Tag: DavidsTea

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DavidsTea’s Campfire Hojicha

Campfire Hojicha by DavidsTea
Green Tea / Flavoured
$8.98 for 50g

First Impressions

Always on the look out for new teas to try, and this one happened to just jump into my shopping cart a while ago because why not? I’ve been really enjoying hojicha in the last year or so, so it’s been fun trying new takes on a classic tea. Campfire Hojicha came in a sealed, resealable silver pouch. I still can’t get over the fact that DavidsTea opted to do such tiny print on their packaging. As someone who wears glasses and has relatively healthy eyes, I don’t have an issue with it, but I imagine there are people out there that would because of the font size. Just not the most consumer friendly – and yes, I’ll keep mentioning it until it gets changed because it’s a thing.

Campfire Hojicha doesn’t smell like a campfire to me at all, it smells like caramel with hints of apple, but I’m not getting anything from the dry leaf that reminds me of smoke or campfire. Campfire Hojicha consists of: apple, roasted green tea, caramel pieces, caramel pieces, sweet blackberry leaves, and natural flavouring. Don’t ask me why there’s caramel pieces listed twice, but they each have a different sub list of ingredients. The first one consists of: condensed skimmed milk, sugar, glucose syrup, butterfat, sorbitol, mono and diglycerides. The second one consists of: sugar and glucose syrup. Confused? I’m a bit as well.

Preparation

DavidsTea recommends steeping Campfire Hojicha in 85°C (185°F) water for 3 to 4 minutes. I opted to do an initial steep of this green tea blend for 3 minutes.

First Taste

Campfire Hojicha steeps to a deep orange, with some tea debris that managed to escape my stainless steel infuser (if this type of thing bothers you, I’d recommend using a filter bag for your loose leaf tea). It smells like caramel, and it actually tastes really sweet. The primary taste that I get is caramel, with some apple fruitiness at the tail end of each steep. I find it overly sweet, and I think that’s because of all the apple and caramel that is in the blend. I don’t really taste the hojicha base, or get any smoky traits in the flavour profile.

A Second Cup?

I resteeped Campfire Hojicha once, and found that the flavour didn’t really change, just got a bit weaker in terms of flavour. It stayed pretty sweet the second time around.

My Overall Impression

I didn’t like DavidsTea’s Campfire Hojicha. I was just a bit disappointed that the flavour of the blend itself didn’t live up to my expectations. Especially with a roasted green tea base like hojicha, I expected the roasted flavours to really shine through because hojicha isn’t usually too subtle (in my opinion). The caramel flavours were definitely overpowering a lot of the other ingredients and it overly sweet for me (and I’ve got quite the sweet tooth!). I think this blend would do better with less caramel and perhaps a heavier hand with the hojicha base, or even adding a little bit of lapsang souchong to it to really make it smoky and make me think of a campfire.

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DavidsTea’s Sheng Pu’erh

Sheng Pu’erh by DavidsTea
Pu’erh Tea / Straight
$10.98 for 50g

First Impressions

Sheng Pu’erh is not a tea that I would have necessarily picked out for myself a few years ago, but 2020 is a year of confusion, mystery, and Michelle trying new things. Because why not? Sheng Pu’erh comes in a very familiar silver pouch from DavidsTea – sealed and resealable. It is a larger bag than you’ll usually find 50g of tea in, which lends me to believe that it’ll be an airy tea and just a very ‘light’ tea overall.

The leaves of Sheng Pu’erh are lightly twisted and have a range of colours from dark brown to a reddish brown colour to even a cream colour for the leaves that show some feathery bits to it. Sheng Pu’erh consists only of sheng pu’erh tea from Yunnan Province, China. The aroma is a mix of earthy and roasted nuttiness. I found out from the DavidsTea website that their Sheng Pu’erh is only a year old, so there’s still room for improvement on the tea itself if you allow it to age.

For those new to pu’erh, there’s two basic types: sheng and shou. Sheng is raw while shou is ripe – sheng is less processed and shou is more processed. I’m still not too familiar to the ins and outs of pu’erh tea and I don’t even remotely pretend to be an expert on it – but I’m in the process of learning! More on that later…

Preparation

DavidsTea recommends steeping Sheng Pu’erh in 95°C (200°F) water for 4 to 5 minutes. I opted to do a quick rinse of the leaves first with the same temperature water before doing a steep time of 4 minutes.

A quick rinse is just like it sounds: pour the heated water over the leaves in the tea pot, and immediately pour it out before it really gets a chance to steep. Then continue the steeping process as normal. Rinsing helps to ‘wake up’ pu’erh tea leaves a little bit, and is a common technique when starting a steep of pu’erh leaves.

First Taste

Sheng Pu’erh steeps to a light golden yellow. The aroma is slightly smoky, earthy, and something that reminds me of mushrooms. It has a nice slightly thickened texture, and is a smooth sip. The flavour stays the same throughout the sip, and it just has a bit of a gentle mouthfeel that allows the flavour to coat in the inside of your mouth without an lingering aftertaste.

A Second Cup?

I resteeped Sheng Pu’erh four times (five steeps total), and added an additional 30 seconds for each subsequent steep. The leaves really opened up from the dried state and you can see the texture in the full leaves after they opened up after all the steeps. The flavour does deepen as you go and remains fairly faithful to the initial steep. It does get a bit more earthy and the smoky notes lessen with the subsequent steeps.

My Overall Impression

I loved DavidsTea’s Sheng Pu’erh. I found it to be a very pleasant cup of tea, and it really reminds me of a pu’erh that you might get with dimsum at a restaurant (I miss dimsum!). There’s a nice earthiness to it that isn’t overpoweringly robust, and the texture of the tea is just smooth. I would liken this to being a good introductory pu’erh because it’s not over the top in flavour, but it doesn’t lack in flavour either. There’s nothing particularly offensive about it, which I can sometimes find fault in for other pu’erh teas, but just makes for a decent, standard cup of pu’erh (which isn’t to say that as a bad thing, but it makes a nice introduction, and I kind of wish that this had been one of my introductory pu’erh teas myself when I first started branching out).

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DavidsTea’s Blueberry Muffin

Blueberry Muffin by DavidsTea
Fruit Infusion / Flavoured
$7.98 for 50g

First Impressions

Blueberry Muffin was a tisane that caught my eye when I was putting in an order online with DavidsTea. I figured that I’m always on the look out for new fruit tisanes to try out iced, so why not? I do like berries, so Blueberry Muffin was hopefully going to tick the boxes. Blueberry Muffin comes in a sealed, resealable silver pouch with a bright label on the front. I’m not sure if I’m the only one, but I’m not a fan of the super tiny print on the labels because I just find them hard to read at times, especially if I don’t have the best lighting available when trying to look at what’s in it.

That said, Blueberry Muffin was very fragrant when I opened the pouch and scooped some out. There’s a lot of fruit in this blend, and it has a very berry-forward aroma. I can even pick up on some dairy notes, which I attribute to the yoghurt in the blend. Blueberry Muffin consists of: apple, raisins, carrot, hibiscus blossoms, beetroot, artificial blueberry muffin flavouring, yoghurt bits, blueberries and cornflower blossoms. Before reading the label, I had zero clue that “blueberry muffin flavouring” was a thing – but I guess we learn something new every day! I wonder what other type of products an artificial blueberry muffin flavouring goes into?

Preparation

DavidsTea recommends steeping Blueberry Muffin in 95C (200F) water for 5+ minutes. I opted to do an initial steep of 7 minutes.

First Taste

Blueberry Muffin steeps to a nice pink colour, it reminds me a bit of the colour of watermelon juice. I would attribute this particular shade to the carrot, hibiscus blossoms and the beetroot. The aroma of the tisane is definitely fruit forward, and it smells sweet. It does actually taste like a blueberry muffin, which is both surprising and not considering that a blueberry muffin flavouring is in the blend somewhere. There is a subtle tartness at the beginning of each sip, which I would think is from the hibiscus.

I tried it both hot and iced, and I would say that I preferred it iced over hot. Having Blueberry Muffin hot just didn’t do it for me, but iced was certainly a treat. It tastes like a muffin with a nice level of sweetness to it.

A Second Cup?

As with most tisanes, resteeping Blueberry Muffin did not work out as it just didn’t have that flavour. I think that that flavouring was really sapped out with the initial steep, which is a shame since it was surprisingly good.

My Overall Impression

I liked DavidsTea’s Blueberry Muffin. Part of me really wants to love this tisane, because it really does taste like its namesake, but at the same time, how much of that flavour that I enjoyed was from artificial flavouring? And how is blueberry muffin flavouring even a thing? It’s definitely a mystery to me, but I did enjoy the flavour and wish it was more natural than artificial. I think I’ll be using this as iced tea for sure, and perhaps mixing it with some lemonade since blueberry and lemon is such a delightful flavour combination and I think the sour of the lemonade will balance well with the tartness of the hibiscus.

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