81 Tasting Notes
today has been a very stressful day, spent 2 hours at the vet with my cat who was not eating. they did a full blood panel and urinalysis, both of which looked good (he has kidney disease and I was worried that he was getting anemic, which is not what is happening). the bad news is they don’t know why exactly he has been more sleepy/not eating (the not eating/not eating very much thing started yesterday evening and continued this morning), they gave him an injection and some other medication, one to treat potential nausea and the other to help with his appetite (this one is a little tablet that I will have to give him every 72 hours and I’m already feeling anxious about giving him a pill). when we got home, Spooky started eating a little bit, and then we took a nap. now he’s been eating off and on, which is great. tomorrow he goes back for some fluids, because he was a bit dehydrated. I’m not a big fan of leaving him at the vets office though, I love the staff and his doctor, but I get weird when I have to leave him there.
anyway, what a weird ass way to drink hojicha. I ordered this on a whim (well, kinda, I really want to put this in some oatmeal), what a novel thing, I thought. prepared this like it was matcha, but instead of that wonderful green/sea matcha smell, I was greeted with the warm coffee/nutty hojicha smell. uuuuuh. they should make hojicha candles. I really enjoyed this, but I also just really love hojicha in general so….
Flavors: Coffee, Nutty, Wood
this is my favourite non-52 teas flavoured genmaicha. I’m saying this and I just read that this actually has bergamot oil in it, so if I have a headache later this is why. but I don’t recall getting headaches from this? /shrugs/ we’ll see.
this really is wonderful though, the rose/toasted rice-ness. yesss.
it’s been rainy the last couple of days, the temperature has dipped down and it actually feels like fall. yes. perfect, just like this tea. I thought I was going to have to partially swim to work this morning (it had been raining since at least midnight and stopped around….5am ish?) bc the city where I live is so used to being in drought, that rain? raiiin? the entire city like floods bc WHO KNOWS WHAT TO DO WITH THIS WATER? so, I packed an extra pair of socks and this tea to prepare myself for being upset this morning, but surprisingly it wasn’t too bad. I didn’t even see any huge puddles of water. nice.
tldr; it rained and this tea is actual banana perfection.
ah yes, made some of this to go with my late night snack (toast + apricot preserves). perfect. this time around it’s a little more astringent, but I think I maybe steeped it too long. it’s a bit fickle and I’m still playing around with how to best steep this.
late night tea, late night snack, late night perfect song:
https://youtu.be/6ygUPMG1TpA
this is honestly the most perfect black tea, fight me.
I have been keeping this for ‘special occasions’ which is something that is very arbitrary, like I made some this morning to take to work because I just felt like…NO. let’s not go to work and instead send the boss an email to say that we* are simply Not Able to come. Not Able. what we ARE able to do is go right back to bed and sleep for one hundred years. those were my feelings this morning, but I went to work anyway. my fingers turned gray because of the books I’m working on, it wasn’t worth it even though this tea is perfect in every way.
anyway, this tea is malty-dark chocolatey-figgy-goodness. marshmallow-y smelling and beautiful. I hope that one day it will be restocked, but I don’t think much has been restocked from Joseph Wesley, which is a shame bc those were some of my favourite teas.
*the royal we. but here it just means me & my cat. hhhhahahahaa.
hm, well, I’ve tried this tea three different ways! 1) in my lil’ shiboridashi, which was a MISTAKE bc these leaves have been cut really short? anyway, I made a MESS, which made the experience kinda…not great. 2) followed the directions and just did a 3 min. steep, this was delicious. beautiful copper colour, malt and brisk. 3) because the bag said: “it is good as straight tea or with milk” I tried it this morning with almond milk and it was just okay.
I think this tea just prefers the 3 min. steep, it loses flavour quickly if doing multiple steeps. it’s also a very interesting flavour that I don’t know how to describe, it’s different from other Japanese black teas I’ve had in the past, but I really like it?
unrelated: each month (?) Den’s Tea changes the free sample they send out with orders and THIS month it’s the Yuzu Kukicha + Matcha from last year and I AM SO EXCITED about it. I can’t wait for November so that I can stock up. dlakjdlajkdlasd.
sometimes I find surprising things in my tea cabinet. I don’t remember ordering this, but there it was, unopened (but for how long? how long have you been in there, lil assam?). I’ve been drinking this on and off for the last month and I really love the malty richness. this is going with me to work (iced) tomorrow.
If you like Earl Greys you’d probably really enjoy this. I, too, at one point really loved Earl Greys and making london fogs, but my body is dumb and amongst the OTHER revolts it has raged, becoming sensitive to….bergamot? is a thing that happened a couple of years ago and now Earl Greys give me headaches at best, migraines at worst. of course I forgot this and made this sample that came with my Sips by box and had the tiniest sip (I made it last night so that it would have time to cool and I could put it in the fridge to take to work today) and even though after taking that tiny sip I was like ‘oh shit’ and then poured it out, I still had the most annoying mild headache all day today. uuuughhhh. this makes me sad bc I still have a can of A&D’s Mount Gray and Wendigo Tea’s Black Shuck that will probably be pushed to the back of the tea cupboard. uuuughh.
I bet it would be fantastic as a latte too! ❤
oooh, good thinking. I’ll try that in the morning!!