Ippodo

Very solid sencha with a more mellow, less “stand out” flavor. I guess in coffee terms, this feels is a very nice blend as opposed to a very opinionated single origin. Very nice for a daily drinker.

Nice light gyokuro. Gentle enough to be a daily drinker, but complex enough to savor every day.

I believe this is what they serve at Ippodo retail locations if you order a standard Gyokuro.

Not for the faint of heart. Iribancha is a traditional Japanese specialty tea from the Kyoto region. It is VERY heavily smoked, with an intense “smokey/burned” smell reminiscent almost of cigarettes.

I’d say it’s an acquired taste that definitely grows on you over time. I used this as a daily drinker for a couple of weeks and definitely grew to appreciate it more over that time.

I will note that transporting this tea is pretty tricky, because it has an extremely smokey aroma that is not really contained by the paper-based bag it’s sold in. Expect your whole luggage to smell like it’s been in a smoker’s house. (I will say that the smell doesn’t stay and just airing out your luggage for a bit will be fine).

A single ziplock bag is insufficient to contain the smell of this tea. I currently have this stored in a ziplock bag within a large airtight Ikea plastic container. Even then, my cupboard smelled like this tea for about a week before the smell fully dissipated.

Nice genmaicha, but is less rich than the Ippodo Obukucha.

Great hojicha, but too strongly roasted / intense to be a daily drinker.

Great hojicha, but too intense of a roasted flavor to be my daily drinker.

Still struggling to “understand” Gyokuro tea. In general, they taste to me like a very umami-rich green tea, almost in the direction of being like a lightly savory green-tea soup.

This one is interesting – IMO, it’s a bit of an acquired taste (for context, I live in the USA and not Japan), but fairly intriguing. Very tricky to serve to guests, since once again, it’s somewhat of an acquired taste and you have to be open-minded and willing to try a somewhat unique/different tea.

For a first time taste, I’d recommend either going to the Ippodo Tea locations in Kyoto (excellent), Tokyo (also quite good), or New York City (never been) to get a freshly brewed cup by the staff, or try brewing it yourself cold brew. Brewing it hot is quite nice, but I’ve found that I enjoy it cold better. (Cold tastes kind of like a green tea flavored very light gazpacho?)

Almost a perfect green tea for me. Much lighter on the roasted-rice flavor, but mixed-in very tastefully w/ the green tea. They claim they use “higher-grade” green tea leaves and it’s definitely noticeable.

Great as both a daily drinker and whenever you want to be instantly transported back to being in Japan!

Really nice, light genmaicha. Genmaicha’s sometimes get the short end of the stick in terms of leaf quality but not this guy. The flavor is nice and complex, not too sweet or too bitter, and the roasted rice rounds out the flavor nicely. I’ll be eyeing Ippodo for genmaicha in the future.

Fantastic quality hojicha. Roasted teas can be a bit of an acquired taste and tend to be a bit one-note as a result of the roasting. That being said, the flavor profile and warm chocolatey notes from this are a treat.

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One of the last of the teas I bought in Japan in 2019. The Ippodo storefront in Kyoto was so lovely, with kind and knowledgeable staff, plenty of tasty tea, and even a cute tearoom where we had tea and wagashi. I miss Japan, time to go back! :P

Anyway, I digress. This is a yummy hojicha, with a roast that’s a bit on the darker side. There’s just a whisper of woodsmoke in the background – not enough to make it taste like a smoked tea, just the right amount to give it optimal cozy, autumnal vibes. Predominantly woody with mineral and fallen leaf notes, perhaps a touch of roasted walnut as well.

Honestly, I don’t have a strong preference among different hojicha (aside from my favorite Kyobancha), so I don’t know that I would buy this specific one again. It’s more of a general toasty vibe to me, and I always have a plethora of Obubu options on hand from my subscription anyway. So farewell, tea with fond memories! :)

This is a great Sencha. I mostly cold brew it (5-10g/1000ml) and it’s so refreshing on a hot day. Subtle marine flavours like seaweed and ocean mist, as well as fresh grass. Not as strong as it would be if brewed hot.

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Hi friends! Sorry it’s been a little while. I haven’t been drinking tea much (too much Diablo IV LOL) and now I’m trying to get back on the wagon. Starting off strong with my first sipdown for June!

This poor tea is from 2019, and yet I never opened it until last month. I actually bought this at the Ippodo storefront in Kyoto, while on my honeymoon. What a beautiful store, with kind and helpful staff and a cute little café to boot! Anyway, I digress. I don’t know much about this tea, it’s not offered on their website and the package doesn’t give much information. I assume from the flavor that it’s a kabuse sencha, as it has an almost gyokuro-like intensity and powerful umami. The leaves are a beautifully deep green color and have a lovely sheen.

Very delicious tea, you would never know it was four years old from the fresh and sweet vegetal flavor. Smooth, thick on the tongue with a creaminess that reminds me of kabocha, and an intense steamed spinach note. It does remind me quite a bit of gyokuro, it has that powerful “green” sort of flavor that makes you feel like you’re really absorbing all of the stored up energy from the tea plants it was harvested from. And then the finish has some nice lingering crisp grass and apple notes that are very refreshing.

Very rich, mild to no bitterness, with no sweetness. Dissolves and froths well. A nice introduction to matcha for me.

Sad sipdown!! would love to get some loose leaf sencha from Ippodo in the future, this tea bag just hit the spot every time!

This has been my daily drinker as of late. It’s delightfully refreshing! Grassy overtones and a silky smooth mouthfeel, I love this tea for fuss free drinking at work. I can usually get two good cups out of the bag if i pay attention to my steep times – I have found that 90seconds for steep #1 and 2 minutes for the second steep are ideal. So sad that their retail location uptown is closed! They had the best matcha lattes.

Horai is a light, delicious, refreshing matcha. As usucha, I found it to have the matcha-typical floral and grass notes, with a little twang of oranges. The aftertaste is long and sweet with hints of cherry.

I love Kumpu. It is a fruity, green-tasting sencha with strong floral notes and a healthy amount of astringency. The first infusion is vibrant and lemony, and the second and third taste more oceanic and mellow. Some sencha can hold out for a fourth infusion, but this tea, not so much. Thankfully, the three steeps are more than enough to satisfy.

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Oops, never wrote a real note for this one. Sorry, Ippodo!

It’s enjoyable as a latte, but quite different from the Naoki matcha I sipped down previously. The grind seems coarser, it was noticeably harder to sift and I saw some particles sticking to the sides of the jar after shaking it with water. The flavor is also a bit less concentrated, it seems like a lighter matcha overall. It’s fresher and more grassy, versus nutty and rich like some of the others.

Still very enjoyable, just different, and doesn’t hold up quite as well to my extra creamy oat milk. I think I only have one plain matcha left, so I’m starting to look at options for restocking for lattes. Leaning toward the 100g bag of Naoki Superior Ceremonial for just under $40 at the moment. Has anyone tried the “lower” grades from Ippodo, like Hatsu or Wakaki, for lattes? I think those are the only ones from Ippodo that would be cheaper.

I sprained my ankle about ten days ago and haven’t been able to move around much. Which means that the task of making tea has fallen to my wonderful partner. It’s been lots of straight ginger tea and DavidsTea’s salted caramel oolong, because that’s what I have in safe, easily accessible teabag format. I should really get it together to make a separate tasting note for that one. But tonight I just couldn’t take the monotony anymore and hobbled into the kitchen to make myself a cup of this hojicha. (Not a slight to the other teas, it just gets a bit dull and frustrating to basically only have two tea options for over a week). This is one of my comfort teas – roasty, great at any temperature, and just an all around workhorse of a hojicha. There’s only a handful of teas that I keep perennially in stock; this is one of them, and I feel its absence if there’s a gap.

Within my current constraints, I didn’t have anything quite ready for a sipdown as a latte for ashmanra’s World Milk Day challenge to drink a tea with milk. But I made a couple of lattes to honor the spirit of the thing anyway! One was this hojicha as an oat milk latte with vanilla agave. Since it’s a tea that I always keep in stock and know very well, I know that I’m not picking up on the full aroma and flavor of it. But there’s still something very comforting about it precisely because it’s one that I drink so often, and I can pick up enough of the roasty, slightly nutty flavor to trigger that sense memory. Drinking it while watching Star Trek TNG. I’ve been watching it since I was a kid, but have never before watched it in order. The GeekSteep episode on it inspired me to do a proper watch-through. It’s a totally different experience of the show that’s definitely making me realize there are things going on here that I have strong feelings about that I never noticed when I was just watching re-runs. So thanks for the inspiration, Roswell Strange and Marika!

Leaving my rating where it was.

Another sipdown, though admittedly not really because I already have another bag ready to go. I absolutely love this tea, one of my favorite hojichas. It’s roasty, delicious hot or cold, and great for evenings because of the low caffeine content. It takes sweeteners and flavorings well and makes for a delicious latte, too. This is an absolute workhorse of a tea.

Starting the new year with a sipdown of this delicious gyokuro. I had a small amount left in the bag so I made several small steeps to use it up before it goes bad rather than waste it. I am always blown away by how thick and savory-umami gyokuro is, even though I know it is and that’s why it is one of my favorite types of tea. This one did not disappoint today!

Decided to break this open for some leisurely weekend sipping. I knew this was expensive when I bought it, but I didn’t realize that one packet only makes three pots (each resteepable). From aroma to mouthfeel to flavor, though, I can see why. The moment I opened it, the most wonderfully intense grassy smell wafted out of the bag. It brews up a deceptively light color, but I got three steeps out of the same leaves in a kyusu and each time the flavor was so robustly grassy and umami that I actually had to go get a piece of cheese to pair it with to help balance it out. I went with a slice of gouda, in case you’re wondering. The mouthfeel was so thick, it was incredible. Between that and the intense umami, it was downright brothy.

I made a salad with the spent leaves. I only had plain sesame oil, not toasted, and didn’t have any sesame seeds to garnish with, but it still came out really tasty! I found it most enjoyable mixed in with the rice, so that the dressing and leaves were well-distributed within the rice. The leaves still had a fair amount of savoriness in them, and the texture was like tiny pieces of cooked spinach, so I’d call this recipe one of the few times I somehow didn’t screw up cooking!

https://www.saveur.com/japanese-green-tea-leaf-salad-recipe/