Ewa

Oh breakfast cup of malted chocomate, TOO LONG have we been separated! The days without your roasted chocolateyness waking me up have felt like years!

But alas, I regret to say that you are not first in my mind at this wonderful moment. That, sadly, is reserved for my Ingenuitea. Oh IngenuiTea, you are SO CONVENIENT. I have missed you!

I LIVE!

Back from Japan and at last ready to have some tea that I do not have to make the stupid entry for before logging!

Naturally, I turned toward an old favorite to welcome myself home. So delicious! I think I’m gonna go on a little 52teas buying spree when I get the chance. Unfortunately, I may not for a while, as my biggest priority right now is finding a place to move into before my lease expires in, gulp, a week. But after that! Buying spree. AND maybe a little contest? A little Japan-related contest? We’ll see!

Another tea to tide me over during my preemptive “can’t find Chocolate milk tea again” mourning period.

I’m gonna be straight with you guys. I have NO idea what this is. I mean, I’m pretty sure it’s just unsweetened black tea, that’s pretty much what it tastes like. Pretty lightly brewed and with a kind of delicate, even somewhat sour flavor. The label uses the characters for black tea so that backs it up too. BUT, the word ‘RED’ is written in all caps on the bottle, so perhaps it is not black tea? The trouble is that the character for black in “black tea” in Japanese is actually the character for dark red or crimson, which brings us back to the idea that it’s just black tea. BUT, I’m not sure how strict of a categorization it is. Maybe that character denotes any tea like drink that is reddish? Also, they sell Java Tea (same name, different company) at Trader Joes, and I think that’s not just normal tea? I don’t actually know, I’ve never tried it.

Ok it’s probably black tea. Like I said, quite pleasant and delicately flavored. And, best of all, unsweetened! Yay!

BUT, forget about the tea, let’s talk about IPHONE APPS. I was trying to figure out what was up with this tea from the website, and, obviously I didn’t, BUT, I did find out that they have a combination iPhone and iPad app which turns your iPhone into a bottle of java tea and your iPad into a glass. I quote from the page! “When you turn your iPhone towards your iPad, see what happens!” Clearly, anyone possessing both of these needs to go and download this right now: http://www.javatea.net/

I picked this up in hopes of cheering myself up during the long search to rediscover chocolate milk tea. As an instrument of cheering up, you have to admit it is pretty rad. I mean, the name alone is already hilarious. When you add that to the extremely frou-frou looking bottle and the fact that what they describe it as is pretty much the exact opposite of what it tastes like…oh Japan, I love you and your insistence that you can just call things “European.”

Anyway, so the description of this said that it was supposed to be extremely fragrant because that is what (all) Europeans like. In actuality though, I found it to be much more subtle than the other (Japanese, one must assume) jasmines that I’ve tried while here. In fact, I quite like that aspect of it – I felt I got more actual “tea” taste out of it than I have the other ones which were basically just all about the jasmine. I think it wasn’t as sweet as the other ones as well, so I’m wondering if the base green tea was different (it was probably European).

Ok, I admit it, I was avoiding steepster. After having spotted chocolate milk tea once and then being subsequently unable to find it again, I fell into a deep depression wherein I cursed myself constantly for not just getting it the first time I saw it. I seriously thought I had missed my chance and it was just SO SAD.

BUT! This morning I found it again at a sort of local convenience store. (Reports that I had been combing every single grocery/convenience store I could find in ever widening circles are COMPLETELY FABRICATED. Who would go that far for a silly bottled tea? (me!)) I was so pleased! At last, I could inflict the undoubtedly too sweet taste of chocolate milk tea on myself! This was going to be SO WORTH IT.

Actually, I noticed while writing this up that this is not in fact “chocolate” milk tea, but “chocolat” milk tea. Apparently they used French chocolate flavoring.

Surprisingly, it wasn’t that bad! I know! I was shocked too! Perhaps I had built it up so much in my head that it was impossible for a single bottle to contain as much sugar as I was expecting. But really I don’t think it was that sweet. Or rather, it was about as sweet as normal chocolate milk is. Which is, incidentally, what it tasted like. Chocolate milk with a very light hint of tea around the edges. In consistency too, it was thicker than I would usually expect from tea, even milk tea – almost pudding like in nature even.

Not bad! But I doubt I’ll have it again :P

So I was all ready to try the lipton chocolate milk tea, but when I went to the grocery store where I’d seen it it wasn’t there! (well, I went down to that one store / where I’d seen that tea just days before / but the man there said the tea, it wouldn’t breeeeeeeeeew /) OMG did I hallucinate it? Did I miss my ONE AND ONLY chance to have chocolate milk tea? I am going to be so sad if I can’t find it now. I will cry bitter tears of sadness.

Anyway, to console myself, I decided to get the milk tea version of TeaO in order to amuse myself with thoughts of golden drops and tea gnomes/fairies (I recently had it pointed out to me that tea gnomes would be much more clever than fairies and would thus be more likely to be assigned to golden drop thievery) It’s all right, maybe marginally less sweet than the other milk teas I’ve had, but the “tea” flavor was also kind of less present making it taste a lot like sweet milk.

Oh well, at least it was calorie off! (Japan makes your English terrible, troofact)

Man! I am totally getting to the point where A. I do not remember what teas I have already drunk and B. I am running out of teas to drink, period! I’ve been avoiding buying the generic brand from the convenience stores because they’re unique to each store and therefore impossible to get from vending machines, the normal source of drinks for the average Japanese person. Also, I doubt I’d be able to distinguish between them.

Anyway, mugicha! Barley tea! I drank this and I was all like “yep, that’s barley tea!” and then I was all like “yep, that’s all I got.”

But seriously, I don’t have much other mugicha to compare this to, but it tastes kind of lightly sweet, which seems to be the case for a lot of these bottled teas. I wonder if the natural sweetness of the non-black teas is why the black teas tend to be sweetened? Because black tea doesn’t really possess that much natural sweetness? No idea!

Other than that, not too bad, it has a kind of odd undertone to it, but the overall taste isn’t as overwhelming as some of the other graintastic teas I’ve had, which is good.

Since I liked the Iyemon Reicha so much, I decided to try another one, this time from Ito En. Like the Iyemon one, this Reicha is a seasonal tea and thus is only available for the summer (hence the name, which means: Cold Tea for the Summer – the sad thing about learning Japanese is you start to realize that being able to combine pictographs has left them really unimaginative when it comes to names “ok ok ok, so we’re making a special summer tea for cooling of, what should we do?” “let’s combine the symbols for ‘cold’ and ‘tea’” “that’s BRILLIANT!”). Unlike the Iyemon, this is just straight green tea, no added matcha, sadly. (yes I realize that matcha is also green tea, you know what I mean!).

This is all right, but I definitely prefer the Iyemon reicha for it’s matchaliciousness. It’s a little more bitter than the standard bottled green teas and it seems the tea they used is the kind of butter kind, but otherwise it seems pretty unremarkable. Another tea your are just not meant to pay that much attention to as you drink.

I was with a friend when I got this and her reaction to it was “that’s just normal tea!” and that is pretty much the feeling I get from it. It’s actually kind of nice, a little sweet, but otherwise unremarkable, not too strong, not too weak, a tea you almost won’t even notice drinking. I give it 4 out of 5 "eh"s.

So the name of this tea basically translates to: “This one for greasy meals” which, someone should probably inform Asahi, is really more of a sentence than a name. I found it at the hundred yen store and was surprised to note that it was another blend of pu erh and oolong! I was surprised to find one in the form of the Chou BouBouCha, but I guess they are just everywhere.

Rather than touting itself as a remedy for post-binge eating/drinking indigestion/nausea, however, this tea is meant to accompany a greasy meal in order to prevent the aforementioned states. I should probably have had some last night when I went out to yakiniku. Missed opportunity!

As with the Chou BouBouCha, the pu erh and oolong work surprisingly well together although in this case the oolong is definitely dominating. The pu erh is really only noticeable because the normal oolong taste is slightly off. This could either mean that it is a successful blend or that there is too much oolong. I know which one I think it is! Still, a pretty nice tea and as my (still somewhat delicate) stomach can attest to, it IS pretty soothing in that regard.

Hay gaiz! Remember that Teas’ Tea New York thing that I didn’t like so much because it was too sweet and I didn’t want to try anymore because all of the rest of them would probably be too sweet and gross? I tried another one! Because I do not learn from experience.

Well, actually, the real reason is twofold. One: it amused me that adding ginger to tea turns it into chai now. Two: it was ON SALE.

So here I am, drinking another theoretical “New York” tea. I think I’ve said it before, but sweetness in general is a lot easier to take in milk teas than in just straight black teas for me, and this continues that trend. It’s still too sweet but it works a little better both because it is a “chai” and because it is a milk tea. In fact, this isn’t too bad, although I wouldn’t say that it was all that chai-ish. You can definitely taste the ginger though. Well, I think I can. I mean, I do know it’s there, though. Maybe I’m just imagining it. No no, it’s there. In fact, it kind of makes the entire tea taste like a cookie! I have spent all day trying to figure out what kind of cookie but to no avail, maybe a ginger snap? It definitely reminds me of SOME cookie…I don’t even eat that much cookies why is this so hard? Maybe a snickerdoodle? Let’s go with snickerdoodle. Anyway, it wasn’t too bad. Nice dessert type tea.

Incidentally, I totally saw a chocolate milk tea while at the grocery store yesterday. It is probably so sweet it will instantly give me diabetes, but I am SOOOOO going to try it. For Science!

As is probably not too difficult to discern from the few times I’ve mentioned them, I am not a huge fan of Starbucks, and yet, here I am giving them my money in exchange for tasty drinks! Inconsistent, you say? Well yes. Willingness to bend/selectively forget my “principles” in the pursuit of curiosity is just ONE of my many attractive character traits! Others include: tendency toward snark, tendency toward whining, the inability to say “fantastic” without sounding sarcastic, AND passive aggressiveness!

Anyway, I saw this when I accompanied a friend in pursuit of a matcha latte to starbucks today and decided to give it a go. I really like the taste of yuzu, it is so refreshing and so lightly sweet, yum! And that is basically what the drink tasted like, the light citrusy taste of yuzu, not very sweet at all, very lightly sour and just a hint of the underlying green tea at the end. In fact, I’d say there wasn’t enough of a green tea taste to it – it could have used more presence. Still it was a great drink for the half hour walk home in the summer heat.

I do not know why I keep getting these bottled iced black teas. They are all sweetened far too much, but I keep hoping that I’ll find a good one that is delicious and not sweetened at all. It is probably impossible though.

Anyway, while this tea hasn’t been as terrible as some (I’m looking at you, Teas’ Tea New York) it is still too sweet and, on top of that, seems to be quite weak. Actually the fact that it is so weak might be making it too sweet as it isn’t THAT sweetened (it’s “calorie off” after all!) but since the taste of the tea itself is also weak, it overwhelms the tea anyway. Fail! At the same time, the taste in general is just so light that it’s not like it’s bad either. I give this one a resounding meh.

Bought this in Chinatown – Yokohama has the largest Chinatown in Japan and one of the largest in the world – from a shop that I happened to duck into because it was raining. The nice old lady there followed me around and explained what everything was and even gave me some jasmine tea to try. I bought this because I thought it sounded neat: pu erh, oolong, and rose! I learned from a friend that these types of blends are actually quite popular in China for dealing with drinking and eating too much. Well yesterday I definitely did the former if not the latter (all you can drink karaoke, baybeeeeeeeeee).

This is quite nice! I like the dynamic of the oolong and the pu erh, both teas are quite present but somehow their interaction smooths out the taste, so that the normal dirt taste of the pu erh isn’t quite so noticeable and the sort of resiny aftertaste of oolong was also unnoticeable. I had thought that since it appeared that the tea just had rosebuds put into it, they wouldn’t do much to change the taste since I’ve read in other parts of this site that flowers added like that are mostly cosmetic. These must be some sort of magical flowers because the taste of rose was VERY noticeable. (I’ve also since had just the tea without a flower in it and it doesn’t taste of rose at all, so it’s really the rosebuds doing it) Magic or not, the rose taste also fits this tea really well, I am quite pleased!

It was also quite helpful for my nausea although it failed to do anything about the icepick lodged in my brain. Oh well, I guess you can’t have everything.

So, the nice thing about the state of my belleh this past week is that it appears to have wiped out my aversion to foxtrot developed during my previous long bout of feeling ickyness. So, I was able to enjoy this delicious, stomach soothing, caffeine free tea for the first time in a looooooong while. I’ve been drinking it a LOT and it is still great. I’ve been waffling about whether to get more of it when my current tin runs out, but I think I’m back on the side of getting moar, moar, MOAR.

I am not gonna lie, half of my reluctance to write these reviews this past week has been due to the fact that most of the time I have to add the tea before I write about it. This means finding a picture, and then translating whatever hilarious description the bottle has on it, which is kind of a pain. The only time it’s not a pain is in the case of the crazy blends that the Japanese seem to delight in creating, because it gives me some insight into what the hell I’ve been drinking.

This particular crazy blend, bought on a day when I was feeling a little better caught my attention because it was a morning blend. This means, apparently, that you add a bunch (8) of different kinds of grain to green tea. Also collagen. Well, collagen pretty much goes without saying really. I mean, collagen! The grains, what I can read of them are as follows: corn, roasted rice, roasted rice malt, two different kinds of barley, green tea, and “extraction from namacha” which is not really a grain but oh well. In other words, good times!

The color on this sucker is really dark, I would totally think it was an oolong or even a black tea before I thought it was a green tea. Similarly, the grains have pretty much overcome any of the original taste of the tea – especially the barley and roasted rice/rice malt/whatever. It kind of tastes like Kawa Inka, which is a caffeine-free instant coffee-like drink which tastes marginally sweeter than this stuff. Through the clever method of looking it up on Polish wikipedia and then switching to English, I have determined that this type of beverage is called “roasted grain beverage” which is why you should never let Leonardo da Quirm name anything.

Anyway, it tastes like a “roasted grain beverage” which, since the tea is supposed to be for mornings, and that type of beverage is a coffee substitute, isn’t particularly weird. It was interesting, but a bit too heavy for me that morning, would have have been better off with more oolong. And, well, the loss of the base tea flavor is kind of sad.

I actually tried this before the premium blend, it’s Suntory’s base oolong tea, so I wasn’t really expecting much except for the whole “helping with my nausea” thing. I have to say I was quite pleasantly surprised by it.

Despite being straight oolong tea, it was also quite light in strength, I thought and similarly did not have much of that aggressively oolongy taste that you get with other brands. In fact, it was a little sweet, and quite nice. Probably my current favorite bottled oolong.

So I had a midterm for my intensive program this past week and I basically got really tired from reviewing for it and just did not feel like doing much of anything else. Part of my review assignments was the construction of sample grammar point sentences and I am probably weird but I just find it really difficult to pull sentences out of the aether with “use this grammar point” being the only guideline. It taxes my imagination, which is simply not that fertile, and makes me want to not do much of anything else. I DID jot down notes about the teas that I drank, so time for some backlogging!

Despite the fact that most of the time I try not to acknowledge it, I actually have kind of a delicate stomach, made worse by my ignoring it and putting whatever the hell I want in it. This week I think the change of environment finally caught up with me, so from wednesday-ish on, I basically constantly felt mildly nauseous – which probably also contributed to the whole “not feeling like doing anything” thing. Anyway, to try and combat this, I invoked the power of OOLONG. Oolong is (apparently) often used in teas to aid with indigestion! Indeed, most other drinks were contributing to my discomfort while oolong actually helped, so that was good!

This particular oolong, is blended with what one of my classmates assures me says sweet olive tea. Apparently to make it look pretty. The result, while not quite “gold” in color as the wrapper claims, is a very interesting smooth and kind of light oolong. By this I mean that the almost smoky kind of taste that is present in some oolongs is completely nonexistent. There is also no aftertaste to be had, which is why I have mentally labeled it “oolong light.” or possibly “lite.”

This tea is in the database twice, interestingly, once as “dark” and once as “koiaji” which is to say the actual japanese word for it. I’m going with this entry because it has more logs in it.

So, like iyemon koime, this is very strongly brewed green tea. I guess because that means more health benefits? That is what the description tells me. Anyway it definitely tastes overbrewed, a lot more so than the iyemon. Someone in another tealog mentioned that Ito En is basically the equivalent of Lipton in America so I guess the quality of the tea is lower (that also explains why I got it for 100 yen instead of 150) (it also makes the whole reverse-importing thing with the Teas’ Tea New York brand even funnier!)

But back to the tea! It’s bitterness is kind of unpleasant really, and it’s got a weird sugary finish at odds with the rest of the teas – honestly I think I don’t like these sugary finishes on green tea, I much prefer consistency of taste. At least it’s not super sweet all the way through though.

Thought that I’d go ahead and try the standard Iyemon Cha today since most of my experiences with the rest of them have been so good. In fact, from what I can tell from the website, after this is done, I just have the Hoji cha left to try before I am completely done with the Iyemon lineup. Progress people! There IS an end in sight.

I found this tea pretty smooth, if a little thin. It’s slightly bitter but only slightly and, while at least it is not all over the place with it’s green tea flavor like whatever yesterday’s tea was, it could still stand to be a bit more assertive about itself. It seems very much to fade into the background even as you drink it, which, of course, may be the point. Before you know it, it’s gone and you have to go out and buy some more! I’m wondering if I find that the mehness I have about it’s taste has anything to do with comparing it to the extremely assertive taste of the koime. It’s possible! But either way, the Matchairi Reicha still wins over both of them. Oh Matchairi Reicha…will I ever be able to drink you again?

So this is really a fascinating example of Japan being Japan. Basically, Ito En liked the labels it created for Teas’ Tea in the States so much that it is reverse importing them into Japan under the disguise of “Teas’ Tea New York” in three flavors as “Green and Red Apple” and “Bergamot and Orange” and “Manhattan Milk Tea” and are pretending that they are an American company. Because Japan. Although I can’t help but agree that the labels ARE pretty sexy.

For some reason they have decided to halve the normal amount of caffeine in the tea (somehow) and they are also advertising it as being “calorie off.” This is weird to me because it basically tastes like they dumped about a billion pounds of sugar in there. Too sweet, as usual, Japan! While we are on this subject, Japan, it is hilarious to me that the it is the Teas’ Tea in the States that is unsweetened while the ones in Japan are sweetened. Up is down and left is right! Cats and dogs are lying down together!

Beyond being too sweet, this tea is EXTREMELY orange flavored. I’m not getting anything that would stand out as being uniquely “bergamot” at all and, quite honestly, I am barely getting any tea! This is ok juice, but it is not very good tea. And dammit, I LIKE my black tea to have caffeine >.<

My pants were looser than normal on me today. I think we can all agree that this is clearly the work of the Karada Meguricha Elixir of Life. Just because it has amazing weight loss powers doesn’t mean that I can slack off on my tea reviewing mission. Nay! I must press on.

Straight green tea today, although this one styles itself as the #1 tea. Pretty big words, tea. Let’s hope you can back them up.

Yeah, no. This tea is kinda meh all around. It tastes a little roasted, a little sweet (in a kinda ick sugary way) a little bitter and a lot of nothing. Also, it’s got that weird resiny aftertaste that I was getting from the Hojicha. It seems to be a green tea that tries to be everything but ends up being nothing and the impression only increases as it gets warmer.

Really, one of my main discoveries with this whole endeavor has been the importance of drinking all of these teas while they are still cold, as letting them warm up reveals more of their, quite often not very good, flavor.

Regardless of how I feel about this tea, I will treasure the experience of drinking it forever because while entering it into the database I learned the Japanese word for bracket fungus. Truly, my life has been an empty shell until now.

So…who thinks that a blend of green, oolong, pu-erh and yellow tea is excessive? Everyone? Good, good. They appear to be operating along the idea of “stuff as much healthy tea into one bottle as possible, thereby creating the ELIXIR OF LIFE.” I wonder if they brew the teas separately and then mix them or just dump the leaves all in together and brew it like that. Hopefully it is the former.

Surprisingly, the result isn’t too bad, although, as would be expected there are absolutely no traces of the green or yellow tea (not that I know how yellow tea tastes, but I’ve heard it’s delicate so…). The oolong and pu erh are both quite present and create a not unpleasant combination. I also feel like I’m getting the orange peel – definitely some citrusy type taste going on. I’m getting other stuff as well but considering I don’t even know what a “chameleon plant” IS there is absolutely no way that I can tell what it is. Although, the label sez there is carrot and it COULD be carrot.

All in all, despite the slightly offputting amount of stuff in this tea, the overall taste is actually not overwhelming and the combination of oolong, pu erh, and orange peel seems to be working well. Regarding the health benefits – it appears to have hit almost every single “health craze” button (whooo goji berries!) so therefore it must be healthy! It doesn’t have acai though. Perhaps I should demand my money back? I’m generally contemptuous of this sort of blatant gimmickry but as I said the taste isn’t bad and it was actually cheaper than some of the other teas (125 yen instead of 150) so…reluctant thumbs up!

Milk teas are kind of an indulgence for me. It’s a little embarrassing to admit to drinking them at all, since they basically go against my entire tea philosophy, being pretty much the tea world equivalent of starbucks coffee-like drinks. In other words, with the amount of sweetener and milk dumped in, the percentage of actual tea in these is pretty low. Still, just like every so often I find myself really wanting some diet coke despite knowing that I am basically pickling my insides, sometimes I just want a nice sweet dessert type drink. This is especially true during the winter when you can get these nice and hot (oh, vending machines with hot drinks, you are so awesome) but sometimes it happens in the summer too. Or, as happened today, I might be in a bakery and the only tea that they have that I have yet to do a write up on is a milk tea. So I guess this time it was fate!

I can’t say that I’ve ever been really able to distinguish between different milk teas, they mostly just taste like very lightly tea flavored sweet milk and this one is no different. The whole zero calorie thing is pretty nice, since I think your standard royal milk tea has at an estimate a billion calories. I don’t think it really detracts from the taste, but I’m not exactly a source to be trusted for that sort of thing, since I’m not really able to distinguish the taste of coke and diet coke either. (I can do it with pepsi and diet pepsi though. because diet pepsi is gross) I mean, I’d probably be able to if I drank them side by side (although why would I do that?), but for me the difference isn’t so severe that I can tell when drinking them in isolation.

The biggest problem that I have with milk tea is that after finishing it I could generally do with a drink. That is, it’s thirst-quenching power is so low that it has circled around and actually causes thirst. Also, it’s got kind of a weird aftertaste – I vaguely recall that aftertaste being present in all milk teas, but a this is my first one during this particular visit, I can’t really be sure, perhaps it’s an effect of the artificial sweetener?

All in all, a nice enough tea latte, and definitely a good substitute if you want a cookie or something.