One More Steep – Page 245 – a bit of sugar and sass in your tea

December 11, 2016December 10, 2016

24 Days of Tea: Hot Chocolate

Hot Chocolate by DavidsTea
Pu-Erh Tea / Flavoured
$8.98 for 50g

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First Impressions

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It’s day 11 of the 24 Days of Tea advent calendar and I was a little bit disappointed to pull out the drawer to see Hot Chocolate. Hot Chocolate and I have a bit of a history in that it had let me down. I posted my first review of Hot Chocolate in November 2015. I had high hopes for this tea then, and I still kind of do because of the name. Hot chocolate to me should be creamy and rich with chocolate flavour.

The ingredients in Hot Chocolate are: pu’erh tea, black tea, cocoa nibs, chocolate chips, chocolate curls, chocolate liquor, whey powder, lactose, soy lecithin, stevia extract, natural and artificial flavouring.

Preparation

DavidsTea recommends steeping Hot Chocolate in near-boiling (90-95°C/194-203°F) water for 4 to 7 minutes. I had to steep close to 6 minutes to fully melt all of the chocolate.

First Taste

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Hot Chocolate steeps to a deep brown colour, there’s oil on the top of the cup. That is one of the issues with having chocolate in your tea (or sprinkles), is that it’s made up of oils so when it melts, you wind up with an oil slick on top of your tea. Not necessarily the most appetizing. It smells a bit like chocolate, but the taste itself isn’t helping the tea at all. There’s that dank earthiness from the pu-erh base, and then the watered down chocolate flavour from the chocolate shavings. Of course, when you take water and melt it in hot water, you’re going to wind up with watered down chocolate. There’s that harsh sweetness from the artificial sweetener, which I don’t like because it doesn’t add anything positive to this tea for me. I wound up adding a lot of milk to the tea and then finishing off the cup. The milk helps cut the sweetness, and make it more palatable.

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A Second Cup?

Hot Chocolate doesn’t do well when resteeped. The chocolate flavour is further diluted (there’s no more chocolate to melt!) and it doesn’t make for a very good cup of tea when you try one more steep.

My Overall Impression

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I didn’t like DavidsTea’s Hot Chocolate. With my second critical eye on this tea, I just find that it’s not very good. It needs a stronger chocolate flavour in order to make it remind me more of a hot chocolate, and it’s lacking a much needed creaminess to the tea itself that’s needed to better evoke the taste of a much beloved beverage.

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

December 10, 2016December 8, 2016

24 Days of Tea: Green Passionfruit

Green Passionfruit by DavidsTea
Green Tea/ Flavoured
$8.98 for 50g

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First Impressions

It’s Day 10 of the 24 Days of Tea advent calendar (only 14 more days left!) and the day of the tea is Green Passionfruit, which is a flavoured green tea. It’s not a tea that I’ve ever really paid attention to before, even though I’ve probably sampled it a good handful of times in store before. Green Passionfruit has this fantastic fruity smell to it, at first I couldn’t place it until I looked down at the tin and small the pieces of pineapple staring back at me. This mix smells sweet, which I attribute to the pineapple in the mix. The green tea leaves are visible, so are the corn flower petals. The dried black currants almost blend in with everything else, with their colouring, but they are very present in the tea blend as well.

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The ingredients of Green Passionfruit are: pineapple, green tea, black currants, cornflower petals, calendula petals, safflowers, natural passionfruit flavouring. I’m a bit disappointed that one of the ingredients isn’t dried passionfruit, to be perfectly honestly.

Preparation

DavidsTea’s recommendations for steeping Green Passionfruit is with hot water (75-80°C/167-176°F) for 3-5 minutes. I steeped my cup for 4 minutes.

First Taste

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Green Passionfruit steeps to a fairly bright yellow – which I think has something to do with the pineapple, possibly a little bit of the green tea, and the safflower. This tea has a very sweet smell to it, the pineapple helps make it seem like a nice hot tropical drink. The green tea base isn’t completely masked by the fruit, as I can still make out the mild vegetal flavours of the tea. The pineapple and passionfruit play nicely together and don’t overwhelm each other when they balance out with the green tea. There’s a good amount of sweet to this tea, so I don’t think additional sweetener is necessary (at all!).

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I think this tea would be excellent iced, due to the fruity flavours and fruit sugar content. This is part of the reason that I find it a bit odd that it’s in a winter advent calendar – the tea itself is good, it’s just not really a “winter” tea for me.

A Second Cup?

I tried one more steep of Green Passionfruit and found to the flavour to be very lacking. The fruity goodness of the first steep was nothing more than a memory with the second steep, and the sweetness had definitely waned as well. I think that Green Passionfruit is really only good for one steep.

My Overall Impression

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I liked DavidsTea’s Green Passionfruit. It has great fruity sweetness to it, and I think I would really enjoy this as an iced tea or cold steeped tea even more than I do hot steeping it. I find it to be an interesting choice for a winter advent calendar selection, since it would probably be better suited for an iced tea collection if it hasn’t already been in one. I enjoyed being able to taste the green tea base and there is a beautiful balance between the fruit flavours and the tea base, which I know from tasting experience can be difficult to achieve.

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