Ewa

I am really starting to think that I like the Iyemon lineup from suntory the best out all of the bottled teas. Perhaps it is their association with “an authentic tea company” (that is seriously in the company’s description of the tea) but these teas seem to just have so much more character than a lot of the other bottled teas. What’s more, the character they have is much more sophisticated than a lot of the stronger teas who seem to be relying on a philosophy of “RAR TASTE THE STRENGTH OF MY TEA”

Which, in a brilliant and smooth segue that I have just ruined by pointing it out, leads me to today’s tea, which is brewed deliberately strong because apparently that is how the Japanese did it in olden times. The difference from their other green teas is obvious just from the color, which is much darker than their other teas. From the color, you could be forgiven for assuming that it was an oolong tea, although it is not quite dark enough for a mugicha. The taste is similarly quite strong and, while I like it all right, I found it a bit too bitter. I also found myself missing the taste of the matcha that the other Iyemon teas have…still, I prefer it to the hojicha…

Ito En is, I think, the only company to be brave enough to attempt to expand their tea market to the States. I haven’t tried many of the Teas’ Teas because, as far as bottled drinks go, they are not too cheap, but when I am taken with a feeling of nostalgia, I will often give in and buy one.

In Japan, the Oi Ocha series, which I am going to go ahead and say corresponds to the Teas’ Tea series because I enjoy making claims that I can’t back up and have no basis for, costs a buck fitty, which is to say, exactly as much as any other bottled tea, so it was inevitable that I would get to them eventually. Today, I was in the mood for something different so I grabbed me some hoji-cha, which, I guess is roasted green tea.

I haven’t had hoji-cha in a while, so I have no idea whether this is a problem with this particular tea or with hoji-cha in general, but there is something massively off in the the immediate aftertaste of this tea (although it resolves itself after a bit). Basically, I get resin out of it, which is…not very tasty. Otherwise, it’s definitely got a roasted aroma to it, actually, on greater thought it basically ONLY has the roasted aroma to it, with the resin coming in at the end. All in all, I am not impressed with this stuff.

Still, as I said, i don’t know whether that’s because this hoji-cha in particular is shoddy or whether I simply do not like hoji-cha. An intelligent person, a person possessing common sense, would take note of the plethora of other kinds of tea available to them and simply play it safe by refraining from trying other hoji-chas. I, however, am neither of those kinds of people! Moreover, I have a MISSION to catalog the bottled iced teas of Japan and no matter how HARD or UNTASTY it gets, Steeples, I will PERSEVERE. Because that is the TRUE MEANING of Christmas.

Another black tea that professes to be unsweetened, this time from Kirin. Thankfully, it does not explain that the tea’s deliciousness derives from tea fairies harvesting the final “golden drops” of tea from teapots in order to make the tea, which, to be fair, coca-cola didn’t EXACTLY say either (but they may as well have). It also didn’t proceed to list sweeteners in its ingredients so I had a good feeling!

The tea is, indeed, unsweetened, although it has a certain very faint sweetness about it that is faint enough to not make me suspicious. I don’t know if its the low temperature steep that did it, but there is an interesting air about this tea, a tiny hint of astringency that never quite comes to fruition. I quite like it, and it’s nice to finally find an iced black tea that isn’t sweetened instead of just pretending to not be sweetened. AND it was on sale, which, unfortunately in a combini means that it’s not been selling particularly well and they are trying to get rid of the last bit they have so they can replace it wish something else. Probably extremely sweet royal milk tea. Or Yet Another Green Tea.

It’s kind of weird to me that the Japanese would be so adamant about sweetening their black teas, when their desserts/cookies/that type of thing are often much less sweet than ones in the US. Ah well, cultural differences!

As promised, more Iyemon tea! This time in the form of genmaicha. I’ve seen genmaicha referred to as popcorny, and this stuff is indeed quite popcorny, both in the taste and in the aftertaste. It’s also slightly sweet, at least initially, which I found interesting, although the sweetness went away as it warmed up. Eventually the sweetness fades to a bitter finish that, combined with the popcorn taste makes for a rather odd aftertaste that I can’t really say I’m overly fond of.

The taste of the underlying tea is kind of similar to the oolong I had earlier this week. Kind of woodsy, skirting along the edges of bitterness/smokiness without never quite making it over the threshold. There is, however, no traces of the matcha that was supposedly iri’d at some point in the creation of this tea. This is not one of my favorites.

I have a feeling that this is not, in fact, the exact same tea as the one described, but I am too lazy to make a new entry and this IS a jasmine tea by Ito En so…oh well!

What I’m drinking is actually called “Natural Jasmine Tea” and gives no indication that it has a green tea base, although that seems to be the most common so it probably does. It’s big thing is that it doesn’t us anything except actual jasmine flowers to induce the jasmine aroma and taste (hence the “natural”). I didn’t really pay that much attention to the other jasmine tea that I’ve tried so far, but the implication is that all the other ones use artificial means in order to strengthen the impression of jasmine. I guess.

The jasmine aroma/taste DOES seem to be fairly subtle here. The aroma definitely is lighter than it was in the other jasmine tea, but I think I preferred it that way. The more this tea warms up the more the base green seems to overwhelm the jasmine within it and I quite LIKE the taste of jasmine. That is, in fact, in fact the reason why I BOUGHT jasmine tea and not green tea. The bottle also tells me that there isn’t much caffeine in the tea, which makes me wonder if it isn’t quite lightly brewed (thereby deepening the “naturally scented” image they’re shooting for). Thus, this is not my favorite jasmine tea, although it’s not really bad, either.

Yay, another day of avoiding coca-cola products! Why do I want to avoid coca-cola products? I guess I don’t really know, except for the sneaking suspicion that if anyone can find a way to sneak high fructose corn syrup into green/barley/whatever tea without telling anyone, it’s coca-cola.

Suntory has several of these “Iyemon” teas, so it’s a name that should pop up a good number of times in these reviews after this. I have to say I am quite taken with this one, though. The taste of the matcha is really noticeable and it gives the tea a nice smooth finish while still managing to be quite refreshing. It is definitely a tea with personality where, I think, a lot of these teas will end up being classified by me as “Yet Another Green Tea.”

This is only a limited edition run so probably once summer ends you won’t be able to get these anymore, which is pretty standard really. The same happens to a lot of the hot drinks after winter is over. The question is, whether it’s a limited run and will be back next year, OR whether this is IT, because if so, I should definitely drink more of it since it’s so tasty. There are still a lot of teas to go though, so I’ll try to control myself.

So apparently this is also Singaporean canned tea, but they sell it in bottles here in Japan so I’m just going to stick it in this entry.

Oolong tea is, I think, kind of the “default” tea in Japan. It’s what people get when they’re in restaurants – quite often it’s free, AND in bottle form it is 30 yen (a little over 30 cents) cheaper than other teas.

This particular one is interesting for its presentation. It’s description on the bottle is written in “chinese style” which means, basically, all kanji. In the description on the back of the bottle they make a big deal out of the fact that they use tea leaves from China for it.

The taste is basically what I associate with oolong tea in japan. It’s quite strong, as most of these teas are since they’re mostly chilled and it’s got that…I dunno, sort of wood-ish? taste to it that I basically classify in my head as “oolong.” Weirdly this is the first oolong I’ve had this trip. But definitely not the last. Pretty standard, all told.

I was in the grocery and had settled on “Namacha” from Kirin, when this caught my eye. With a name like TeaO, I HAD to try it. Apparently, Asahi had ceased sale of this in 2004 and was now reviving it, aiming it towards men in their twenties and thirties. The appeal is not immediately obvious to me, but I am A. Not male and B. not Japanese, so what do I know?

This tea’s “thing” is that it tastes sweet but doesn’t contain any sweeteners. Instead the sweetness comes from something they call the “golden drop” which seems to refer to, from what I understand although admittedly I didn’t put THAT much effort into it, the deliciousness of the last drop of tea in the pot. So…I guess they collected all of those drops and made it into tea? What did they do with the rest of the tea?

The ingredients, however, pretty clearly list sweeteners as the second entry, so I have no idea what that’s about. Is it because the “no sweeteners” on the front label uses a different kanji compound than the one in the ingredients? The one on the front can also mean “saccharides” while the one in the ingredients is “sweetening materials” and includes three words, the first two I have no idea on (oh wait no, one is xylitol. can’t think how I didn’t immediately get that from kishiritooru), but the last on is sucrose. So yeah. Asahi advertising scandal blown WIDE OPEN, you saw it here first, steeples!

The taste is interesting. It’s only very lightly sweet and the sweetness has an interesting quality to it that I could totally be fooled into thinking was a property of the tea itself if I didn’t instinctively mistrust everything that advertisements tell me. The tea itself is lightly perfumed – I’m almost getting a hint of rose here (are you SURE you’re marketing this to dudes, Asahi?), light in color, and fairly light in terms of the black tea taste as well, although definitely present.

If you absolutely MUST sweeten all your black teas, Japan, I guess this is the way to do it, although your weird marketing ploy seems a tad dishonest, not to mention lazy since you don’t even try to conceal the ingredients. Or maybe the fact that you don’t bother hiding them circles it around back to honest? I don’t know. Still, it mars my enjoyment of this tea and that makes me sad because it was quite enjoyable.

You don’t see these in vending machines very often, so I tend to get them when I see them, even though they go against my personal rule of not sweetening my teas. Despite the fact that it is totally too sweet I still drink it because the apple flavor has been blended really well with the black tea. It tastes super appley and delicious, while the black tea is still present and if it wasn’t sweetened it would probably be my favorite tea ever. But alas! It is and I’m afraid that means at LEAST 10 points docked because A. it impinges on it’s effectiveness as a quencher of thirst and B. too sweet! bleh.

Jasmine teas are probably my favorites within the range of Japanese bottled iced teas. Weirdly though, they are not available year ’round. From what I can recall, they show up in the summer and then once fall starts disappear again. This saddens me.

I have no idea what the base tea here is, I assume it’s green, but the bottle doesn’t actually say and and ingredients only list “jasmine tea” and, interestingly, vitamin C. Not sure what’s up with that.

This tea was great! Very refreshing and strongly scented. The low temperature did not conceal the jasmine-ness at all, giving it a noticeable character without having to rely on the bitterness of the tea. Great for a day of walking around Yokohama. And finally something that’s not a coca-cola product!

Bought this at the grocery story for mornings.

It’s nice!

A nice black tea.

That is nice.

Another Coca-cola iced tea (the vending machine by the center where I have my program is Coca-cola brand, can you tell?). I confess I have no idea what they are getting at with the “nigori” thing since it’s a term that usually used to refer to unfiltered sake. Unfiltered tea? Maybe! I have my doubts about the whole high quality thing too, and anyway, it’s probably wasted on an iced tea.

I didn’t find this tea particularly memorable. It was cool, which was the important thing. It’s got a bitterness to it that does sort of remind me of matcha, which was kind of nice, but that only came to it as it warmed up a bit more. Straight from the vending machine it mostly just tasted cool and green-ish. The matcha thing is neat, but I’d still put it below Sokenbicha since that at least catches my attention while I am drinking it.

It’s summer in Japan and that means drinking LOTS of bottled iced tea (available at a vending machine near you! I mean really near, like, 10 feet away. Also, there’s another one twenty feet further. Thanks Japan!)

The last time I was here, I never really went about choosing them in any sort of systematic fashion, usually just going with whatever caught my eye at the time. But this time! This time will be DIFFERENT. I am going to systematically try and then log as many of these bottled iced teas as I can so I can actually figure out which ones I like best. It’s a dirty job, but someone’s got to do it. Then, other people going to Japan can reap the benefits! provided their taste in tea is at all similar to mine, of course :P

I remember having this stuff a lot when I was here, mostly because the whole “blend of twelve different teas” amused me (and continues to do so). Just from what I recognize: looks like several different kinds of barley tea, some green tea, some pu erh, senna tea, chicory (which I didn’t know you could make tea out of!), dandelion root, corn, beans, and a partridge in a pear tree.

It has a pleasant enough flavor and isn’t bad as a go-to tea since, being a coca-cola product it is guaranteed to be pretty much everywhere. I’d classify the taste as “barley tea lite” with the barley teaness being smoothed out a lot by the rest of the stuff in there and a more earthy direction achieved with the pu erh. It probably is totally healthy too since it is so full of STUFF. The name translates to refreshing, healthy, beautiful tea, although I’m not sure if the TEA is beautiful or if it will make YOU beautiful. Both, probably.

I live!

I’ve been away from the computer for the past week since I was having a last minute vacation prior to going to Japan and then, well, I went to Japan. I am staying in a tiny tiny room in a long-stay hotel for the duration, which has free internets (yay!) and AC and some bare necessities for cooking: microwave, hot plate, and, because it’s Japan, electric kettle! Thanks Japan! Not many places in the world would consider that a life necessity :D

Had some of my delish almond biscotti (I took that and Foxtrot with me and will otherwise rely on what I can get from the grocery stores here) last night while I tried to make it to 8m before falling asleep. My endeavor was nearly a success but I ended up pooping out at 7:30. Close enough! Ahh, it was so nice to have that touch of familiarity.

I managed to get three good infusions out of it (the tea mug they gave me is tiny!) although by the third one I confess that A. I was nearly unconscious and not really paying attention and B. I’m pretty sure it was just kind of almondy water. The first two, however were delicious as usual.

My last teafrog sample, which I have been avoiding. Because I needed caffeeeeeeeeeine.

I’ll be honest, I actually already tried this tea once, but (stop me if you’ve heard this one) I completely forgot about it for nearly half an hour and by the time I got to it it was TART. Like…my mouth has puckered so much I can’t take another drink tart. With that kind of result due to my own scatterbrain-ness, I didn’t really want to review it. Besides which I would just have bee reusing material from my Stress Reliever post, like so:

TAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAART

TART!

MMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMFFFFFFFF (sound of trying to yell tart through puckered lips)

Anyway, this is my second try of this tea then, this time with utilizing a somewhat more sensible steep time, hopefully to better effect for my enunciation.

No idea what color the tea brewed up as because it is night time and the light switch is ALL the way across the room. Red of some kind would be my guess! The result is still tart (no surprise there!) and I definitely get a sense of the bitterness around the edges that Morgana got although it’s not all that pronounced. (Actually I had completely failed to notice it until reading her note. Damn you knowledge! I want to go back to blissful ignorance nao, pls kthx)

While the tartness is not wholly unpleasant, it is still somewhat overwhelming and I am mainly filled with the urge to MIX this with something. But what? Assam Melody to the sort of rescue! Despite knowing that I would be kicking myself for it when I eventually slouched off to bed, I brewed up some Assam to see what there was to be seen. I brewed it for a relatively short time to avoid adding bitter oversteeped black tea to slightly bitter froot tea. The result? Interesting…I kind of wish I had a straight green to try this with and had more sample left to try it with the nonexistent straight green tea. It might have been good! I think the acidty of black tea doesn’t really fit the tang (TAAART) of the tea, but something a little more mellow, like a buttery green tea would complement it well.

That sounds kind of like more effort than I’m really willing to put into this tea though.

Another go at this. Still does not taste like gingerbread. I am going to be certain this time! No waffling about whether I actually know what gingerbread tastes like, nosiree!

Last of this packet! Unfortunately started a super long boss fight right after setting it to steep and forgot all about it. Stupid Frost Giant.

Well, at least it woke me up!

Getting into the home stretch of this sample packet. I still find it too perfumy. Definitely prefer the Earl Grey Special.

The last bit of my sample – I gobbled that sucker right up. Unfortunately, in my gobbling I consumed almost all of the cream caramel bits in the packet prior to this last cup. So now it taste like a very lightly caramel flavored rooibos rather than lightly rooibos flavored caramel candy. Shame that.

Still, I suppose the problem here was between teacup and chair, so I’m going to go ahead and cut it some slack…and be more careful when I inevitably order more of this :D

Last bit of the sample packet!
I am finishing sample packets left and right here: I want to try to clear out my tea cupboard a bit so that when I get back from Japan I will have room for all of the teas that I am planning to treat myself to for my birthday :D (well and for anything I happen to bring back from Japan, of course)

Interestingly I completely forgot about this tea and left it to steep for…like an hour or so? So basically it’s Paris Tea, now from concentrate! Except without the part where you dilute it! So really just the concentrate!

Weirdly, I kind of like it better this way – I think the black tea is able to overcome all of the flavorings thereby getting rid of that weird powdery sensation that I keep getting with this tea. Who’da thunk it? (not me.) Still, it is not sufficiently better to make me consider getting more, besides which I am not really cool with waiting an hour for my tea.

I continue to taste mostly mint. And..a little bit of onion? That can’t be right. Not sure where that came from, it’s not like I have onion tea for there to be residue of in the mug.

Very strange.

I feel you all should know that the best part of waking (best being a relative term of course) is malted chocomate in my cup.

This was very currant-y today, yum!

(why yes, I AM avoiding the Hawaiian fruity sample thing from Teafrog – I can’t help it! I am very busy employing “Dessert Tea Stress Therapy” to keep from going insane over the trip :P )

Well that was the LAST bit of this stuff that I will ever have! That is so sad, because it really is super good although (and this will probably sounds blasphemous) after having the malted chocomate which has roastiness going on it was kind of…without character…I think I like quite a few of my current teas more than I liked this particular cup.