Coconut Cream Pie

I forgot I still had this sample laying around! I got it in a trade about a year ago.

Made the whole baggie in a pot, but unfortunately this leaves weren’t stored in a tin. The tea that resulted was a little weak, but still tasted deliciously like coconut. I miss this tea… one day I’ll make an order at 52 Teas. They’ve always been intriguing to me and spot-on when it comes to flavored teas.

We just returned from a five hour trek through a frozen swamp. It was exhilarating crossing logs, creating our own shaky log bridges across treacherously deep swamp waters and then walking (him) or crawling (me) over them.

It was terrifying when we fell through the ice and ended up in deep water and even more frightening when we realized we were lost, soaked, the temperature was dropping down to 12 degrees and we might not get out of there. Our bones might decorate the swamp just as the skull of the small creatures we saw going in decorated it.

Thankfully we’d packed Clif bars as emergency rations and we ate them to get enough calories to encourage our bodies to make heat to dry our jeans and clear our minds. Not that it worked all that well as a heating trick. Our jeans froze hard as boards when subjected to temps in the teens and a brisk wind. But it did clear our minds sufficiently to find a way out again.

Once we arrived home the obvious question for me (that I’d been contemplating since our fourth hour slogging through the swamp) was what tea was suitable to serve as a warming celebration beverage after such an adventure? I picked this one and added a bit of honey. Mmmm. It tastes like victory. Swampy victory.

It really is a yummy coconut tea and the addition of the honey and Silk creamer makes it even yummier!

Thanks to iHeartTeas for this sample, it came from her sell off sale. This was one of the first teas I added to my shopping list when I joined steepster, it had so many positive reviews that I knew that I just had to try it. When I opened my sample package I was immediately surprised by how large the coconut pieces were and how much this tea smelled like coconut. This tea smells heavenly.

I didn’t have any steeping instructions so I played around a little. My first cup was 212 for 4 mins and I wasn’t initially pleased with it. It had an astringency that I didn’t care for while it was hot and all I got out of it was the coconut flavor. I made a second steep at 212 for 5 mins, mixed it with the first, and allowed it to cool before I drank the rest of it. That cut the astringency a bit and it was more drinkable, but I’m not sure that I care for the black base.

My second cup was 208 for 3 mins. I didn’t notice the astringency as much and was able to taste the coconut and a bit of cream. I find myself wishing for more cream and a hint of pie crust, but overall this wasn’t bad, I’m just not sure that I care for the black base of this tea.

Overall, I think I prefer this one at room temperature or cold. I have a little bit left and am considering making a latte out of it so I’ll post again if I do.

Just made my first 52teas order of the month. Whiskey sour tea? This Kentucky girl couldn’t say no to that!

This is another sample from Meghann (it’d kind of be nice if we could actually tag people in these posts) that I’m having in celebration of the new TOTW. I admit, I’m not getting “pie” out of this one. Then again, I’ve never had coconut cream pie. This is, however, very coconutty, and has a creamy quality to it. Black tea base is yummy as always. I’m glad it’s part of the permanent collection…it’s one that I’ll probably invest in in the future.

Adding milk really brings out the creaminess of this tea and adding some sweetener (honey) is enough to almost make it taste like coconut cream pie filling. The taste of the crust is missing though.

The smell is just like coconut cream pie. The taste is more like a coconut tea. Really good. I am so glad I purchased this tea for my dessert shelf in my tea cupboard!

Thank you Kittenna for this sample. I have wanted to try this forever.
I think this would be so good with Frank’s new black base!
It is very good as is however.
I do find I enjoy it more as it cools so I think I am going to let this get to room temp then put in the fridge and see how it tastes cold.
There is such a nice creaminess to this tea but I am a little surprised there is not more of a coconut flavor.
It may be my palate though so letting it cool and having it iced might help.
Will make more notes later. :)

From the best sellers sampler pack.

This tea just seems to be not working for me. I really like the sampler pack to try a variety of popular teas, but I dislike that the sample sizes are fairly small so you don’t have much to experiment with.

Initially the tea is super strong black tea. As it cools the coconut becomes quite strong. To me it is very strongly dried, shredded coconut taste. It is creamy but I am not getting much of the cream pie out of this tea. I did add a bit of rock sugar.

Sipdown no. 136 of the year 2014. Whew. Since I started counting sipdowns I’ve managed to do at least one a day. I even have another one already lined up for tomorrow. I have some individual serving samples I can also use in a pinch, but I’m trying to get some of the bigger containers in a position to sip down on account of that’s where the real clutter problem lies.

This was my second tea of the day, and it turned into a cold tea experience because I spent the morning on my tax information collection project and I got stuck on the phone with the bank and the benefits person at work trying to figure out whether I had a documentation gap. During that time, this became very close to an iced tea.

The good news is that it’s actually quite good cold. I wouldn’t have thought that would be the case, but it is. It’s actually pretty refreshing, and though I wouldn’t ordinarily think of a coconut black as something to drink iced in summer, that idea is now firmly implanted in my mind.

The only downside is that the coolness doesn’t change the missing pie-ness. It’s a tasty coconut flavor, but I don’t get pie. (At first I thought maybe I did, but then I realized it was the macaroon I ate while drinking this. That wasn’t intentional, by the way. We had a big tray of macaroons leftover from Heritage Night at the kids’ school so I grabbed one without really thinking about the connection between it and what I was drinking.)

BTW, the tax info collection project went much smoother than anticipated. In fact, I’m ready to take the whole she-bang over to FedEx/Kinkos, make copies and ship them off to my accountant (who also happens to be my cousin). That means I have a vast stretch of not that many hours left until the kids get home to do other stuff. And tomorrow. Let’s not forget tomorrow, which was the cushion day I took off in case I found huge gaps in my tax records and had to try to get copies of stuff. I might have a day in which I get to pretend I’m actually a writer for a living.

I’m going to have to try this again. I ate a few pieces of chocolate and then drank it, and then went back to it hoping the chocolate aftertaste would have subsided, but I wasn’t nearly as enamoured with this as everyone else. Actually, I haven’t been enamoured with any 52 Teas blend so far. I have a theory that maybe packaging, presentation and promotion (and reputation) do a lot to affect someone’s rating of a tea, even inadvertently. If this was called ‘Coconut Garbage Flakes’, and blended by a mean jerk instead of a cool everyman’s nerd kind of guy, maybe everyone else would feel the same about it as I do. Not that it tastes like garbage, I was just giving an example of crappy marketing. Don’t get me wrong, it’s alright, but I notice a weird chemical taste to it, in the back of my mouth. And when I stick my nose in my cup and inhale, it smells like cat pee.

Sorry guys, I said it. I’ve wanted to love every one of Frank’s teas that I’ve tried (via swap) but I’ve been disappointed so far. Marshmallw Treat Genmaicha was good in the end, after I compared it to a straight genmaicha. But still left something to be desired.

After drinking Davidstea’s Coconut Oolong, I’m on the hunt for an equally amazing black coconut tea, and I don’t think this is it.

That being said it is possible that the chocolate seriously ruined my taste so I will try again before rating this, because I don’t want to be unfair. And I don’t want any hate mail either!! I will happily eat my words if I’m way off here, because I wanted to love this!

Thanks to Emilie for the sample of this (no, really!)

(boiling, 3 min)

Edited to add

Yeah… no. Tried it again last night, hoping for the best and it’s just…yucky. That sums it up. Still smells like cat pee once brewed. No coconut taste that I can notice. I feel like there’s something wrong with me because everyone seems to love every 52Teas blend ever, except me. I dumped the rest of this out, because you know why? Because my newest DellaTerra order arrived yesterday – NO BRAINER. I would love to find a 52teas blend to love. Le Sigh.

Thank gawd for swaps!!

Edited again

I want to add that there’s a possibility the batch I tried may not have been fresh and possibly even starting to change tastes on account of age, so the tea company shouldn’t be blamed for that. However I have no way of knowing so my rating stands. If I ever try this again from someone else I will let you know if it tasted better!