Shinobi_cha

I have had this a number of times now, and have been holding off rating it to get as good an idea as possible. Each time, it felt too weak, so last night, I used boiling water for 15 minutes! That did the trick.

First of all, I will say I think it is a delicious tea and very good for a honeybush/rooibos blend (yes, I know it is actually honeybush, but I am putting them in the same overall category because I enjoy both).

However, I don’t know if it was my particular batch, but I didn’t taste the pie aspect of this tea at all. I know that is a lot to hope for, but after hearing so much about 52teas, I really had my hopes up.

I added a little vanilla icrecream to my cup, and it was amazing!! However, it still didn’t taste like “strawberry pie”. The strawberry was very much there, as well as a little sweetness, etc. (even without the icrecream), but not bakey.

Nevertheless, though it didn’t meet my expectations, I still I look forward to trying some of their other blends when cupboard space frees up! Or, if Frank blends something I just can’t resist, which has almost happened, but not quite. . .

I had this again yesterday, and I enjoyed it so much!
I used boiling water to pre-heat the kyusu (but only 150 for 1 min 45 seconds for the brew). Anyway, before I poured the water over the leaves, I smelled them, as they had been sitting in the warm pot for a few moments.

I was knocked back by an aroma as if I walked into a bakery, or just pulled fresh muffins out of the oven! How can a green tea smell bakey? Well it did, and deliciously so.

This is delicious! Got it from a local cafe.
It has a creamy note, in addition to the sweet roasted flavors of a normal houjicha.
I would put it at just slightly better than Den’s regular “Houjicha Gold” , however, since I got this from a cafe, I don’t get to try multiple infusions or smell the loose leaf and get a real feeling for the tea, so I’m going to rate it the same.

oOTeaOo sent me a teabag version of this same stuff, and that, too was excellent.

Yesterday, I had a pot of this, and I think I figured out the ideal steeping parameters (for me, at least). My thought was, well, with a fukamushi cha, you have to do it short because of how small the pieces of leaves are, so they brew much more quickly. What if I tried this tea like that?

So I did both the temp and time less than what is suggested on the package:
165 or 170 degrees for 45 seconds

All three steepings were creamy, slightly sweet, and slightly vegetal (with slightly progressive weakness, but not a lot). I was quite disappointed I had to quit after that!

This was a good genmaicha with matcha. It has a nice sweet aftertaste that gets more strong on the 2nd steep, and it lingers several seconds which is very nice. (I think the matcha covers this sweet aftertaste in the 1st steeping).
I enjoyed this tea, but it seemed fairly standard to me, nothing exciting, though no real faults either. The leaf itself is very small; it looks like a fukamushi, but I’m not sure.

Thanks to LiberTeas, for sending this surprise sample!!

Thanks to LiberTeas for sending me a sample, especially of a tea she really loves!

I’ve never had guricha (or tamaryokucha) before, so this was a new experience for me and I have been excited to try it. For this first time, I went ahead and followed the exact instructions on Mellow Monk’s website. I hope to experiment a little with the 3g – 5g left or so…

The loose leaf actually gave off an aroma like a freshly plowed garden. Yes, even like soil a little. That didn’t scare me off, because even though that isn’t an aroma that sounds edible, it reminded me of going to a nursery or walking through a garden, and those are good kinds of smells.

As for the tea itself — this is definitely different than regular sencha! There is no hint of that fresh bitterness, or grassy/vegetal flavor. Instead there is a bit of flavorful earthiness, it is definitely fruity, with a mix of mint and pine in the background. Perhaps its more like the smell of pine needles, but very muted, with mint in there somewhere.

I hope to compare it to some other gurichas, too, to see if this is a pretty unique tea, or if it’s typical of guricha. Either way, it’s delicious! There’s a good chance it could go on my shopping list in the future.

Very sweet, with quite a nice roasty aroma. Certainly not a roasty aroma like houjicha, but enough to make it smell deliciously sweet.
The dry leaf gives off more aroma (that I can detect at least) than most teas, and the wet aroma follows suit.
There is a hint of grassy, but for the most part it is sweet.

I have very little experience with kukicha; just this and Rishi’s fukamushi kukicha (which is also a different varietal, gokou). This isn’t as good as Rishi’s but I still like it.
It seems like Den’s tea needs to add another kind of green kukicha, perhaps one from a high quality tea like gyokuro or tencha stems.

Thanks to oOTeaOo for the large sample of this! It’s definitely an enjoyable one.

I’ve had a hard time placing this tea, but after I’ve probably had something like 10 cups (4oz cups), I think I can give my impressions.

I’ve found the first cup to be somewhat creamy, which is really nice. It doesn’t seem bitter, unless you use too hot water or too much leaf. But, it does have a bit of astringency that comes in the 2nd or 3rd steeping.

It feels like an everyday green, but the brewed leaf smells good, again somewhat creamy, and strongly vegetal. As others have said, the taste is semi-sweet grassy. The main downside is that after the 1st steeping, it seems to go flat and lose any depth.

Looking at the loose leaf appearance alone, it seems like it would be a pretty low quality tea. I’m sure from a grocery store it would be. But after seeing the brewed leaves and actually tasting the liquor, it’s surprisingly pretty good. I don’t know if I’d make it a regular for my cupboard, but it would be a good everyday green.

This has been on my ‘to try’ list for a while, and what’s great is the fact that a local cafe carries it! So I can try it without having to get a full 2oz.

My taste buds aren’t working too well, as I have a bit of a cold, but this is awesome.
I think Den’s Tea should not only label their Organic Sencha and Genmaicha as “Organic” but also as a higher quality version of each. I’ve found the Organic Sencha to be excellent; one I could easily drink every day. This Organic Genmaicha is very similar. Yes, it is $3 more or so for 2oz compared to the non-organic version, but I think it would be worth it.

Even though my tastebuds (well I should say, my nose, I can’t smell much of anything) aren’t working properly, the sencha is fruity and delicious. I’ve found that genmaicha, especially with matcha, usually hides the sencha/bancha base, but not this one. It nicely balanced and the best genmaicha (w/ matcha) that I’ve had thus far.

The next time I’m looking for genmaicha, this will be on my shopping list.

A big thank you to Frank you shipped this to me extra fast to make it in time for a Father-Daughter birthday tea party.
I highly recommend 52teas, they have AWESOME customer service.

I was a little afraid of a bubblegum flavored tea, but I figured the little girls would like it.
But it is blended very well; it’s not at all like the bubblegum icecream you might find in 31 flavors or another shop like that. It tastes like the flavor you get from a piece of bubblegum, but the honeybush is still very present and nicely balanced. I personally wouldn’t drink this all the time, but it was perfect for such an occasion. Surprisingly, all the fathers enjoyed it more than expected, too.

Thanks to oOTeaOo for the swap of a pyramid bag of this!

I think this must be the same exact leaf as the loose Organic Sencha. It has that same fruity note that is really good, semi-sweet, and earthy.
Even though I’d buy the loose leaf version simply because it’s more economical (same price, but you get more tea I think), I rate this the same because it is just as good.

I had to try an ice brew method with this one, because I know it is so successful and wanted to give Obubu’s highest quality tea the best shot possible.

I may not have needed to do so, because every steeping was really delicious and overall the tea seemed pretty unique (in a refreshing way!). I’m surprised it is aracha, because it seemed to be only leaf (small whole leaves and broken pieces). There were so many small pieces in the dry leaf, I’m also surprised it wasn’t a chu or fukamushi.

I couldn’t figure out why I liked it, but it didn’t have the typical gyokuro flavors (nor the typical sencha ones)… it wasn’t strongly marine flavored or vegetal, or super sweet or bitter, or fruity, and yet somehow it was full of flavor and gave 5 good infusions.

I’ve finally finished the sampler from Obubu, and overall I wasn’t too impressed, but they do carry a couple that I found to be pretty good – this and Sencha of the Earth I can think of off the top of my head. Those might be good enough to pick up 100g some day. If they sold them in 50g sizes, I would definitely put them on the shopping list, because it would not only be cheaper in that amount, but 100g is just a lot of tea! (I get tired of the same one after a while, so it’s nice to have something different to try, and 2 – 2.5oz seems like the sweet spot for me).

I’m having trouble rating this one because while I enjoyed it, I couldn’t tell the difference between this and any other houjicha… it seemed somewhat bland.
The dry leaf smelled very good and even had a hint of green (not much but the wet leaves looked more amber colored instead of that dark brown, like raw umber). The smell reminded me of Tencha-Kuki-Houjicha by Den’s Tea, which is a lightly roasted tea that I really like.

The flavor, as I said, was fairly unremarkable, at least in my opinion. I was hopeful that I would really like it, because I hoped more of the green characteristics of the tea would come through. Instead, it seems, that neither the green, nor the typical roasted flavors came through. It is solid, but it seemed average.

So far, none of Obubu’s teas have really made me think, ’I’ve got to try that again some day (or rather, order a bag of it at some point)’.
But this one will make me reconsider. Nice to have Steepster, so I can look things up that I enjoyed.

The dry leaf smelled faintly peppery and sweet. The wet leaf in the pot was fantastic — it smelled more strongly of pepper, which quickly dissipated, then gave way to creamy notes and I even smelled what I would describe as plantains.
The tea itself was delicious – it had a light, almost playful sweetness up front, like sweet cream (and yes, the creaminess in the aroma was present in the taste!), then was perhaps fruity, like the smell of apricots.

The 2nd steeping, the wet leaf smelled like pesto — olive oil and basil are probably the best ways I could describe it. The taste had less creaminess to it, but was still sweet and more strongly like apricot again.

I tried an ice steeping as well, and it had more of the traditional balance of slight bitterness, marine, vegetal, and sweet that I’m used to, but it was good as well.

This is quite a unique sencha and I wish Obubu had a better description of it. It sounds somewhat bland or uninteresting from their website, but I still hoped it would stand out (I guess because I’m down to my last samples, and I was hoping this other of their higher quality teas would be really delicious). Well, my hopes weren’t for naught.

The wet leaf smelled incredible — strong notes of chocolate, with cherries and cigar smoke also in the aroma.
The taste, while nicely sweet, lacked depth (for me at least) and didn’t have all the flavors or aromas the wet leaf seemed to promise, so that was a bit disappointing.
I do like it, and it is slightly difference from regular houjicha, so I’d almost be tempted to seek it out. But the sample wasn’t quite convincing enough to put it on a list for when I’m looking to get houjicha.

It’s somewhat impressive that Obubu puts out 4 different kinds of houjicha. I wonder how difficult it is to have consistency of roast — what’s the difference in the roasting process between light, basic, and dark? Seems it could be quite difficult to do it consistently.

While I enjoyed this cup, the wet leaf smelled like pickled peppers. Now, I liked pickled things (be it peppers, kim chee, or cucumber), but that was a strange smell to get from tea.

Stranger still was that this was actually present as a flavor. I did like the tea, but it was strange. I don’t remember what else it tasted like, but I don’t think there was a lot there. I’m rating it this high simply because I enjoyed it, but in terms of good quality bancha, I’m sure there’s better out there.

Also interesting was the fact that this had really long twigs present (1" – 1.5"!) that really looked like twigs from a tree, rather than the very small, reed-like kuki in a regular kukicha.

So I tried the rest of the sample today with steeping parameters that I’ve typically used at work, for the Genmaicha from 1TTEN (170 for 30 seconds for the 1st). Because I brew it at work, the hot water I get comes from our water cooler at a steady 170.

This brought out the same flavors in Satsuki as 1TTEN’s version (toastiness, good but somewhat unremarkable, followed by a most sweet, aromatic, mouth-filling aftertaste), further reinforcing that both of these are great teas and very similar in quality.

Obubu seems to have a fairly unique approach when it comes to the green tea market. There are other tea farmers (like Hibiki-an) that sell directly to consumers, but Obubu sells all of its tea as aracha, which is unsorted tea. I don’t know a whole lot about it, but my understanding is that most of the green teas on the market have been sifted by machines by their size, and then once sifted, expertly blended with several other lots to come up with one unique, but consistent product (ie, if you know how to blend teas to achieve a desired taste, you can have the product taste the same every year no matter how good or poor the harvest is that year or other factors that come in to play).
Obubu, on the other hand, seems to distinguish their different products by where in the fields they grow them, and by which harvest (and method of growing, of course). I would guess that this can lead to a lot of variation in the product from year to year. The better the harvest, the better all of their products will be, and vice-versa.

I’m no expert, so that is just a guess.

Along those same lines, this is a cool, pretty unique tea. This is a 2nd harvest sencha, yet, it is covered for the last 2 weeks like a 1st harvest kabuse or gyokuro would be. If they didn’t cover it, I’m sure the flavor profile would be the nearly indistinguishable from their Sencha of the Summer Sun.

Enough rambling.
I did the first brewing with 40 degree water (5oz for the whole 5g sample) for 14 minutes. It tasted like a non-sweet gyokuro; lots of marine aroma and flavor, a little grassyness, maybe some hints of sweet.

The next steep was with boiling water for just 25 seconds. The wet leaf smelled a little peppery, and then was full of fruity notes just like a green oolong. I really liked that, and hoped that the cup would contain some of those oolong-like fruit flavors, as it would have been very unique.
The tea itself wasn’t bitter at all, nor astringent. None of the marine or nori flavors from the last brew were left. Instead, for some reason I tasted chocolate oranges. I’m not sure if the chocolate flavor was really there, but the orange flavor certainly was. This flavor wasn’t sour like citrus; but, again, like the orange flavor you get when you have a piece of orange-flavored chocolate. The body of the flavor didn’t taste like the fruity oolong the leaf smelled like. Other than the orange note, it was slightly sweet and grassy, but not a lot of depth.

I wonder if aracha is the reason I’ve felt like none of Obubu’s teas have had a lot of depth. There have been good/interesting flavors, and I have certainly liked a few of the teas, but many of them have seemed good at the beginning of the sip, only to give out towards the end and not leave any kind of aftertaste or aroma in the mouth.

I’m once again impressed by the sample sizes that Den’s Tea provides. 10 grams— that is nearly half an ounce! This was their sample of the month, and I happened to give in to their year-end sale a couple of days ago. I have enough left now for another few cups.

So, I recently tried the Genmaicha from Obubu, and so I’m comparing this to that one, and also to the Genmaicha from 1TTEN, which up to today had set the bar for this kind of tea.

Well, no longer.
Actually, I should say, this ties; they are both delicious for their own reasons, but I can’t put one over the other. The fact that I enjoyed this tea as much as I did came as a nice surprise, because I was expecting to not really care for it (thinking “why would I’d ever order this, since Genmaicha Extra Green is available and delicious”?), but it holds its own.
I have yet to try a tea from Den’s Tea that I didn’t think was very good (ok actually Rose Sencha, but that’s because I’m not a big fan of that flavor).

The genmai in this isn’t too strong and the toasty flavor doesn’t mask the tea itself. And the tea base is delicious! It is really quite buttery-sweet, and I found it hard to stop taking sips. It was one of those experiences where a tea is so good I can’t stop sipping because it seems to induce thirst, and at the same time, I’m trying to figure out why it’s so good!

I’d say the main difference between Satsuki, and Genmaicha from 1TTEN is that this has a very good initial sweetness followed by the typical toasted rice flavors. Whereas 1TTEN starts with the typical toasted rice flavors and seems unremarkable, but suddenly the aftertaste explodes in your mouth as a sweet, almost irresistible wave.

Their description is right, this is a very bold tea for a Japanese green.
The loose leaf had an interesting look… there were a few leaves that were compressed together like a pu-erh tea cake.

The first steeping wasn’t as bitter as they described. It mostly tasted like a low quality sencha, in my opinion. I think I over brewed the 2nd steeping, as it was incredibly astringent and not much else. This would go well with strong tasting foods, as it is strong enough itself to not get masked.

I only had one sample of this, so it’s hard to form a strong feeling after just three cups (re-infused twice).
However, the genmai is sweeter than other versions I’ve had. The green tea base seemed to be somewhat thin, as I couldn’t taste it very strongly, but what I could taste was good. I’ve had a genmaicha where there was far too much genmai for my liking and there might as well have been no tea leaves at all. This wasn’t like that, because even though it seemed thin, the popped rice was good quality and tasted a little sweet.

So far, the bar has been set by 1TTEN’s genmaicha, as that has the most delicious (bancha, I think) tea base that I’ve had. Nevertheless, this is a good one.

This tea has very interesting steeping directions. However, they help to offset the salt (which preserves the blossoms)…
The sight of the tea is very nice—clear liquid with a pink flower floating in it.

The smell of the blossoms and the taste of the tea is like cherry jam, which I like very much. However, it is muted, and there is certainly salt present in the flavor (especially towards the end of the cup) so that wasn’t my favorite…

This is good, but, I wouldn’t buy it. The coolest thing about it (besides the appearance) is that I can now tell what Sakura really tastes like, and so it has pretty much the exact same flavor of cherry that Den’s Sakura Sencha has (though, that one is definitely stronger). I’m curious to also try Rishi’s Sakura Sencha to compare. Either way, I’ve now learned the difference between simply cherry flavor and sakura flavor (the latter being different, though I’m not exactly able to describe it well, it seems more buttery).

Their website says this tea is an aracha (unsorted) tea, but it looks like it’s just the top leaves and bud to me (at least, it is very similar in appearance to Den’s Sencha Zuiko, or their Hashiri Shincha). The wet leaf looked and smelled just like those teas too, though not as sweet as the shincha.

This seems like a typical first flush sencha (in my limited experience)… fresh bitterness, with a vegetal grassiness underneath. There was some sweetness present, but not a lot.

It wasn’t truly exceptional, but it didn’t disappoint, either. If you were to buy a whole bag, at $26 for 100g and shipping (from Japan), it’s not a bad price compared to similar kinds of tea.

Tried a very successful experiment today with this. I’d say this way of brewing can make any good quality green a ‘100’. :-)

I used 1 TB leaf, 2 TB water, cooled to nearly 32F, and dumped it to the side of the leaves in the pot, so that they weren’t completely covered, and soaked up most of the water. After about 9 minutes, I poured out the, perhaps 2 tsp worth of ice cold, pale green “syrup” into my cup. By the way, the wet leaves smelled peppery, fresh, and strongly marine (like nori or seaweed), and even like salty ocean air.

The tea was like a soup. Like the most warming, comforting soup you’ve ever had. It had the most irresistable savoriness that you can imagine, coupled with a soft sweetness. I took the tiniest sips and the flavor filled my mouth. It was gone very quickly. Excellent.

The subsequent three steepings retained nearly full flavor (as it tastes with normal brewing), and produced a very dark (nearly as dark as matcha) liquor. The 2nd and 3rd were a nice balance of marine/savory and sweet, while the 4th was pure sweetness.
They were done as follows: 2oz water/100F/4 mins, 4oz water/140F/2 mins, 4 oz/140F/ 1min.