JavaVana Mate

it’s a good tea, it’s my I need a kick to get going tea. it also helps with the bad headaches I get

I love this tea. It was given to me by a friend and I love mixing it with other teas. I mix it with CocoCaramel Sea Salt herbal tea, chocolate tea, vanilla tea- basically whatever is available to me. It always gives a stronger flavor. This and the My Morning Mate are my go to teas.

Not. a. fan.
This mate blend smells like Bailey’s and tastes like an overwhelming subpar Bailey’s. I’ve made pancakes with this tea and that ended up good, but I don’t think I’ll ever drink it again.

I really like this tea in the morning. It is sorta like coffee but has a slight hint of vanilla. It’s a nice rich tasting tea. I drink it plain.

I used to drink a cup of coffee first thing in the morning and then switch to tea throughout the day. Because of ongoing stomach problems, I stopped drinking coffee and switched to tea entirely. This was one of the first teas I bought to replace my morning coffee since the description on the website said something about how this would appeal to coffee drinkers.

The problem is that I always drank my coffee black—no flavors at all. This tea, however, has a very strong flavor of bourbon! A hint of vanilla is also there, but the bourbon flavor is overpowering.

It’s been sitting on my shelf for awhile since my first attempt so I thought I’d try it again today. I made it extra-strong (2 tsp for 8 oz of water; brewed for 6.5 minutes) so that I could add milk and stevia to it to hopefully detract a bit of the flavor and make it more palatable. It still isn’t great but this made it somewhat more appealing.

I don’t think I’d get it again; it doesn’t appeal to me. For flavored coffee drinkers, though, I could see how this would be a welcome, lighter alternative.

Maybe I’m a bit biased with this tea as I am also a heavy coffee drinker! Of coffee notes, this has more of a caramel flavor reminiscent of a shot of espresso; more creamy than your average cup o’ joe notes. Right out of the tin, the first smell you’ll get is roasted cocoa and warm vanilla. The mouthfeel is slightly acidic but overall clean (unless you add cream, which was a tasty addition in my humble opinion!), and with a medium linger. The Mate showed through strongly and I did notice the tell-tale signs of the caffeine that hit me a few minutes later. I do all tea tasting both iced and hot: I much preferred this tea hot. When cold, the subtle nuances of vanilla are lost to the chill.

I am (was) a coffee connoisseur. However, I had to give up my beloved java due to health reasons. I have reluctantly had to switch to tea, and I’m trying everything I can get my hands on. This is my first mate. So I can’t comment on this in relation to other mates yet. However, since this is JAVAvana, I’m going to comment on its similarity to coffee. I was not a flavored coffee drinker. I preferred a strong black colombian or french roast. This tea tastes exactly like a flavored coffee. I was actually surprised. The mouth feel is a little lighter than coffee, but the overall flavor is virtually the same. If you’re a fan of flavored beans, you will love this. My only concern is the “artificial flavors” in the ingredient list. I’m not sure what that is. I try to steer clear of artificial when appropriate, but when I’m craving coffee I can’t have I’ll make an exception.

It tasted a lot like coffee, but also like thai iced tea. I made way too much and didn’t drink much of it either. Maybe less is more in this case, was mainly looking for something to keep me awake.

So, today I was reading some other reviews or some forum or something and somebody mentioned making a cup of chocolate tea with half a cup of chocolate milk and half water. So of course, this is now the only thing I want to do. As I’m in university in a dorm without a fridge, I dont have any chocolate milk but I do have hot chocolate powder. I added a scoop into my steeped cup, and the results were shocking. I was never really a big fan of this tea and, expecting full on chocolate overpowering taste, I instead found it tasted like a mocha. It even looks like one, I’m pretty sure this is gonna be a new thing I do regularly. Definitely recommend trying this :)

I grabbed a cup of this on my way out of the mall because I needed to wake my brain up.

Dry leaf smell: almost exactly like a Tootsie Pop tastes! Delicious!

Brewed taste: Tootsie Pops! …and dirt. It was odd for a tea to be so sweet and yet have such a strongly bitter aftertaste. I’ll admit that I’m not sure I steeped it for the exactly correct amount of time (I roughly estimated five minutes as I walked to my car), but I’ve never had a mate taste quite like that. I could definitely detect the coffee beans, but the bitter aftertaste was not that of coffee. It was something else completely.

Overall, meh. It was drinkable, but not my favourite.

I did however determine once again that my local Teavana doesn’t seem to take part in the sketchy business practices I’ve read so much about here on Steepster. They offered help while I was browsing, but had no issues with only selling me the hot cup of tea that I wanted. It was a perfectly pleasant experience no different from any other store at the mall. So that’s nice. I wonder if some of the negative things I’ve read are about American policies that don’t apply to the Canadian stores. Or maybe my local store is just the exception to the rule. Either way, it’s nice.