Eden

Unlike any tea I’ve had before, one of my favorites. It tastes slightly roasted – a little dark but pure and clean. Like you’re drinking a piece of wood that has not been burnt, but delicately browned over hot coals. I’m not really doing the experience of drinking this tea justice. You really must try it to know, and I highly suggest that you do, especially if you have a lot of boring herbal zingers and coconut oolong teas in your arsenal. This one is totally out of the box. It feels healthy and grounding and down-to-business. Down-to-earth. 1 bag in 1 cup boiling water with 1 packet NuStevia. You can steep it forever – it doesn’t get bitter.

Bagged
Aroma when Dry: Bright, nutty
After water is first poured: Warm, bright, nutty, faint grass
At end of steep: sweet, buttery, nutty
Tea liquor:
At end of steep: light mossy green
Staple? Type yes, prefer loose, will look into if brand carries this type in loose leaf.
Time of day preferred: Any, daily go– to tea.
Taste:
first notes: creamy, nutty, buttery, roasty with minor hint of grassyness
As it cools? Notes mellow out slightly, tea stays roasty and buttery, sweetens (eastern) a bit
Additives used (milk, honey, sugar etc)? No
Lingers? Yes, notes blend slightly, but all linger with character.

No notes yet.

No notes yet.

Greenish straw yellow in color. The aroma is a faint roasted brown rice. The first taste has the brown rice up front, mild, and a faint tea taste (but not bitter or green), or the tea and rice taste are hard to separate. There is a faint bitter, roasty aftertaste. There is not much here to taste, but nothing to object to, either.

I tried a 5 minute steep at 175F which did not result in a change or increase in the flavors.

I think this is a pleasant caffeine delivery tea without much to set it apart (or to complain about) Mild.

Forgot to log this a few days ago…it was chai like and in a bag and not bad actually I liked it just fine. More coming soon…

backlogging from the other day…check out my previous notes

Yay! All moved into my new apartment! Just a few boxes of books and the washer to move. Afternoon koicha is permissable. =)
Today’s matcha came out with more seaweed than chocolate than usual. I’m fairly certan the water was a little cooler than usual. I’ll have to remember to keep the temperature up if I want a bowl of cocoa crisps for breakfast.

Thank you LiberTeas for including this in my HoppiTea package!

The bag smells very strongly of star anise. Although it is very strong and I don’t usually like star anise, I am finding this actually quite pleasant. Maybe a little allspice in there also?

Preparing this using stovetop method, as I usually get the best results from chais this way. So, after steeping, I can smell less of the star anise and more of the other spices (cinnamon etc), but I can also smell the tea and chicory is coming through well also.

This is a nice spiced tea, the spices are not very strong but it has an all-round pleasant flavour.

The sencha tastes more like a cucumber type tasting green than a buttery or grassier green tea taste…if that makes sense. The mint is great! I can taste the spearmint a bit more than the peppermint. As I am a mint freak – I do like this tea!

When I opened the package, I could immediately smell the Star Anise… YUM!

This has a pleasant chai flavor. The chicory gives it a nice depth. I love the flavor that the roasted Hojicha and chicory bring to the chai spices. Not overly spicy, just a pleasant spiced tea.

This is very nice! Usually, when I have a mint green tea, it is made with a gunpowder green. I’m finding it very agreeable with Sencha! I like the gunpowder too, but, this is certainly a nice change of pace.

Smooth and light-bodied and crisp and delicious! A very nice tea, even more surprising that it’s a bagged tea! Very nice indeed!

I’m generally not as big a fan of bagged teas, but this is a nice savory genmaicha if I am on-the-go, especially on a cold morning.

FINALLY A JAPANESE TEA I LIKE!!! It doesn’t bother me that it is considered the poor man’s tea.

This tea is nutty smooth and creamy. Awesome!!! It would probably be pretty good cold.
I believe it is low on caffeine because I drank a cup last night with the intent to stay awake a little longer. I was asleep after the last sip.

Happy 100th note to me! To celebrate it and my exit from the hospital, fresh matcha is in order.
Despite being a little expensive among matcha, it’s worth it for a couple tins a year because this isn’t just matcha. It’s also the only thing as good as matcha: CHOCOLATE.
The start of the first sip is much like the aroma: fresh, thick spinach and kale sautéed in olive oil. Then everything goes dark. The end of the first sip dissolves into raw cacao, flax, seaweed and cocoa crisps. I swear this tastes like my favorite candy bar, Fearless’s Super Seeds, wrapped in toasted nori. Oddly not any of the olfactory salad greens. As this cools and as usucha it sweetens a bit and gains a seawater taste. Combined with the perfectly thick froth this is a satisfying and chocolatey treat. I have to remember not to have this one before breakfast; I felt full and wired for an almost an hour afterwards. 100 for the 100th!

This is my go-to bagged tea, since it’s easy to find in stores, and is one of the few caffeinated non-loose-leaf teas that I really enjoy. I don’t know if this is because I’m an overall fan of Genmaicha, or because of the actual quality of this tea.

Yummy! One of the best for smooth mint taste.

Sipping this again. Only steeped at two minutes, and it doesn’t taste too much different—although it’s been a while, so who knows.

It’s definitely green, I realize. But roasty, so that there’s a good vegetal taste under a barley and/or cooked rice sort of note. I like it.

It had a pleasant, roasted taste. A bit cocoay, actually—reminded me of Dawn.

Packaging said boiling, five minutes, even though this’ is a green tea, but I didn’t have access to the internet when I made it initially, so I figured maybe the roasted nature of it allowed you to brew it at boiling. So I did, and got no bitterness.

I’m not sure if I actually like it or not, but it was certainly a very DIFFERENT tasting tea.

Just trying this for the first time – this is my first hojicha too. I’m on the fence. In a way, it just tastes like plain green tea, but it is smoother which I really like. I thought it might taste roasted, but it doesn’t at all. I just read that hojicha has reduced caffeine..maybe not the best choice for first thing in the morning! :)

First impressions? This smells like (roasted) yerba maté. Tastes a little like it too, but also like real tea, which is good. This looks to be a whole different brew from Adagio/Rishi’s Kukicha – both the leaves (what I can see of them in the bag) and the liqueur are a dark brown. This tastes a little like coffee, a little like chocolate, and a little like some imitation-coffee tea blends I’ve had (chicory is probably the flavor I’m getting there, or some sort of barley malt). It’s hard to pin down the flavor, but definitely interesting, and I will probably keep it on hand as a strong but low caffeine bedtime drink.

No notes yet.

I first had this tea at Paul & Elizabeth’s, a truly great natural foods restaurant in Northampton, MA. Its naturally creamy, vanilla-y taste made me crave more, but since they don’t sell it there, I had to figure out what it was and track it down. I ended up with some green Kukicha from Tao of Tea, which is good, but I wanted the roasted stuff, and was a bit chagrinned to find this at my local healthfood store, on sale, no less. It’s exactly the tea I remember from the restaurant, and it’s really good, especially considering it comes in a bag. One really good thing about this tea is that it doesn’t get bitter or nasty if it sits in the pot for awhile. Good hot or iced!

This is a bagged tea that I bought this summer on a lark.

I brewed this according to the manufacturer’s instruction: boiling water, steep for four minutes. Both of which seem reasonable to me.

The tea brews with a pleasant aroma of cinnamon, anise, and that “chai spice” smell that reminds me of ginger and cardamon.

While this is described as a roasted green tea, I couldn’t discern any flavor of green tea, or roasted green tea. I would describe the flavor as being a thin form of the aroma with a hint of mild black tea.

The flavor was enhanced with a small amount of sweetener, but milk (2% in this case) did nothing to hurt or improve the taste.

For a bagged tea with “chai spices” I would say that it was mildly enjoyable, but nothing I would ever crave to buy again. It had a nice Christmas/Thanksgiving flavor, so I might suggest that with a bit of sweetener it would go best with a dessert, say carrot cake or shortbread.