The can is an appealing avocado and cream color, with a gold and dark brown Monster claw "M". It looks to be in an art deco style (what do I know, I dropped out of art school, and wasn't exactly "there" when I was there). The can states "Tea + Energy" at the bottom of the can. On the back, Monster rambles on in an attempt to make themselves more trendy, "HECK (expletive removed) YES! Monster can do tea. Not that powdered junk or the latest New Age cure-all. Not the tea the Queen has with her crumpets or the tea little girls have with make believe friends. Chai Hai is more like the tea guards drink in Turkish Prison-Tea with sack not bags." (If anyone thinks that's amusing, you should stop sniffing glue). "Imported tea, cream, Monster's spice and energy blend...Guaranteed to stoke the fires within." Then they printed their dumb website url on the can, like anyone drinking Chai Hai has the internet.
Finally another tea product, our only other tea product review to-date was Inko's White Tea Energy (which was awesome, and after a year-and-a-half, I've never seen it on the shelves of any store in my area). I love Chai tea, and I love this drink. I'm pleased that the whole can has less than 200 calories, and only 1.5g of fat (1g saturated, 0 trans. fat, 10mg of cholesterol). For those of us trying to impress others with our healthy diets, I'd like to see a green tea energy that doesn't have the milk and about half the sugar. They could probably get a respectable tasting beverage down to about 35 calories per serving. Before I get too off topic, let's get back to the awesomeness of the product at hand. It's a perfect combination of spices and creaminess. It's not overtly thick, so it remains refreshing. It may thicken up as it gets warm, but I'm like the owl on the Tootsie Roll Pop commercial, and I'll never know for sure.
Plenty of energy, like most Monster Energy products. I think this is now my favorite Monster product, with the Original Monster coming in as a close second. I rated Lo-Ball higher than original Monster, but the other Java Monster drinks are "sipping" drinks for me. Chai Hai, like the original Monster, goes down fast and furiously (no Paul Walker/Vin Diesel reference intended).
Respectable price, and I think this is a great day of redemption for Monster after the Mixxd debacle, which was our last review of one of their products, and without question the worst product they've produced thus far. Chai Hai has some of the same ridiculous marketing jargon on the can, which makes me want to not buy Inko's White Tea even more, but, unlike Mixxd, at least the product within the absurdly-verbiaged can is awesome. At the end of the day, I don't need a paragraph to tell me that Chai Hai is Spiced Chai Tea with Monster's energy blend, and I certainly don't need that paragraph to read like a made-for-tv porno.
Look out for the pilgrims and mistletoe! Java Monster is like Thanksgiving and Christmas rolled up into one big tasty holiday. Chai Hai tastes like you squished a pumpkin pie into a honkin' glass of egg nog, added some caffeine, and magically dropped the calories to 90 per serving. This could only be more festive for me if it had Hustlin' Tom Turkey and The Robot Ghost of Christmas Past from the Future on the can.
The taste was amazing. I usually take a while to drink 15 fl.oz., but this went down so smoothly, it was gone in about 15 minutes. I couldn't put the can down, as soon as I'd processed one "swig" (larger than a sip, smaller than a gulp), I had to come right back to the mouth with the can. This beverage didn't see much idle time. It really is really does taste a great deal like holiday foods, but so does Chai Tea normally, IMHO.
I felt great, and the speed with which I laid waste to the whole can probably increased the effectiveness dramatically. I felt so energized, I'm pretty sure I could have killed you. I don't know, I didn't try, but you better watch your back next time I annihilate a Chai Hai.
I'd like to see this drink available for $2, but my Chai Hai purchasing experience puts the price range around $2.29-$2.49. Once you find them at $2.29, I'd call that a reasonable value. I've found the Java Monster product prices have been all over the board since their introduction. We bought the Mean Bean for $2.79, and then as prices flailed wildly, we bought Lo Ball for $1.99. It appears the prices have risen again, and appear they may be settling in the $2.50 range. At $2, this drink gets a 10 on value, at $2.29, it's more like an 8.