Roasted Green Tea

A sipdown! (M: 15, Y: 15)

And this is again a very sad sipdown. This tea is lovely, very forgiving steeping paramters and yet so wonderful. I had roughly 6 grams left, so decided to use all the leaf for my western steeping.

I got so wonderful cup of tea, full of caramelised sugars from the leaves, hints of roasted and chocolate notes, some smooth and toasted notes; even 5 minutes steep did not brought any harsh and rough notes.

If anything… I will miss that forgiving steeping parameters. You can use any water temperature, I did 90°C — 3 minutes and 95°C — more than 5, but less than 10 minutes and both steeps were equally good. Also, it is low in caffeine, so definitely good for evening drinking too.

No, I am not crying. My eyes are just sweating.

Courtney nailed it with her description of this tea – it’s a chocolate-smelling hojicha. It smells like a chocolatey black but when brewed, it’s warm and toasty. Standard hojicha flavor and a good quality hojicha at that. It has a smooth, gentle roast that’s very comforting. Tastes wonderful on a cold morning.

This smells so roasty it’s almost chocolate-y. The taste is very hojicha-like. There is the same roasty flavour in the taste, with a lightness that makes it easy to drink.

I overstepped my most recent cup by 2.5 minutes and the taste hasn’t been impacted at all.

When I hosted my friend, her parents, and her SO over for Canadian Thanksgiving (my own family had ditched me for a trip abroad), they picked this tea to pair with our roast duck dinner (I love trying out other people’s holiday traditions). The roasted sweet barley notes paired exceptionally well with the meal, but the company had a hard time wrapping their mind around this being a green tea.

The only baseline I have to compare it to is hojicha or actual barley tea. Neither is my favourite go-to beverage, but I always enjoy drinking them when they’re available (usually at restaurants). I loved how forgiving and mild this tea is and enjoyed it as an evening cuppa. It will be missed.

Now I need to try the other Georgian Teas; thank you so much for putting this together, Martin!

Finally dipping into 1 of these Georgian teas. Thanks so much for orchestrating the group buy, Martin :)

The flavor and aroma are full of sweet-roasty and slightly tangy goodness. Roasted barley, caramelized sugar leaning almost burnt, toast and wood all underscored by refined grassy astringency. Earthy in vibe but not taste. Somewhat mineral texture, good mouthfeel that’s a little oily. One thing that arrested me was the color of the tea in the bowl — an alluring, deep shade of salmon with a vibrant clarity. Fresh tea, what a treat :) That’s about as deep as I’m going to get tonight.

I thought this roasted green tea was going to be a wild card but it’s really well balanced and refined. Turns out to be made with a hand that knows what makes houjicha a cup of hot comfort :)

One more :)

Addendum: brewed in a bowl today at work with dispenser hot water, the astringency was no longer in balance and the tea didn’t develop that deep salmon color until the third top-off. Probably due to filtration and pH level — every tea I drink at home uses unfiltered tap water which definitely has calcium in it. Nothing crazy but I do think it smooths most of my at-home brews.