Eden

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.

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.

This is an odd tasting tea . . . in a great way!

perfect without sweetener.