Pineapple Kona Pop

Hodie Hum…a little of this Teavana left to finish up and then it will be gone. Bah Humbug! Drats! Buggers (who says that? one of you says that?) I dunna like this tea!

Schey fixed my haircolor this afternoon, then Megan came over to spend the night (for newbee’s these are my teenaged granddaughters who think I might grow up some day…fat chance!). Schey and I are planning an afternoon outing to a local Hookah Lounge. Megan and I want to go to Rome. Ah, Rome…good looking men….ah hum….

This Kona Pop has to go…and I’m not sad about it. If you read the reviews…I’m not alone in my view that this is a poorly created tea. Few enjoy it.
It happened that I had some whole dried pineapple rings from the organic market in my cupboard so I chopped up half a ring and added it to my steeping basket. No way was I going to have a lack luster, blechy pineapple tisane. Mine was going to POP!
The results worked pretty well. (A true organic flavoring would have been better)
Compared to the shriveled up bits of tasteless fruit from Teavana my addition greatly improved the flavor.

Adios Pineapple Kona Pop! Don’t Come Back!

Teavana: (Skip to “The Tea” if you’re familiar with Teavana, or just don’t care to read about my first time at the vendor.) So it didn’t really take me long to crack on the Teavana front. It’s just so convenient to work in a mall with a tea store, and I drop by multiple times a week – often just to look around and enjoy being in a place that’s all about tea. I couldn’t really give that up.

Our new Teavana opened on Thursday, but I wasn’t working until today. I got a peek at the finished renovation-and-stock Wednesday night through the metal gate, but that’s about it. So I had to stop by today to say hi and check it out. The manager grabbed me and asked if she could give me, “the tour,” and I obliged…because I like her and was genuinely curious about what was going on with the store. Apparently Calgary is the first to get finished Teavanas? Some quick observations:

-Staff have to wear stupid colorful aprons like my store does (although being a guy, I generally get let off the hook with anything but the more basic colors). These were truly garish yellow aprons with rainbow text on them that said something about iced tea. My condolences to the staff.
-There were two sample stations of two: one at the door, one at the counter. I was sweetly warned by the manager that they are sweetened, but I obviously don’t care! She also pointed out that all their samples are blends of two teas. The taste of them all? Like juice. Good, but pretty much exactly like fruit juice. I see no need whatsoever to try to replicate them by buying all the teas in the blends.
-Expensive gift sets and cast iron is indeed closer to the entrance than lower priced stuff. Also, there is no price tag on practically ANYTHING, including the cast iron. I’m not sure if that is just because they haven’t gotten to it yet, or what – there is a paper tag tied to everything, but except for some little cute saying, the tag was blank. Stupidly, I kept checking them anyway and getting annoyed when they were blank.
-A lot of the product really does look good. I’m horribly tempted by the pretty glass stove-top kettle. Unfortunately, my family just bought an electric kettle that will probably last us years and years, and we don’t have room for a stove-top. I’m now going to hope the kettle breaks…
-Commission is so obvious that all the employees have little green plastic cards that they put stickers on for each tea they sell. No joke. I have no idea what else that could be for except commission. It makes me sad because I think now that it will be harder to say hi to people when they are so focused on getting their own sales and won’t casually switch off with each other anymore.

I sniffed a bunch of tins, and they indeed all smelled delicious. I was specifically looking for a blueberry white (always looking for one), and a peach white I’d heard they have. I left with both of those and a pineapple herbal because it smelled a bit like DAVIDs’ Tropicalia. The total was a little pricier than I’d expected, but I dismissed that thought because two of them were whites and I figured my mental estimate (without knowing the prices) had just been too low.

Which leads me to my beef. (And if you’ve read rants about Teavana before, I’m sure you know what’s coming…) When I got home and checked my receipt, I found it really hard to read (what the hell is a quantity of 1.91? 1.91 what?), so I got out a calculator and the little Teavana booklet, compared prices and did the math. And it would appear that ALL THREE TEAS were over-poured. ALL THREE, Y’ALL.

-My Precious White Peach was over-poured by 5 grams.
-My Imperial Acai Blueberry was over-poured by 8 grams(!).
-My Pineapple Kona Pop was over-poured by 10 freaking grams! I asked for 50 and got 60. At least that’s the cheapest one, but…

The total price difference works out to $4.31 before taxes, basically the cost of another tea!

THIS NEVER HAPPENED TO ME AT TEAOPIA. Never. There were over-pours, yes, especially towards the end when they were getting rid of stock, but I was NEVER not warned about it.

I’m…not pleased.

The Tea: So after that, is the tea any good?

…Eh. Drinkable. It’s nowhere near as good as Tropicalia, I’m afraid, although the smell is divinely pineapple with something almost spicy underneath.

The taste is just disappointing. I brewed it hot and flash-chilled it, and was very far from blown away at the first hopeful sip. It certainly tastes like pineapple, but the taste is not strong. It actually reminds me a bit of DAVIDs’ Bamboozled (which I have yet to review), so if Teavana is closer to you than a DT this might make a reasonable desperate substitute for Bamboozled. Otherwise, I’d go with Bamboozled itself, as it is by far the superior of the two.

I just wouldn’t get, you know, fifty SIXTY grams of this again. The supposedly dominant flavour is not really strong. If it turns out to be much better cold-brewed, I will raise the rating. Otherwise, I’d say skip this one.

soooo thanks to fiddling for this one. i have to say, not sure how people drink this one. After having some very nice pineapple oolongs recently, this is just a big ol’ miss. Especially since it smells like…i dunno…something that i’ve smelled before that is most certainly not pineapple. I’m leaning towards pollen..but i think that would be doing a disservice to plants that produce it. I see that some folks out there have enjoyed it, so that makes me happy. It’s just not a tea for me.

I love pineapple but ehhhh, even with a little sweetener, this is still kind of gross. Like someone put something really weird in some pineapple juice. It’s okay, it’s helped me feel like calming down since a shower didn’t do it. I’ll finish it off no problem, I wouldn’t seek this one out again.

I was hoping for something to put me in a better mood. I was supposed to get my new glasses Thursday. Supposedly now they are coming tomorrow, it took two calls for them to be like okay, tomorrow. But nobody told me the lab broke the frames and that has been the delay. I hate that my mom had to call about it too. Then I had to cry to someone at the student advisement center to let me take summer classes without going through all the advisement for summer. It worked, but ugh today has been a nightmare. I just want to go home.

Thanks for the sample, brandy3392!

I first tried the blueberry pineapple kona pop blend in the Teavana store near me. I really wanted to have that blend, but the people that worked there told me I had to buy each tea separately at a minimum of 2oz each. I opted for this one instead. I figured I could mix blueberry into this.

Anyhow, I cold brewed this herbal last night. I love all the bits of fruits and flower petals. It is a pretty blend, abeit a bit sticky! I had to shake the tin a bit and scoop to get the bits out. My husband drank a lot of it this morning! I just tried this, and it is good. When I sipped it a little yesterday, it wasn’t that good. I think it needed more time to steep. It is sweet with a little tartness to it. The pineapple and apple flavors are prominent, fresh, and juicy. It tastes like juice. No additives needed. I imagine that kids would love this blend. This is very very good iced/cold-brewed. I cannot imagine this being good at all if I steeped it hot. This is perfect for this hot weather.

Now, I want a pina colada!

Made this tonight as my evening herbal…it is VERY sweet even without sugar. I taste the pineapple and other generic tropical flavors. I will say it has a VERY sweet and cloying aftertaste.

I will drink the remainder of my sample but will not re-buy this one. (I got this in an exotic iced set for the holidays.)

Uggg. Teavana I am sorry. I like several of your offerings but this one was just not to my taste. I am usually a fan of fruit tisanes so I had high hopes for this one. It is just kind of tart and tastes artificial like bubblegum. I did not like it all when I brewed it up hot. Finally I decided to cold brew it in the refrigerator with a couple of chamomile teabags from Trader Joe’s to mellow out the Kona Pop. Now it is like a barely drinkable watered down pineapple juice. Oh well. I guess they can’t all be winners.

Another rather weak Teavana tea. I really don’t know where they get their suggested amounts. I can’t seem to get much real flavor. It was sold as in an ice tea set. Didn’t get much flavor from it hot or cold. Nothing really negative as far as flavor but not enough body to satisfy me.

I made this again but iced. I don’t like it. I should have made it stronger but I didn’t. This tea is so lackluster… wouldn’t get this again.

I can not believe how long it has been since I have had time to sit down with a good cup of tea, much less write tea notes about it! I have been drinking this cold brewed while I am at work and I continue to love it as always. It is tart, like a pineapple tea should be in my world, but not so tart as to verge on being sour. I am not crazy about it hot anymore, but it really shines when it is cold brewed!