Blueberry Kona Pop Tea Blend

I’ve tried this iced in store a few times over the summer, mostly because my kids are crazy about it.

In store it is WAY too freakin sweet, belch. It does have a nice blueberry-ey flavour, if you can get past the sweetness. So on my most recent trip into Teavana I bought the exotic iced tea set, mostly for my kids, but there are some flavours in it that I wanted to try.

The dry.notes of the blueberry alone are so delicious, so much blueberry goodness. I live in Northern Ontario where THE best wild blueberries come from, so I know blueberry. The pineapple on its own smells gross. But I mixed em up anyways (this was my first go at blending teas together). I added 4 perfect teaspoons of each flavour to my steeping basket, plopped it into my pitcher added about 1.5 perfect tea spoons of rock sugar (had I been making this for myself i wouldn’t have added the sugar, but it was for my girls.), then I poured the boiling water over it. i allowed it to steep for about 15 mins as per the guy at teavana.

This is nicely blueberry-ey, it probably could have been sweeter for the kids liking, and could have been more blueberry flavoured for my liking. I’m not even sure that I get any flavour from the pineapple. What I definitely don’t get is a Rooibos taste, thank goodness!

I’m stupidly obsessed with this blend right now.

I’m not actually sure just how that happened. I was walking around the store sometime a few weeks ago adjusting things and I felt a bit thirsty for something cold so I snagged a sample cup to sip. I’ve had it many times before, of course, but that time something happened and now I’m seriously addicted to it. I fill my Timolino with it every night before I go home, and make it in the mornings before I go to work.

And it’s AT work. I’ve lost my MIND.

Also, I’m THIS many. holds up four fingers Everyone else in the store likes the chai/chai blend best or something, but me, no, give me the one that tastes like JOOS.

I had a mom in with her son in one of those packs on her back buying a pound. She admitted to also being obsessed with this blend, and says that her son loves it as well and that they go through big pitchers of it. He was SO cute – just old enough to be speaking a bit and he kept anxiously squawking, “Where my TEA? Where my tea?!” Not old enough to be patient through a five-minute steep, see…

Sorry that I’m not around, guys. One of our core staff developed some sort of family problems, and all his eight-hour shifts got cut, so we’re all pulling overtime right now to cover him.

Only two days left until I can officially review the new ones!

1.5 tablespoons for 375 ml

Extremely unpleasant aftertaste which I think is from the added sugar in the pineapple pieces. Tartness from the hibiscus is very apparent. The hibiscus does not seem to be well-blended. I can detect a little bit of the punchy-ness from the rooibos but the flavour profile is very much taken over by the pineapple and hibiscus flavour.

Got this as a sample from an online order I placed this summer.
I am slowly trying to use up all of my fruity/iced teas that I have left from the summer. I also have pledged NOT to buy anymore tea until I have used up all of the ones I have. So, this tea is really nice.

Dry leaf nose: Pineapple, blueberry, rooibos.

Taste: Mostly blueberry, a little bit of pineapple.

I really do like the taste of this tea (iced). I haven’t tried it hot yet, and since my sample is gone I probably wont.

I may pick up a bit of this one when the TEAVANA store opens near me this fall. But, I am more excited to try their new GLOBAL TREASURES COLLECTION first. Maybe I will wait until next summer to pick it up.

But, nonetheless, this is still a great tea and I really enjoyed it. Have a great day ;)
EDIT- added a rating

A nice tea to enjoy on a hot summer day, but much too sweet when used as a hot tea

Always one of my favorites to drink although I did notice yesterday, using my Breville One Touch Teamaker for the first time, it wasn’t as strong as I liked even though I used the strong function. I might have to set it to custom so I can have it steep for longer. Still a great cup of tea though.

I may have gone a little crazy at Teavana yesterday and bought about $50.00 worth of tea. Some of which was 75% off so I really went for it. I’m looking forward to trying the others that’s for sure.

This blend was a sample that came with a recent order I had made.

Not a lot of rooibos teas catch onto my radar, much less rooibos blends, but it is summer and this is one of the teas that Teavana is heavily promoting, one must give it a try.

The leaves, both dry and steeping, give off a faint fruity aroma. I can tell this is a very sweet tea, and I believe the scent is quite dark. It isn’t a familiar sweet scent, rather interesting and made me all the more curious.

The first initial sips give a very fruity rooibos flavor, the blueberry very dominant. I like that there wasn’t much rock sugar in this sample, as complaints of it being too sweet had me a bit worried, but I can see how more rock sugar can make this blend sickeningly sweet.

This could probably use less rooibos and rose, and more pineapple, as it is too dark. It also might be that this blend probably shouldn’t be consumed hot, but rather iced, which I could see making this more enjoyable.

Despite, through the rooibos and rose, there are nice fruitful flavors that I do enjoy, and it seems there are more details that I might catch with second or third brewings.

A rather middling blend, but I’d reserve a final decision after trying this iced.

I cold brewed some of this to drink iced and it is good! Does it taste a bit like juice? Yes! A more complexly flavored lighter juice tea that has many fewer calories than real juice. I like it because of that. I like how the blueberry and pineapple flavors complement each other to make a new fruity flavor unique to this tea. The slight taste of the rooibos holds it all together nicely.

I got this as a sample with my Teavana order. It’s ok, but it’s way too sweet for my tastes.(I usually NEVER use sugars..) I can see why they recommended trying this iced. I think I’d really enjoy this tea if there weren’t as much rock sugar in it. Very fruity and you can definitely taste the blueberry.

This tea is very good. My daughter loves this one too! I replaced her fruit juice with this cold tea to decrease on her sugar intake.
I like drinking it hot as well. It’s caffeine free, so I can drink it at night.
I need to purchase more because it was all gone now. I bought just 200 grams to try and it only lasted 3 days. Btw, brewing this tea will make your house smell so good. I really love the smell. :)

YUMMMM.. hot, cold, sugar, no sugar, too much sugar… I love this tea either way.

it is good, very sweet.

Teavana teas themselves are unsweetened, so the rock sugar is touted as the solution to customers who can’t quite recreate the flavor of this sample at home. However, the official Teavana recipe for Blueberry Kona Pop is as follows (for a 32 oz teamaker):

1/2 cup Blueberry Bliss
1/2 cup Pineapple Kona Pop
1/2 cup German Rock Sugar

brewed for 15 minutes and poured over ice, as per doubling-the-tea-strength-to-avoid-dilution guidelines. It’s a TON of sugar. It’s almost viscous when drained and poured. And it’s delicious.

There’s almost no flavor of tea- though it’s an herbal blended with a rooibos, so perhaps that’s to be expected- and with the heap of sugar added, it tastes far more like juice than tea of any sort. If you catch it later in the sample’s life (or if employees haven’t added enough ice), it does tend to get somewhat watered down, but when it’s done right, it’s sweet and tropical without being overwhelmingly so; the blueberry is definitely the predominant flavor, with the pineapple as more of an overtone and aftertaste.

(As a side note, the rest of the sweetened samples really do contain only about a teaspoon of sugar per cup, at least as of this writing. I promise.)

Tastes good with german rock sugar!

Another infamous Teavana tea that’s better iced than hot. I enjoyed it as a fan of the flavor profile of blueberries and pineapple. I take my teas sweet, and, like other reviewers have mentioned, it’s pretty sweet. However, I take it iced with a teaspoon of sugar, and overall, it’s a pretty delightful summertime beverage.

I want to like this tea. I really, really do. I got a sample of it with a recent order with teavana and didn’t really stop to check the ingredients. The first cup of it I made was absolutely revolting. It was FAR too sweet for my tastes. I figured it must be the candied pineapple and I’d pick it out before making my next cup. I poured one ‘perfect teaspoon’ of tea into a tiny bowl (it’s a teaspoon I purchased from my local DavidsTea) and was really unimpressed with the amount of added sugar I found. About half of what I scooped out was sugar!
Now this probably works just fine for someone who enjoys sweetened teas (i.e. my boyfriend) but I rarely add sweetener to my teas, and almost never to fruity blends. When I do, it’s often agave or honey, never sugar. I found it just a bit too weak but this is probably because after I picked out all the sugar I didn’t have enough for an actual serving.
I would really like to try this tea again and was seriously contemplating purchasing a blend but I’m wondering if it comes with sugar already added? Can anyone help me out?

Hello?! Any rooibos out there? If there is any, I certainly don’t taste it. The taste and smell overwhelmingly sweet/fruity – more blueberry than anything else in there. The color is pretty bright red. I don’t hate it. It’s certainly not my favorite. I think that I would enjoy this tea more if it was served cold.

I have brewed this hot several times, but wanted to try it iced to enjoy this afternoon. I used six tsp of the blend plus 1 very heaping tsp of German rock sugar and brewed for twelve minutes, then strained the blend over ice in a 24 oz tumbler. The hot version is pretty delicious, but the iced version is flat-out fantastic… rather like fruit punch, but more interesting. I even managed to get a second steep out of this (212 degrees for 20+ minutes) which was a pleasant surprise.

LOOOOOVE this blend as an iced tea (even in the winter)! I’ve been dragging my husband with me whenever I went into Teavana and noticed he kept beelining for the sample. He likes his coffee/tea a lot sweeter than I do, so I brew this with a little bit of rock sugar, then add more sugar to his afterwards (and yes, he freely admits that he likes this because it tastes more like juice than tea, haha).

For about 28-30 oz of water, I’ll use 6 heaping teaspoons Pineapple Kona Pop, 6 teaspoons Blueberry Bliss, and 3 teaspoons rock sugar. Steep for 10 minutes with boiling water. Brew over ice, add sugar to his, and we each have iced tea with our preferred sweetness level.

One thing I’ve noticed with this is that the pineapple flavor doesn’t really shine through. I love pineapple but am reluctant to try Kona Pop on its own because of the bad reviews. Bummer.

I love this tea…I like the boldness of the fruit, and the sweetness (I add stevia to all my tea). It does taste more like juice, but I dont’ tend to like straight-up juice, and I do like this. This time, I had it hot (which I like), but I agree with posters that it is better cold.