Hawaiian Islands Tea Company

Morning brew, hot and plain. No coconut, creamy (macadamia?), rum/alcohol, sweet rooibos, milk, brown sugar. It is a fantastic and unique herbal blend, but it doesn’t resemble its name.

No ingredients listed anywhere on the package? Idk what is even in this. What I do know is that the herbal/rooibos base is very sweet and the flavouring is quite strong.

The rooibos base is rooibosy (brown sugar, molasses, hay, minerals), sweet, flavourful. There is a bit of creamy and nutty flavour, but mostly it tastes very strongly of alcohol, vanilla, white rum, and molasses. No coconut that I can taste.

Like Maui Mango….makes fabulous unsweetened iced tea! It is also really good hot, but it reminds me of the excellent iced tea I had in Hawaii recently, with its fruity notes.

Makes the most fabulous unsweetened iced tea! I brought back a couple of boxes from Hawaii recently. Need to get more!

I’m not a fan of bagged green teas, but I enjoy this tea. It has just the right touch of sweetness.

It’s bland. Pineapple … not really. It’s not even listed in the ingredients so I’m not quite sure of why are tasting pineapple but I don’t.

i actually had this ones last night… this one was sort of sweet and coconut ish sorta… but other than that fell short. Too bad since macademia flavour was interesting to me. not a bad cup..just nothing special

smells like strawberry…. tastes, largely just like strawberry. There’s no trace of the lychee flavouring in this cup. the flavouring is really light though…and disappears some times throughout the sip. not great… not terrible in the drinking sense, just lacking.

smells like…. something familiar..not quite pineapple but sort of if you really think hard about it.

tastes like… burnt fake pineapple. if that makes sense. there’s another flavour here i can’t place that is fruity…somewhere in between pineapple and peach…but there’s a burnt taste here. Funnily enough, i don’t hate this nearly as much as others have… it’s in pineapple/ not really..but it’s not bad haha

Tried this tea today and I must say that I love the exotic flavor to this black tea!

this was a tasty treat today – a deliciously guava like tea with ginseng. I think in the grand scheme of things, i could have done without the ginseng but the guava flavouring was spot on. really interesting tea to try!

Pass the Stash TTB #1

First tea from the Pass the Stash TTB. It’s kind of meh for me. I’ve definitely had worse rooibos teas, but this isn’t really anything special to write home about. I don’t get much coconut, and just a very faint hint of macadamia. It’s drinkable, but that’s pretty much it.

1 tea bag used
Malty. Note of beer. Mango flavour is subtle. Black tea is slightly brisk.

Meh bordering on blech.
It’s flat, it’s boring, it’s only a little bit coconuty.

I was in Hawaii and spotted this box at a market. It is a rooibos, but I’m not really tasting the rooibos which is fine by me. I added a little sugar. I get a very distinct macadamia nut flavor and a creaminess like young coconut. The two flavors pair well into an almost chocolate like flavor, but it isn’t a very exciting decaf option… at least at the moment. As the cup cools I get a bit of the rooibos dry mouth feeling. I wonder if my opinion will change if I drink this when I’m in a better mood.

11/28
This was the other bagged tea i grabbed to make my life easier while i finished up testing. this is pretty tasty for a bagged tea, but i have to say – annoying that i had to cut the bag open to get at the tea bag lol no easy rip line or anything.. so i was worried i’d cut the tea bag. this one’s pretty mango-y and not at all bitter. thanks for this one omgsrsly

FInal, Final Count: 158 lol

Sipdown! (25 | 346)

This one is also on a black base, so it has the same very earthy and mineral taste.

The mango is a bit creamy and slightly generically tropical. So it reminds me more of a mango or tropical candy, or maybe one of those Lupicia Hawaiian exclusive teas, like Hua Ki.

It’s fine, but not really mango to me.

https://www.instagram.com/p/CP_3u8lBIy2/

Shadowfall sent me a bag of this as a free sample with my purchases from her stash sale. I don’t drink many bagged teas, but the convenience is a welcome change. :P When I opened the packet, I was immediately hit by a lovely juicy scent. It’s definitely a combination of mango and peach, maybe with some tart apricot in there. Smells amazing! I steeped for 3 minutes, which was the maximum recommended by the package.

I’m actually finding this quite enjoyable. The flavor is certainly not true-to-life or anything, but it’s pleasant enough and the level of flavor is good. The base tea is fairly strong, and it’s a bit woody and malty. I did add some sugar to mine, so I can’t really comment on bitterness, but mine certainly doesn’t have any. A tad bit drying, but nothing terrible. Overall, I like this a lot given the convenience!

From Another TTB Round 2

The box arrived! EEEiiii! This is my first TTB so I’m excited. The box actually isn’t as overwhelming as I though it would be so YAY!

I grabbed this one first out of the box because I’ve been wanting to try some Hawaiian teas but hadn’t the chance yet. Plus it’s one of the few tea bags in here and I wanted something easy.

They aren’t kidding when they say Pineapple! Even dry the tea bag was delightfully pineapple-y. I love pineapple, I could eat it all day if only my tongue didn’t go numb.

The black tea base is OK, it’s not overwhelming, but I wouldn’t call it amazing either. Overall it’s not offensive, but I think I would have found a green tea base more interesting. The smell of the brewed liquor is not as sweet of a pineapple as when it’s dry. The dry smell was more like crytallized pineapple versus the brewed smell which is more like pineapple juice. Mostly this tea is awesome because of the smell, but that is pretty fleeting as the tea cools.

Surprisingly enough I’m getting that ‘back of the tongue, numb feeling’ I get from eating fresh pineapple. Haha, talk about getting the entire experience!
Would I buy? Maybe. I’m sad that this is the only teabag of this tea in the box, so those behind me won’t get to try it, but I might have taken it all for myself anyway, so there’s that.

This came my way via the last traveling teabox I believe. I wasn’t expecting too much given that it was just a regular teabag filled with what looked like tea dust, but honestly it’s not bad. Luckily I paid attention to the directions on the packet and only steeped it for 2 minutes as the results were surprisingly flavourful without being astringent. I can really taste the mango too and it actually tastes like the fruit rather than Random Tropical Fruit Flavour™.

My parents got this for me when they went to Hawaii in the fall. I, umm, just started unpacking my Christmas presents and voila! More tea…

This smells soooo good dry. I do find that the mango scent fades a lot once steeped. I’m preferring it with some almond milk, rather than plain. This way, it’s a decent, creamy, fruity black tea. I think it’d make a really good milky iced tea, actually. Maybe I’ll try that.

(2 bags, 16 oz)