Coconut Rum Tropical Green Tea

This is a lovely treat tea! It is good iced or hot, sweet or not. I turned a non tea lover onto this tea and she searched for it and kept it in stock. Then I turned a tea lover onto it as well. It’s a solid tea, and a good staple to keep for quiet afternoons designated for day dreaming. It’s great to give to guests as well. You can really taste the coconut and rum. Quite yummy.

Recovering from an illness I treated myself to a couple boxes of tea, this being one I chose.

Unfortunately, that’s where my excitement for the tea ends. I brewed it, initially at 190 degrees for 3 minutes but found it was almost flavorless. I put the bag back in and steeped it for another 3 minutes. The flavor was better but still far too subtle. I added a bit of sweetener and that seemed to help bring out the flavors of the tea. Even still, I found it to be far more subtle than I had hoped it would be.

The second steep was at 160 degrees. I sipped the tea at one minute intervals as it steeped. At one minute it was almost undrinkable. At two minutes, I got a hint of ‘fruit’ but still not enough flavor for me. At three minutes not much change from the flavor I got at two minutes. At four minutes I noticed another small bump in flavor, still not enough for me. At five minutes I’m getting a little bump again in flavor, but now I’m also getting a hint of bitterness. Since it is now starting to develop a bit of a bitter flavor, I ended the steep at 6 minutes and added sugar/milk to my tea to enhance the flavor.

The last brew I tried was the company’s suggestion of a rolling boil and infusing the tea for 2-3 minutes. This was my least favorite brew of the three cups I tried. It almost instantly drew out a bitter aftertaste.

I still have to try a cold brew of the tea, but, thus far I prefer the flavor at the 190 degree / 6 minute steep with some sweetener and milk. Really, I may return this tea. I find it that uninspiring and I already have a stack of mediocre teas I need to work through. This is the second tea offering I’ve tried from Zhena and both have been a letdown sharing one common descriptor from me: bland.

When I try a cold brew of the tea, I’ll update my review to include my thoughts on it.

Edit to Add: I opted to not try a cold brew of this tea and just return it as I have several teas to get through. I don’t need to waste any more time on a teas I could just return. So that’s what I opted to do in this case.

Not really enough flavor on this one for me. No real coconut taste or rum flavor. Just tastes like green tea. Wouldn’t buy it again, but it was nice to try

Sipdown!

This one sounded so good in the store, but it’s not so enticing in smell or taste. I added sugar last night to coax out some flavor, but all I got was closing sweetness and sharpness that I imagine is supposed to be rum. It’s better than the burned green tea flavor I was getting, but not by much.

Got a tin of this at World Market earlier, and am overjoyed that the weather has cooled off enough this evening for me to have a nice cup of tea. I have to admit, the smell was a little overpowering when I opened the tin, but once I brewed a cup, it smelled much nicer, and the first sip once it was cool enough to drink reminded me so much of those lovely mai tais I had at the luau on Kauai last fall. This is a seriously escapist cup of tea!