Obubu Tea

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Tea peeps? This tea is FREAKING BEAUTIFUL!

This is a new tea for me, and from what I was told from the tea seller, yunomi.us, this is a very traditional japanese flavor. Ehh! A Challenge! An Adventure! Lets go!

Dry leaf, these pretty blossoms smells like pickles. Oh boy! Most likely they smell like this since they are salt pickled cherry blossoms.

The taste? I get a cute kiss of a sweet cherry taste that is floral. The sakura tea’s flavor flutters softly towards a more savory flavor that’s a little salty. The more I sip away, the more stronger and floral this tea gets.

Full review with lots of gorgeous pictures on my blog, The Oolong Owl http://oolongowl.wordpress.com/2013/04/03/sakura-tea-from-yunomi-us-tea-review/

I can’t believe I never logged this tea! I’ve had it for quite some time and although it says that the expiration date is 6 months after shipment, these smell beautiful much after that. This is a truly beautiful tea. In the back the tiny flowers have a smell of light umeboshi, salt, plum/cherry, and floral hints. It is simply amazing to watch them steep. I wish I had a decent camera because you can see the veins in the translucent skins of the flower petals. As much as I enjoy watching blooming teas, this feels much more organic. Since I couldn’t find any official steep times quickly I treated this very similar to an herbal. I used only 6oz of tea for one slightly larger and one medium blossom.
Once steeped this actually has a much strong smell than expected. It has a very light liquor that reminds me of white wines. It has a very unexpected ume plum smell. It is very distinct and reminds me of my favorite Japanese ume gum. Any sense of floral smell is very subdued. The flavor is very much the same, very light, subtle, and most of the flavor is on the back end of the sip. It is a very fun and amazing tea that I would advise people try at least once.

Additional notes: Recently, I saw a tasting note that said cream houjicha! Well, I don’t have a cream houjicha but it sounds delicious. I had to try this with some cream… some Bailey’s Cheesecake cream!! What?! I decided to forgo the higher caffiene tea today, just because I wanted to try this with cream. I have learned since the last time I had this one that all tea except rooibos and herbals have caffiene in them. Even though I only slept 4 hours last night, I wasn’t that sleepy. I think the steep time must be boiling and you can’t really hurt it with the steep time, especially if you love more of the roasted toasty flavor. The cream is delicious, of course. It tastes like a cheesecake, and the toasty houjicha is the delicious crust (otherwise, I think the cream flavor is just cheesecake filling without the crust.) It is reminding me of the milky coffee my parents gave me when I was three years old… which isn’t good because I only put a bit of cream in it. I assumed the coffee was mostly milk, but now I think there was only a little milk added! Yikes! I love this tea.

This is a gentle Sencha. Much less intense and bitter than most I’ve had most of the time.

This has a nice medium green.. A moderate zucchini rind sort of green.

The bitterness is very light and nicely tasty.

2g to 2oz, 15 sec. 5 steeps.

Muppetlove THANKS for this!

This is a mighty fine Houjicha but it’s a tad different than your standard Houjicha…it just has that little extra something-something.

Sure – it has that robust roasted flavor and notes of woodsy/nutty goodness but it has a sweet-mineral type flavor to it too! I like it!

Despite always wanting a roasted tea, I didn’t really have any in my stash. Rumpus Parable sent me some tea (thank you!) and this happened to be one of them! I really like it! I wonder if it has caffiene though? The steep color IS a beautiful amber color. I like it for the steep color alone! The flavor is roasty, toasty and surprisingly sweet (and I steeped it hot and for a while). Good stuff!

Sending some to Azzrian but couldn’t pass up a cup while doing so! Woot!

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So I have been wanting to buy some matcha for a long time. I needed the whisk and the bowl. Steepter gave me the whisk and small scoop and this little taster of matcha.

My first time making it went well I think. No lumps and nice an frothy. It is has a nice gassy taste to it, but a little bitterness as well. I have had other matcha that was a bit sweeter then this, but all in all not bad. Might make a latte with this.

I have to say what I know about matcha is pretty much nothing. I’ve been resisting the urge to get the whisk because I wasn’t sure I needed a new toy. So I was happy to find one in my Steepster select box, along with a sample of this matcha.

We did get a little card with instructions, which were easy to follow. Yesterday morning I whipped up two batches of it, it took me a bit to get the hang of the whisk but that’s ok. By my second attempt, I noticed the matcha was nice and frothy. But I do see needing a matcha bowl in my future. :)

It’s a very nice, green bundle of joy. The tea is very flavorful, grassy and has a bit of bitterness. This morning I blended some with raspberries and soymilk. I found it needed a touch of sugar. Most of my experiences with matcha have been that they are slightly bitter so that isn’t unusual. I can see how this will be great for making smoothies! And for cooking!

Thanks to Steepster and Obubu for this fun treat!

Just tried this at 185 degrees, 10 seconds. It was Very green and Very savory. There was a almost-not-there sweetness, too, but as said it was barely there. I like it much better than last try.

Second steep, 15 sec: bitterness is coming out strong, but it’s still good.

Third steep, 15 sec: The bitterness is lighter and I’m mostly getting the vegetal flavor.

Fourth, 15 sec: This one is a much gentler steeping. The flavors are more muted and lighter on the tongue.

And so on as I keep trying it! Fiddling with it this way I like it MUCH more than I did the first way I tried it. I’m learning to not follow the website’s steeping instructions and follow my “standard Japanese greens steeping” method of trials and errors.

This isn’t a favorite but I AM glad I got so much of it from my Club membership shipment. I can try it all sorts of temps and steeps and not worry about running out. A good tasting tea to play with!

Very nice, and quite different from other Japanese Senchas I’ve tried. This tea is very much like the description depicts: it starts off with a savory bitterness which wanes into a smooth sweetness toward the tail, and then there is an astringency that cleanses.

I enjoy this for how different it is. It is probably not a Sencha I’d drink every day, but, it is one that I’d enjoy on occasion, and it would definitely make a pleasing palate cleanser after meals.

I wanted to make this tea over two and a half hours ago, but I’ve had a sleeping kitty on my lap. How could I move and force him to get up when he’s soooo cute? Cutest kitty on the planet!

He must be super tired or super comfortable, because he won’t budge despite my yelling. Why am I yelling? Well, you see, I’m watching 24. If you’ve seen 24, that’s enough of an answer right there. If not, Sean Astin just walked on screen. Without pausing to think, I shouted, “IT’S SAMWISE!!!!!!!!!”

Frodo, my kitty, jolted awake on my lap and then calmly laid his head back down and promptly returned to napping. In case you couldn’t already tell, I’m a wee bit obsessed with The Lord of the Rings. But Frodo didn’t seem fazed by my outburst, so I had to wait him out for another 40 minutes before making this tea.

I can say though that the wait was definitely worth it! The brewed tea aroma is roasty toasty houjicha! Ah, how I love roasted green teas. Oh yum! It’s just so yummy! I’m getting caramel and almond notes, and a bit of milky creaminess too.

This tea is awfully tasty for being nearly one year old. This is renewing my love of houjicha. I’ve been drinking a crappy, minced, bagged version of houjicha lately, and I’ve gotten sick of it. I’d forgotten how wonderful real, fresh houjicha is.

For those of you that haven’t tried houjicha before, GO! DO IT NOW!! BREW PEOPLE BREW!!! But really, try it! It’s nothing like regular green tea. The grassy vegetal flavor is roasted right out of the leaves, and it turns into a soft, mellow, toasted cuppa. Soooo good! Thank you Mercuryhime for yet another amazing tea experience!

I tried to rebrew, but I just couldn’t like this tea. It tasted one dimensional to me. Mostly twigs, like a kukicha, which I am not the biggest fan of either. To each their own.

A very mild genmaicha. The rice flavoring is nice and lightly toasty. I prefer greener tasting, like Den’s Tea. I’ve been wanting to sample this, since the rice is different than other genmai based teas. Is this sticky rice?

This is slight sweet with a somewhat hay-like flavor. It’s moderately dark and has a short finish. It’s a light tea, not strongly flavored but pleasant.

Wow this tasted horrible. Just green bitterness, no sweetness at all.

I just received this sample as part of the Owners Club Gift. I don’t like it at all. Very green and bitter. I tried it using the warm and then standard methods of steeping and didn’t care for either outcome.

Another from my Steepster Selects box!

I was hesitant with this one because of the smokiness. I’ve smelled a few off-puttingly strong smoky black teas before and didn’t like that at all, so I was wary of a smoky Houjicha. I really shouldn’t have been. This is delicious. Absolutely delicious. It is perfect on a dreary cold afternoon (we get a lot of those in Halifax this time of year), and the roasting takes the caffeine out so that makes it great in the evenings as well. It steeps up beautifully and with no bitterness that can sometimes happen with other greens. The smoky flavors are muted in the steeped tea, but are still there in a sweet delicious way.

I think this one might be one of my new favourite greens. SUPER glad to have received this one since I know I would have by-passed it simply because of the smoky roast if I had come across it in a tea shop.

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The final of the three teas from the December Steepster Select Box. A very good Houjicha, I’ve tried a couple of the Houjicha teas from Obubu but this is my first experience with the smoky roast. I am not usually fond of strong smoky flavors, but it works very well with the roasty toasty flavor of the houjicha, and I am enjoying this quite a bit. The smokiness really stands out.

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Im not really getting smoke some from this. It reminds me of charcoal roasted Tung Ting. I was expecting something else I guess.It might also be me. My allergies are flaring up a bit so I can’t really smell. I will probably have to try this again when I feel a little better. I just could not wait to try it…