Tropical Green Tea

Picked this one up at a Pilot truck stop a while ago. I had quite disappointing experiences with the other sachets I picked up, so I wasn’t expecting much from this one, but such is cupboard cleaning: sometimes you drink teas you’re not the biggest fan of.

The dry sachet smelled very generically tropical; I could maybe pick out pinapple? But also worringly artificial. I’m starting get a bit skittish about some fruit tea blends since they can go so wrong so fast for me. Anyway, when I brewed it, it was better than I was expecting. That’s not saying much, but the aroma is decently pleasant and not too fake or sickly-sweet smelling. The green tea isn’t obliterated in the aroma or the taste, which is nice. It tastes fairly generically tropical, like it smells, but it’s decent enough. I was surprised to see that there is mint in this, since the combo of mint and tropical fruit sounds horrible and wrong to me, but while the mint flavor is definitely noticable, I don’t hate it. Overall, it’s not a terribly exciting tea, but not so bad that I won’t drink the whole cup.

It brews into a pretty copper tea scented with mint and pineapple. The mint is somewhat overpowering in the brew and there is a slight bitterness. Overall it smells better than it tastes. Another tea that must be re-homed. My kitchen is the Home for Wayward Teas.

Premium and Full Leaf? Hardly. The smell of the tea is good, which is why I bought some. The taste as others have said is overly minty which hides the green tea taste and does not feel very tropical. I bought the tea out of convience since it is pre-bagged loose leaf but was sad to see the actual condition of the leaves. They are small pieces not at all what good Dragon’s Well looks like and I saw notable amounts of tea dust, probably accounting for some of the bitterness. In the future I will just pre bag my own good loose leaf tea and skip the “convienience” factor.

I bought a sampler of Revolution Tea at World Market. This bagged tea is pleasant but not exactly something I’d go out of my way to purchase. I taste tropical fruits but it doesn’t seem to give me a single obvious note. I managed to get two steepings out of my bag.

This is quite delightful! It’s good on its own or as part of an iced tea pitcher. It has a very fresh flavor.

Fruity, but the green base is better. I coldbrewed for ~1 hour in 700 mL and would have preferred a higher quality green. The fruity notes aren’t distinct (passion fruit, guava, maybe mango?). I’m still not sure what the revolution was when they made this tea.

Even though the tea smells good, I got no hints of tropical, mint, or much of anything other than the flavor of the green tea when brewed.

While it wasn’t terrible, it was so plain and uninspiring that I look forward to finishing the box and never buying it again.

I may try the suggestion to make it a cold tea and see if I get any better results. I steeped it at a variety of temperatures (175, 180, 185, 190) and found the lower temperature brought out the best results which isn’t saying much.

EDIT TO ADD: I finally got around to cold brewing this tea and still remain largely unimpressed by the tea. I did, however, find the cold brew slightly more palatable with some sweetener and will be how I finish this box off.

Again, on discount, a really awesome consort of flavors, and then all of them overpower each other. I wanted to taste more jasmine with the pineapple, but the mint and lemon blockaded the delicate flower. I definitely taste the tropical and I thoroughly enjoyed the tea in the first few seconds, but then I was so severely disappointed by a pineapple lemony green tea blur. Looks like this is a bag better Gong fu’d, and a partial waste of five dollars. I do like this tea. It just falls short of its potential.

With the addition of tropical fruits like pineapple and orange, this tea tastes… eek. I don’t think I can bring myself to drink another cup… but the tea bag looks so cool! it’s see through and triangular so who knows.

In spite of the fact that I have way too much tea, I do tend to be very frugal and try to use what I have or give it away, not just toss a bad one. This one was a little bitter and sour to me hot. I honestly didn’t know anyone who would just love to get their hands on this, so I decided to try it iced. If I make a few big pitchers of it, it will all be used up and I will have saved some of my favorites for more special occasions.

My youngest daughter and I tried it today and it was good. I don’t mind drinking this at all now that it is cold. I used four tea bags for my Bodum iced tea pitcher. I poured a liter of 174F water in and steeped for three minutes, removed the bags, and added water to the top of the pitcher. Then I chilled it in the refrigerator.

The tea is now smoother and I do taste the green. The pineapple is okay but when hot it has the bitter pineapple taste and I wanted a sweeter, more candy like one. With the tea cold, the mint is more refreshing and I am enjoying it more, especially with our 105F heat index. That’s around 40C for you metric system folks. My daughter was just sure I had sweetened it and was surprised when I told her it was absolutely plain.

I have a feeling we will be done with this whole box of tea really soon.