Hoku

I don’t think I’ve ever noticed how much weird stuff is in this sachet. Not only the green oolong balls and some flower petals, but chunks of dried pineapple, a ton of little silver dragees, pink peppercorns, and some bizarre spiky light blue candy thing (?).

I accidentally steeped this a little longer than I normally would but it seems to have suffered no ill effects. Lupicia’s flavored oolongs seem to be remarkably robust to differences in steep time and temp. This certainly makes them good traveling teas! I know I can take this oolong sachet with me and not have to worry about fussing with water temps or things like that.

I tend to like Lupicia’s flavored green oolongs and this one is no exception. It’s like their pineapple oolong, but instead of pineapple and coconut it’s pineapple and guava. So it makes a fruitier and more refreshing cup rather than the creaminess that the coconut brings. Also I love guava so it’s extra awesome. I would love to have enough of this to try cold steeping it as well because I bet it would be outstanding. Maybe I’ll be able to pick some more up eventually!

TTB Tea #13:

Another tea that isn’t on the website. I’m glad it’s here though because the tiny and tightly scrunched oolong leaves could almost be mistaken for green unless inspected carefully.

1 bag (3.4g)/6oz water.

In addition to the leaves, I can see yellow strands of something I assume to be flower petals, pink pepper corns, and silver balls… odd. The aroma is very fruity with a hint of floral.

After 3 min. the liquor is a medium peachy golden color… the kind that is lovely in a tea cup, but ugly in 1970’s flooring lol.

The aroma is that of pineapple and peach… I’m assuming the “peach” is guava- I have no clue what guava smells or tastes like.

The flavor is exactly what you’d expect from the aroma. Fruity, but not overly sweet… kind of the difference between fresh pineapple and canned. This is fresh. You can almost taste the firm texture of the fresh pineapple. The fruityness is grounded by a smooth, light oolong base. Quite lovely!- and I don’t even especially like fruity teas… or fresh pineapple for that matter lol.

Holy Fruit Salad, Batman! Thats what this smells like, a fruit salad on a summers day. This is a sample of some Hawaii only tea that was brought back from a recent trip. Generally I like it. Its very interesting in the sachet, with little silver balls and whatnots. It tastes a bit like a fruit salad as well, which makes a good tea for a morning like today, where the temp is going to be way up high. A refreshing oolong.

Hoku is a Hawaii exclusive and I have to say it does reminds me of Hawaii. It is a light flavor tea, you have to steep it in hot water for more than 5 minutes to let the flavor out. I think it’s best for cold-infused tea, rather than hot tea. The smell of tea is remarkable, it’s floral, sweet, like sitting in a flower shop. I personally like to drink it after dinner since it’s Oolong (less caffeine) and make me relax, a lovely bedtime tea :)

Sipdown (510)!

Many thanks to Kittenna for sending some of this my way! I was very excited to try it; Lupicia teas are certainly not the most convenient thing to get a hold of in Canada which is so sad because they’re generally SO GOOD. This one in particular really seemed like something I’d enjoy though; an oolong with pineapple and guava!

Honestly, the most interesting thing about this tea for me may actually have been the super unique looking sugar sprinkles/crystals in the blend. I’m usually pretty neutral about sprinkles in my tea, but these things were damn stunning! I did take a photo for my Instagram and I think you can kind of see them in the photo? But very unique, for sure.

Photo: https://www.instagram.com/p/Beq_ogoF7vC/?taken-by=ros_strange

Flavour wise… This was pretty good!

I wasn’t actually sure if I liked it at first because it does come off initially as very highly floral, and those notes can be a little overwhelming right off the bat. However, once I had kind of acclimated to that wave of floral top notes I was really able to get into the rest of the profile and deeply appreciate the tropical fruit notes. This one is certainly pineapple flavoured – that much would be very obvious even if I didn’t know what was in the blend prior to steeping it up. It is weird though because it was a very sweet, and almost candied tasting pineapple but at the same time had a lot of the freshness and natural taste of pineapple juice. So, sort of like having a foot on either side of that line.

As for the guava, I do think it was present in the profile but certainly not as heavily as the pineapple and not in a way that I think would be clear if you weren’t already familiar with the ingredients. It was certainly more of an undertone, and I think if it did anything at all it was just add a little contrast to the floral aspects and depth to the overall tropical profile. Still pleasant, but not the star and those guava notes, in my opinion, shouldn’t be the reason you get this tea because I think if you’re hoping for those element then you will be disappointed.

Overall? A very nice tea though! I greatly enjoyed the cup and it’s something I’d really happily drink again if it was more available to me from here in Canada.

Even 3 years later, this tea is still good. I picked this up from the Ala Moana store in Honolulu in 2011. It has a nice pineapple and guava taste at the end with a clean oolong taste up front. It is naturally sweet, but doesn’t have the complexity in flavor that most oolongs have.

oh dinosara even if i hate all the other teas in our swap…this one makes it worth it. I am loving this tropical taste. Lupicia does flavoured oolongs in such a way that i love them. the pineapple, guava delicious yummy taste to this is everything i wanted it to be. EVERYTHING.

Another Hawaiian flavored tea bag from Lupicia. At first when I opened the packet and took out the sachet, there looked like there wasn’t enough in there. Lo and behold… after steeping the bag was full, the leaves really plumped up and unfolded nicely. The tea has a light fruity scent both before and after steeping. The taste is mildly fruity too, it is nice in this tea I get the tea taste and its not over powered by fruit. It doesn’t need sugar to make it taste good but with sugar added, the fruitiness comes out more. When I looked at the dry bag, it looked like there was a couple konpeito candy pieces too so added sugar is not necessary.

I’ve been to Hawaii only twice, but after buying a small tiny tin of this the first time, I learned my lesson and bought 150g the second time around. This tea is just phenomenal. The quality of the oolong is out of this world. This is a very, very fresh tasting tea. It’s sweet but not too sweet. Fruity, but not like an herbal/tisane.
There are tiny little confeito candies in the tea, probably flavoured with juice, which really gives it that sweet flavour. This tea needs no extra sweetening, it’s really quite fabulous without any added sweetener. My friends who don’t even drink tea are always impressed by this one as well. I think it’s one of my favourite oolongs. Lupicia really knows how to do oolong well.

In the tin, Hoku is a tightly rolled green oolong with yellow flower petals, pineapple chunks, green sugar bits, pink peppercorns, and tiny silver balls that represent the stars that are Hoku’s namesake. The scent is pure tropical fruit, and the visual and the scent together are perfect for a Hawaiian tea.
This makes a medium yellow brew, with a lovely tropical fruit aroma. Unsweetened, the flavor is a medium oolong with a little fruit – most of the fruitiness is in the scent. Hoku practically begs for a little sweetener to accentuate the tropical fruit flavor. I think this would also be nice iced.