Mocha Latte

Sipdown! 143/365!

Hmm. The overall rating on this tea is pretty low, which I find interesting. I personally enjoyed it much more than I had expected, as it tastes much like a latte to me (more accurately, it actually tastes like coffee candies I’ve picked up at asian stores. Yum.) I haven’t read the other reviews, but presumably there’s some sweetener in here which may have ruffled some feathers? And general opposition to coffee beans in tea? I feel like the whole package just works well together for me, though. Nothing I’d have needed to stock up on (too late anyhow), but an interesting treat!

I have to argue that this is a pue’rh tea? I was gifted a bad of this tea from a friend but it didn’t have much info on the packaging except for some of the infused ingredients listed. Anyone want to confirm whether it’s pue’rh or herbal?

I was craving this tea recently and it took me a while to find it hidden away with all my other tea. But I found it and had it as a latte, and man, it was so delicious. I hate coffee, but the chocolate goodness mixed with the mocha candy was greaat. Perfect latte.

It’s been a while but I had to voice my disdain for this tisane. It smells amazing but does not taste anything close to the smell. I made the mistake of buying the prepackaged tin. I tried to see if mixing it with their coffee cake tea would help but no improvement. It’s sad since for the most part I like or find most of their teas/tisanes tolerable. However we can’t hit a homerun every time. Hopefully it will never return to their shelves.

On my second try brewing, this tea was slightly more tolerable when topped up with half and half coffee cream instead of milk. I still would not recommend this tea, though.

I had a lovely visit at DAVIDsTEA earlier today. The Halloween tin email prodded me to slap on some makeup and head out the door. You also get an adorable reusable bag if you spend $35, and I coincidentally spent $35.11 without trying, so win! The tin is beyond cute too. I filled it up with 120g of Chocolate Maca-Doom (AKA Macaroon, yo). It was a delight to see that one a part of the promotion. Also grabbed 50g of the Pumpkin Pie matcha and 10-15g of a few new ones. I keep eyeing that light sky leaf Perfect Mug , by the way. Don’t let me get it! I picked up the glass hibiscus one when it went on sale a few months ago so the madness needs to end sometime.

And what’s this that the stores don’t have bulk Swampwater? Boo-urns.

Oh yeah, and I laughed pretty freaking hard at Pumpkin Die (Chai) in the store.

Anyway, I got 8g of this and dumped it all into the infuser basket because it’s an odd amount (not enough for two but a little more than I’d usually put in a Perfect Mug). I left this brewing for like ten minutes because I got distracted with life and as I cautiously approached the mug to lift out the infuser, I could already tell through the glass that it was murky AF so I knew I would be in for a scary ride.

First sip warranted a, “How is this tea?” aloud despite being home alone. Ok ok, fine. How is this a tisane even? I just. No. It’s so cloyingly sweet. Before I added milk, that initial sip made my mouth contort uncontrollably because it didn’t even know how to react to the wrongness. Coffee sure, but maybe a Vietnamese coffee gone off?

Adding milk softens the blow a bit, but it still has that overwhelming chemical sweetness you get from other blends like Red Velvet Cake. Like pseudo-sugar poison. Am I drinking a mocha Yankee candle?

What makes me even sadder is realizing that this mug of tea cost me $1.28, so I’m forcing myself to drink this all because surely there must be some sort of useful electrolytes and vitamins hiding away in this hot mess.

This is the nicest coffee-ish flavored tea I’ve had from David’s. It is very mild on the coffee flavor and actually tastes a lot like a watered down hot chocolate, which is perfect if you want the warmth and flavor of a hot chocolate but without any of the calories. Perfect tea for when Im in the mood for something like coffee but its late and I don’t want the huge bolt of caffeine from coffee. A really good staple tea, at least for me. I’ve already repurchased a second batch of this one.

This tea is actually pretty good-another tea that I think must be tried in a latte.

My tea twin, Roswell Strange, reminded me about this tea which I actually tried about a week to go as an iced latte to go while wandering downtown Toronto looking for stuff to buy for my sister’s bachelorette party.

The sales person told me that as an iced latte, it tastes a bit like an iced cap. Though I am not sure I would go that far, it definitely had a chocolate coffee flavor, similar to the iced capps made with chocolate milk…but much thinner. When I let my friend try the tea, she said it “tasted like vanilla smelled…which I guess means it tastes like vanilla”. Once she mentioned that, I noticed it too. Also, that comment made me laugh which meant noticing the vanilla made me laugh too.

Ultimately though, most of this got tossed because at the end of the day it was like a thin flavored milk drink and in the hot, hot sun, milk wasn’t really sitting well.

Sipdown (125)!

Finished this one off with supper; it’s been a very lazy “in bed” kind of day for me so far. I studied for a while, and watched some TV but mostly I’ve just slept off and on and enjoyed a couple lazy, casual cuppas.

I didn’t much care for this one last time I had it; it was too thin/weak and reminded me more of hot chocolate than either tea OR coffee. So, I changed some things today to try and get a better cup out of it. For starters, I added milk to give this a richer, fuller mouthfeel and add some creaminess to the flavour. Afterall, this is supposed to be Mocha Latte so milk didn’t seem like a stretch. Then, to exaggerate the coffee notes I added in a shot of Kahlua as the piece de resistance.

At this point, you can barely call this tea anymore – it’s just a sweet, creamy drink that kind of hits some of the elements of a Mocha Latte and some of the elements of a cup of hot cocoa. It’s creamy, with strong vanilla/custard notes and a lot of chocolate and coffee. That thin, weak flavour is gone and it was thoroughly pleasant. I still can’t improve my rating though – it shouldn’t take that much doctoring to make a tea tolerable. And like I said, there was far from anything about this by the time I was finished with it that tasted like tea at all.