Pumpkin Spice Chai Tea Latte Mix

Last night I was in Trader Joe’s surveying their newest pumpkin paraphenelia when I noticed a cannister of this on their “New Products” endcap. Even a few months ago I wouldn’t have given this a second glance, but my love of all things pumpkin, a recent unexplained craving for spiced teas, and my recent appreciation for other forms of powdered tea made me pick it up and put it in my basket.

The first two things on the ingredients list are sugar and non-fat milk, so that should give you a sense of what we’re dealing with. Tea ingredients are listed as Black tea and Darjeeling tea. It also includes powdered pumpkin. The powder smells intensely pumpkin-spicey, like raw pumpkin pie mix. I prepared it as instructed and it yielded a intense brown color that seems dark for a latte mix. The flavor is very sweet, and quite tasty. It got a little two sweet for me at one point, but the addition of a little more water evened things out, and I will probably make my next cup with 8oz instead of 6oz of water. It’s not super tea-ish, but honestly when I drink chai I’m not super concerned about that. It is quite like drinking liquid pumpkin pie, and a good easy mix when I don’t have the energy to deal with other chais or matcha.

I had a can of the TJ’s chai mix in the past and remembered liking it well enough, so when I saw that they had a pumpkin version (and I’m a sucker for trying anything pumpkin flavored) I had to nab it. The check out gal commented on how good it was while I was purchasing it, so I was even more hyped up to try it. The first whiff I took smelled a little soapy with pumpkin. When I tasted it, I found the same. It was sweet with a muddling of spices, some pumpkin flavor and that overwhelming soapy taste on the sides of my tongue. That was about all I got out of it for the whole cup. Not as good as their plain chai and not worth using up my self imposed one caffeinated cup a day ration. I can tell this one is going to sit in my cupboard for a while taking up precious real estate for other teas. Bummer.

Like other reviewers said… the TJ Chai Tea Latte mix is good. I’m also a sukher for ‘pumpkin spice’ and grabbed this one, it is not so good. In fact kind of terrible. Not too sure when awry here?

Backlog:

So, when I went to Trader Joe’s before Thanksgiving, I grabbed a can of this. I also grabbed some of the pumpkin butter as well as the pumpkin ravioli that they had because back in the samples area, they were sampling the pumpkin ravioli with a sauce made with the pumpkin butter and browned butter and it was so good. That pumpkin butter has become a favorite ‘syrup’ for me, I mix it with equal parts half & half and it’s delightful on pancakes and waffles.

Anyway, this is pretty tasty. Sweet, yes. I wish it wasn’t so sweet, BUT I do like that I tasted pumpkin and I tasted the black tea and the spice. It wasn’t an overly spicy chai, but it was pleasantly, warmly spiced. I finished off the can in record time, so I guess I either enjoyed the convenience of the powdered chai latte mix or I enjoyed what I was drinking enough to polish off the can so quickly.

So, it’s good. I don’t know if I’ll be buying more when pumpkin harvest happens again at Trader Joe’s. I’ll definitely be buying more pumpkin butter though.

Really sweet and very much a tea latte. It smells REALLY strongly of pumpkin, so I was afraid that the flavor would be an artificial pumpkin taste. But I was wrong, the pumpkin is pretty balanced. Overall, very tasty.

Really good chai latte! The pumpkin tastes real and the mix has a good thickness.