairly expensive, but if you happen to get a ‘free reward’ through the Starbucks reward program, you can opt to redeem for 1oz of free tea at Teavana if you happen to have one locally – I don’t believe that you are able to redeem free rewards online.

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Liquid Proust Teas’ Smoked Breakfast

Smoked Breakfast by Liquid Proust Teas
Black Tea / Flavoured
$5USD for 1 ounce

Liquid Proust Teas has provided me with Smoked Breakfast for the purposes of providing an honest review.
I received this product at no charge to me and received no other compensation.

“The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes.” – Marcel Proust

I first came across Liquid Proust Teas on Instagram shortly after I had posted my first blog entry here on One More Steep. Andrew Richardson, the owner of Liquid Proust Teas, had liked my screenshot and I saw that he was looking for bloggers to review some teas. We communicated and a couple weeks later I got a package of tea to review! This is the first of four reviews of Liquid Proust Teas.

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First Impressions

The bag that this sample of Liquid Proust Teas’ Smoked Breakfast came in is very sturdy, I thought I was going to rip the thing apart trying to get it open! But onto the tea… The aroma of smoke is very, very strong and it reminds me a lot of the smell of a campfire. There is an underlying scent that reminds me of star anise, which is not listed on the ingredients list at all. The tea itself is quite nice, I can see a lot of texture in the dried leaves and the leaves themselves are decently sized.

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Smoked Breakfast contains the following ingredients: Chinese black tea (FOP), lapsang souchong, cinnamon pieces, and flavouring. For those who’ve never had a tea with lapsang souchong before, it is a smoked tea (which accounts for the strong smoke smell). Despite cinnamon being on the list (and being able to see the cinnamon), I can’t smell it at all when the tea is dry. I would have liked it if the ingredients list identified the flavouring as natural or artificial.

Preparation

Liquid Proust Teas recommends steeping Smoked Breakfast in 205°F (96°C) water for just 60 seconds. I thought this was a typo a first, given that black teas are normally steeped for a few minutes, but I did check the Etsy page for this tea and it is not a typo. So I gave it a go at 60 seconds.

First Taste

The tea was steeped for 60 seconds and it still smells smokey although it is not as strong as when the tea was dry, it is a lot more muted now it’s been steeped. I did have to let it cool down a bit as 60 seconds is not a long time to allow water to cool down. To my surprise, Smoked Breakfast is a very smooth tea. It wasn’t bitter and it doesn’t taste smokey. Instead, it tastes a bit sweet. There’s not spiciness that I would have expected from the cinnamon, I can’t taste it all. The tea itself is delightful. The subdued smell of campfire promotes a sense of nostalgia.

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A Second Cup?

I opted to try steeping Smoked Breakfast for a second time. This time I steeped it for longer than the initial 60 seconds (probably around 90 seconds). The campfire aroma is still gentle and not over-powering, and the taste of the tea remains true to the first cup. I love it when a tea can be steeped again and taste great! It would probably do very well for a third or even fourth resteep, although I didn’t try it as it was quite late in the day when I had resteeped this tea.

My Overall Impression

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I liked Liquid Proust Teas’ Smoked Breakfast. The heavy smoke aroma is very strong and can be off-putting if you’re not prepared for it. I find that the smokey aroma doesn’t transfer into the flavour of the tea itself, and overall it is a very nice tea. I quite like the taste of it and the gentle smoke aroma when the tea is ready to go is quite pleasant. The 60 seconds recommended steeping time was a good call by Liquid Proust Teas, and it did pretty well with the second steeping. Being able to resteep a tea and have it taste great is a great quality to find in any tea.

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DavidsTea’s Pumpkin Chai

Pumpkin Chai by DavidsTea
Black Tea / Flavoured
$7.50 for 50g

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First Impressions

I’m a big fan of nice quality tea bags (for storage) – especially like the ones from DavidsTea that keep the air and light out of the bags. One of the nice things about DavidsTea is that they’re usually quite willing to make up little bags of teas if you just want to try something – I think the smallest bag I’ve ever had weighed out was 10g. Pumpkin Chai is one of their seasonal teas and it’s been brought back for several years in a row, according to the internet. It’s quite a sweet smelling black tea. I can definitely smell the cinnamon and it reminds me a lot of pumpkin pie in a way.

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The ingredients include: black tea, cinnamon, cloves, caramel, carrot, lemon peel, pumpkin candies, pumpkin flakes, natural and artificial flavouring. It also includes an allergen warning for milk and soy products. At first glance, I can see cute pumpkins sprinkles as well as pretty big pieces of cinnamon and the pumpkin flakes.

Preparation

DavidsTea recommends steeping in 96°C water for 4-7 minutes. As I love chai spicy, I opted to steep the tea until around the 6-7 minute mark.

First Taste

Pumpkin Chai smells really good when it’s done steeping. It smells like a mix of pumpkin spices and tea – which is a good thing given the name of the tea. It’s a beautiful red golden brown colour. When I take my first sip, I definitely get the feel of mouthcoating. The richness in the tea and the oily sensation may be due to the oils in the pumpkin candies. It’s not an off-putting sensation though, and I didn’t get a visible oil slick across the surface of the tea like I did with DavidsTea’s Birthday Cake. The cinnamon flavour is even more pronounced in the steeped tea than it was in dry format. I quite like it and I can see why Pumpkin Chai is popular enough to be brought back year after year. I am curious about how well this tea will do with one more steep because it does contain some ingredients that usually do not do well when steeped again (primarily candies and flavouring).

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A Second Cup?

Surprisingly, Pumpkin Chai did okay on the second steep! It still has a pumpkin aroma and still tastes alright. It’s not as good as it was in the first steep, but it’s hard to expect the added flavouring to hold up for a second steep. I would not expect this tea to hold up very well for a third steep though.

My Overall Impression

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I loved DavidsTea’s Pumpkin Chai. The adorable pumpkin candies and the great smell and flavour make it a must-have for me. I can definitely see myself stocking up on a bit more of this tea in the near future to continue to have some great tasting pumpkin tea throughout the autumn. If you are interested in getting some Pumpkin Chai for yourself, do keep in mind that it is a limited/seasonal tea. I don’t think this tea is for everyone – if you’re not into sprinkles/candies in your teas, or you’re not a fan of artificial colours (because there is nothing naturally colouring those sprinkles to be a bright orange), I’d steer away from this one. I personally really enjoyed Pumpkin Chai though! And I’ve heard that it can be really good as part of a tea latte – as a fan of chai lattes I can see that being true, especially when you consider that chai is traditionally made with milk (or some milk and water) instead of straight water.

As an aside, the tea menu for DavidsTea’s fall 2015 collection has a recipe for “The Ultimate Pumpkin Chai” latte on the back that I will be giving a whirl soon – and writing about it!

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