Coconut Chai

I am feeling indulgent tonight, so I had a big mug of this while eating cherry cheesecake bread pudding. Take that, heat wave! This is from my swap with Will Work For Tea and the reason we swapped in the first place: she had a bunch to unload, and I love peppery chais so it was a match made in heaven!

I’ve had a few coconut chais before, but this one is quite different. First off, it doesn’t have any other “Asian” flavor components (lemongrass, galangal, etc) but a more classic Indian spice base. The spices are strong, as you can tell just by looking at the tea: whole cloves, big chunks of pepper and other spices. Yum! It brews up quite bold and peppery, with lots of different spice “layers.” There’s warmth from the cinnamon and ginger, heat from the pepper, a spicy quality from the nutmeg, and that distinctive tongue-tingling flavor that comes from cloves and cardamom. The coconut here is mostly flavoring (no actual coconut pieces) and it’s an odd result: it kind of tastes like it was steeped in coconut water! It’s not overpoweringly coconutty or tropical, more homey and comforting like coconut cream pie. A nice departure from my usual chais, but bold enough that this could be a regular in my cupboard!

So without thinking, I dropped 2 sachets into a pot of milk and water and let it simmer away for a few minutes.

I take a sip. SPICY. My initial reaction was just “ooh gurl no” until I realized this stuff must be potent enough not to need to be doubled for this preparation. Although I think maybe I’d use 2 for 12 oz of liquid. So I filled my mug with more milk and microwaved it for 20 seconds to get it warm again.

I’m kind of disappointed this doesn’t actually contain any coconut. So it doesn’t really taste like coconut…it doesn’t even smell like coconut.

However I can drink this chai! It has more of a well rounded group of spices compared to the only other chai I have right now…the very clove-y one. But this one is peppery too, and I can taste cardamom and cinnamon and nutmeg and everything. Just…no coconut.

I’m even using coconut milk in here but it’s one that never really imparts a flavor, so there’s no use relying on it. Booooo. I’ll definitely be on the lookout now for a coconut chai that contains some legitimate coconut flakes.

Sample courtesy of Indigobloom! Brewed this one up last night, forgot about it, drank it today, thought it was a pretty tasty chai, and not one requiring additions, as I find many do! Glad I have a bunch of this as I will thoroughly enjoy it! Full review next time, when I’m not 47 mins past my new bedtime, and when I’m actually drinking it fresh!

ETA: Second infusion remains quite potent. Yum.

Full review – tomorrow – April 1st on http://sororiteasisters.com/ but here are snippits:

A big THANK YOU to Marcel Duchamp for this sample!

I really have to be in the mood for a chai. Coconut Chai Tea from Zhena’s Gypsy Tea was really calling to me today. Sent to me from a Steepster.com friend, and I am happy for it, I am sipping a yummy chai with a nice hint at coconut, and a slight taste of vanilla. No vanilla is listed in the ingredients but I taste it nonetheless. Must be how the coconut gives the tea a light milky and nutty flavor combined with the typical spices in chai. Regardless, I am really enjoying this chai from Zhena’s.

I will say if you are expecting a really coconutty tea, this isn’t it. Honestly I would not mind a bit more coconut flavor myself, but I am satisfied with it being lightly flavored.

I believe it was you, Ashmanra who sent me this beaute! thank you for the generous sample!!
Just a quick note today. I am so sleepy…
This one is strong boy! whew. Not for the faint of heart. but it is good. Heavy on the coconut, and spices… it has tons of flavour. and caffeine to.
However… Because of the in-yo-face factor, I think I really need to be in the mood, which I was when I had my cuppas :)
Also, it’s very sweet on it’s own. No sugar added! I guess that is the coconut’s fault huh!
Thanks again Ashmanra
Rating: 83

I finally gave in and picked this up a few days ago because it was on sale at Kroger. (This had been on my Shopping List for at least 2 years.) I also want to note that my tin is black, unlike the one in the picture here.

By now I’ve had it both hot and iced, which is what I’m sipping on now. As far as chais go from my experience, this is a sort of mild one. The spices aren’t particularly strong, but that’s not to say it isn’t flavorful. It is, it just doesn’t burn my mouth like the chai at Java Monkey here in Decatur. (I love the burn…) Since the spices are so mild, I tend to drink this one without milk. When I brewed it for the first time, I put a few teaspoon’s worth in, which was also nice, but I was looking for a bolder experience.

The nutmeg and cinnamon are what I taste first, followed by delicious ginger and cardamom. I can’t say the coconut stands out very much, but it’s there. It adds a sweet sort of vanilla-like note, which I am loving right now. Sadly, though, this tea makes me miss Adagio’s Thai Chai. While I’ll be happy to finish this tin, I think I’m going to keep searching for my perfect chai…

Sandy and I bought a few new teas in Southern Season yesterday, so we are sitting down for a marathon tea tasting day. (Which reminds me, congratulations to Sandy on your first half marathon. You can add that to your Century Rides!).

I was staring at the walls of teas with my eyes glazing over at how many there were when I caught sight of this and a little neuron fired in my brain. I practically screamed, “That’s the tea that JacquelineM likes!”. Naturally we had to buy it and try it, and also thanks to JacquelineM I am having mine with an everything bagel. Until JacquelineM, I was a bagel atheist, but it turns out I was a bagel agnostic and Jacquelime showed me the way.

I could smell and taste the ginger and clove but I wasn’t getting much coconut, mostly just a creaminess.

We decided to take Mike Harney’s advice and slurp slurp slurp. That really amplified the clove and took it over the top but I didn’t pick up more coconut. I am drinking it plain. Perhaps the onion of my everything bagel is interfering with the coconut, or maybe it is just a hint and that is why I am getting creaminess instead of coconut. Either way, this is very good. It reminds me a bit of Stash Tea Holiday Chai. And I do believe we have just finished the whole pot!

Thank you Meghann M – I LOVE it!!!!!

Even though this is a chai, I did not make it stovetop. I took two bags and steeped them in my giant 16 oz mug with boiling water for 4 minutes. Some sugar crystals and milk and WOW. First you taste a delicious moderate spice, then there is a hint of sweet toasted coconut. I am REALLY impressed with this chai! It does spicy/sweet soooooo well.

So far I have loved both Zhena’s teas I have tried! I have a feeling that I am going to go to either Wegman’s or Whole Foods very soon so that I can sample more of her wares!!! :)

After reading Meghann M’s and JacquelineM’s reviews of this, I decided I had to try it. I made a semi-unexpected trip to Louisville yesterday, and stopped in World Market whilst there (really, I couldn’t not stop, could I?). I picked up a tin of this and some other teas.

It’s not nearly as spicy as I was expecting/fearing (I do that with all chais, yes, I need to stop). The coconut flavor isn’t overwhelming, but is definitely there and blends well with the spices. I think I might like Adagio’s Thai Chai a bit better, but I really like that this is in bags. It’s destined to become my work-chai because of that.

I think I’ll try it at 5 minutes next time…let’s see how strong the spice can get.

Apparently I’m on a coconut kick today.

I picked this one up because I had seen Kittenna rave about it, and it was on sale. Woo!

It’s really nice. I’m not tasting much coconut, but I did a 3 minute steep to stay on the safe side. I think that 4 or 5 minutes would be fine with this tea. The spice flavours are so nicely balanced, I’m really enjoying it. Definitely a good bagged chai to drag around with me in my purse. :)

I am really liking this. The coconut flavor is stronger than I expected it to be, and it is sweet and oh-so-yummy! The chai flavors are not as robust here as I usually like for my chai teas, but, the level of spice works really well with the coconut. I like how the sweetness of the coconut brings out some of the spices.

Really nice. I think this would also be very good iced.

Got this in a little Zhena’s sampler. A friend of mine RAVES about this tea, and I didn’t feel like fussing with loose again today, so I grabbed a sachet of this.

It really does smell delicious! The typical chai spices with a hint of toasted coconut come across. As for the taste? I think I may have made it too weak. It does have a nice flavor (the spices and coconut balancing out nicely), but it tastes a little watered down, so I may do a longer steep next time!

Thank you Will Work For Tea for sending a ton of this! I sipped some of this last night. I love the unsteeped scent of this! Very spicy! The steeped scent is less appealing… not sure why. A chai hardly ever disappoints me. This one didn’t. However, the coconut there was non-existant. I don’t mind, as sometimes coconut in tea is a bit gross to me. This works as a regular chai for me, anyway. I can never have enough of those!

I received this in a swap from will work for tea
I love the look of the tea, you can see all the spices in it and the coconut too. What i dont like is the smell, its very off putting, I can’t quite place what it smells like.
Once steeping the.spices start to come out, it smells very.nicely spiced and no one spice over powers the other.
On first sip you get all the spices blending perfectly just as in the smell, however I am not tasting any coconut whatsoever. The full spice flavour continues throughout the cup and if I try really hard i get a hint of coconut after the sip where it lingers on your tongue.
Over all a good spiced tea, but not a coconut one. I have yet to find a hot tea where the coconut really comes out at the front. I am glad to have this one though.

This is a very unique chai! Picked it up at my new, local Wegmans in Frederick, MD. For a bagged chai, this is quite tasty! I haven’t had hot tea in days. This was my inaugural tea for July and I’m glad I tried it out. I taste plenty of cinnamon and ginger, a little bit of cardamom and a lot of coconut flavor! (For those of you allergic to coconut, I checked the label – there is only coconut flavoring, not actual pieces.)
Wonder how this would taste iced? I got stuck in a meeting so the tea has cooled off considerably and it’s still tasty…

Tea #2 from the ’Here’s Hoping’ teabox.

Wow! This is spicy. Just as the spice hits the back of the throat there is a wonderful sweetness from the coconut on the tongue. I really, really like this. I added some sugar and milk to my cup. The milk smooths the spice just a bit, and the sugar highlights the coconut so that the toasted flavor comes out more.

Yum!

My professor had a Christmas party in class today and ordered cupcakes, coffee, and tea, and one of the teas in the box was this one. Sounded great! Smelled kind of charred, somehow, but not in a bad way. Probably just the spices. The tea base seemed pretty decent, and I really liked the coconut. This would have been better with some soymilk, but since none was available, I drank it plain. The pepper notes stuck out kind of jarringly, but overall it was decent. The pepper would’ve been calmed with some soymilk, so I’ll try it chai-style next time and it’ll probably be lots better.

Let’s cut to the chase. This is the best home-prepared chai I have tasted thus far. There’s a nice balance of spice here. Not too gingery. Not too cardamomy, etc. And the coconut adds a pleasant natural sweetness to this. Coconut and spice always seem to play together nicely.

I steeped it for four minutes to start off, and there is no bitterness at all. I’m sure I can give it another minute next time and it’ll be even better. I added some milk and now this smells like a spiced coconut cookie.

After downing that first cup relatively quickly, I’m now trying my second cup without milk, and it’s really good too. The coconut doesn’t quite pop, but it’s still there.

This reminds me of DT Coco Chai Rooibos, except without the peppercorns, and of course, a different tea base.

Thumbs up, Zhena’s Gypsy Tea.

Steep Information:
Amount: 1 teabag
Additives: none
Water: ? hot spigot (1 flavia cup full)
Steep Time: a little over 4 minutes
Served: Hot

Tasting Notes:
Dry Tea Smell: spice with a hint of coconut
Smell: cinnamon, clove, spicy warm and comforting, maybe a faint hint of the coconut shell
Flavor: cinnamon, clove, black tea very well rounded and smooth
Body: Medium
Aftertaste: clove, ginger
Liquor: dark brown

This is a tea swap thanks to the lovely Jillian on Steepster. I think if I had more time a little honey or sweetener might enhance this tea, maybe creme? Sad the coconut isn’t a stronger flavor. This however is a wonderfully smooth and spicy chai.

Post-Steep Additives: none

I went shopping in Chapel Hill with Ashmanra and we got several new teas. This morning we are trying some of them. The first was this tea with a cherry vanilla bagel from Panera. The can of tea smells like cinnamon, ginger and coconut to me. It is a bagged tea. The brewed tea smells the same to me though not as intense. I drank the first cup black and it tasted like most chai — cinnamon, ginger & cardamom with a hint of creaminess that I took to be the coconut. I added milk and sugar in the second cup and while it added to the smoothness it really didn’t change the flavor profile for me. It is a very nice chai.