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Sipdown Sad to see this one go. I had every intention of going wild during Tao’s Boxing Day sale. In fact I had been planning my order since their Christmas in July sale! But my cupboard is honestly out of control and I knew I should be placing any large orders. Yay for self control at least.
I finished off most of this as a celebratory pot when I go my cast removed, and I saved just enough for one last cup. Decided to bust it out today for no reason in particular. Still delightfully sweet and lovely. Hopefully they’ll do the sale in July again so I can pick up a bit more of this.

Yum! This is quite tasty. The ginger in here is more like a candied ginger rather than fresh or dried/grated ginger. Not artificial at all, just lacking that bite you get fresh. I made it a bit light with 1/2tsp to 4 oz vanilla soy & 4 oz unsweetened soy. Next time I could definitely add a bit more. I also think this would be fantastic for mixing. I could see it being delightful with blueberry matcha and I’m dying to try it with the sesame matcha Cameron B. so sweetly gifted me.

I love the packaging as well. It comes in a resealable zip bag inside of a nice cylindrical tin. I picked this up in my grocery store at $14 for 43g/1.5oz which I think is a decent price compared to other flavored matches, and especially considering the package. I’d love to try their yuzu matcha in the future, but sadly I can’t find it locally and Republic of Tea’s website charges $18.50 not including shipping which I find a tad pricey.

While I’m mostly a black tea gal, I do relish my nightly cup of houjicha. I’ve been wanting to try these flavored houjichas for ages, but they were out of stock for quite some time. And when they came back Yunomius sadly removed the sample option. Cameron B. came to my to my rescue and generously sent me some samples. I’m trying to drink all my swaps/samples in the order I got them, but I decided to cheat and treat myself with one of these.

I’d had a houjicha + mint blend before and wasn’t super fond of it. The mint was too strong and the houjicha wasn’t of the best quality. But it sounded like a promising blend, so I was curious how it would work in this instance. The leaves seem to be a mix of regular hojicha and hoji-kukicha (my favorite!) and there are cute little silver balls hanging out in the mix. Sprinkles? Steeped a tsp for a bit over 2 minutes at 190ºish.

Yum! This is quite nice. The chocolate is creamy and melds right into the roasty houjicha. The mint is thankfully not overwhelming, but it’s barely noticeable. Just a refreshing bit of brightness. Not bad at all, but not really mint chocolate. The website recommends adding milk which sounds odd to me, but why not give it a try.

Added a splash and unsweetened soy and… yum! Surprisingly nice. The chocolate is very creamy and it tastes super nutty. I really like it! Sadly the mint is pretty much completely drown out, but it’s very tasty. Overall I really enjoyed this and will definitely consider picking up a package for myself. I do think it would be improved with more mint, or as a straight chocolate houjicha. But as-is it’s quite nice.

Oh, man, this stuff is amazing! If you’ve had the Organic Dian Hong from Dragon Tea House, this tastes exactly like that but… white. The same deep almost savory thick malty sweetness that just coats your mouth with every sip. It’s amazing. Also bit of a cinnamon type spice and wheaty malt, and there’s some fruity brightness hiding out in there too. A bit cantaloupe-esque, but not quite.

These types of leaves are a bit difficult to measure, so I just dropped a bit into my little teapot until it was about 1/3 full. Steeped 15s and 20s so far with almost boiling water. Perfect! I imagine this is a difficult one to mess up.

The stock is looking a bit low on the website. Even though I’ve only had one cup I’m seriously considering ordering more right away. This is one of the best teas I’ve ever had.

Sipdown I sent the rest of this to a Steepster pal, but held back a 1/2 tsp for myself since I had forgotten whether or not I wanted to order it. Turns out, yes! I definitely want more of this delightful tea. It’s sweet and mellow with a distinctive honeydew flavor. As it cools off the honeydew slips into cantaloupe which I think is just as delightful. I actually don’t find the sencha too vegetal or savory for the flavorings, but I steep for a very short time which may help with that. Bird Pick offers this up in sachet form which I think would be a good option, as I tend to drink greens around bedtime and don’t love dealing with cleaning up my steeper late at night.
Thanks again to Bird Pick for the free sample of this, I’m excited to try more from the company.

I really wanted to try some Bulang so I decided to place a small order with puershop to pick up a few samples to try. They arrived this afternoon and I randomly chose this one as my first. One thing I noticed was that all of the samples had such pretty looking leaves. Long and twisty with some fuzzy tips. The kind that I love watching grow in my glass teapot.

Steeped about 5.5g in 120mL. Overall quite nice. The first two steeps give the lightest bit of stone fruit at the end of the sip, mainly tasting of generic vegetal sheng flavor, with a touch of bitterness. Much less than I’d expect from a 2013 though. Generally I steep my sheng with boiling water, but for the next steeps I let it cool off a bit and was rewarded with a much smoother tea. Definitely the way to go with this one.

The qi is surprisingly nice. Earlier I actually thought I was lightheaded from not eating but… no. I’ve eaten since then and after drinking another steep I’ve gotten the same feeling. Interesting.
Great price as well. It’s not the tastiest tea I’ve ever had. But it’s an easy one to sip, and considering the price and lovely qi I’ll definitely consider a full cake of this somewhere down the line.

Steeps – rinse, 10s, 10s, 15, 15s,

Apparently Steepster somehow deleted about 50% of the review I made for this one last night, and it no longer makes any sense. I can’t seem to get edits to stick either so here is what I remember to be missing…

This is a really lovely sheng. Sweet, not at all bitter and quite fruity. The Finest Brew Co. mentions apricots, but I got nice ripe juicy pear. There’s also sugarcane and a nice vanilla bean ending. It has a lovely qi as well.

Steeps so far… 10s, 10s, 15s, 10s…

Oh, very nice! I’m only on my second steep and the ball has barely begun unfurling so I’ll have to give a full review later. But so far I’m loving Nice qi as well.

I’m so very impressed with the pu-erhs I received from The Finest Brew Co. and am totally bummed they sold out before I could pick some more up in their New Year’s sale.