Tea Information:
Leaf Type: Green
Where to Buy: Den’s Tea
Tea Description:
Houjicha-Gold delivers a delightful and calming cup. Highly aromatic but gentle to your stomach with a low amount of caffeine.
Learn more about this tea here.
Taster’s Review:
It’s been wet and cooler over the last couple of days and something like this Houjicha Gold (also known as Roasted Bancha) from Den’s Tea is perfect for a day like this. It’s warm and cozy!
It has a delightful toasty, caramel-y flavor that I’m really enjoying. The sip starts out sweet and stays sweet all the way through to the finish and it’s a sweetness that lingers into the aftertaste. After that first sweet note, I start to pick up on some slightly savory notes. Flavors that remind me of freshly roasted corn and and a warm, nutty flavor that immediately brings warm hazelnuts to mind. My grandmother used to make cookies with hazelnuts in them and that’s what I’m thinking of as I sip this tea.
There are some vegetal notes to this but I find that with a roasted green tea like this, most of those strong vegetative flavors have been ‘toasted’ out – most of the grassy/vegetable flavors taste more nutty and toasted now. So now, rather than tasting a freshly steamed spinach flavor, for example, I taste more of a freshly toasted hazelnut flavor with notes of roasted corn.
So if you’re someone who is fairly new to green teas and have yet to get your palate to become acquired to the flavor of green tea, I think that a Houjicha like this is a good place to start. It’s such a warm and inviting flavor that you don’t really realize that you’re drinking green tea!
And if you’re new to Japanese Green teas, may I suggest Den’s Tea’s Green Tea Sampler for Novices? This sampler offers a nice selection of different teas from Den’s so that you can learn about Japanese teas as well as train your palate to understand the different flavors of Japanese teas. I purchased one of these collections several years ago and it was a really rewarding experience – and you get a whole lot of tea for $3!
Pineapple Sencha from Den’s Tea
Tea Information:
Leaf Type: Green
This tea is available from Amoda Tea.
Tea Description:
Loved by anyone who tries it, this tea is a must-try. There is a perfect balance between the fresh, grassy taste of a Sencha (a Japanese green tea) and the sweet tropical pineapple. Very natural & authentic fruit flavour and a buttery creaminess make this tea an example of how flavoured tea should taste! Great as a cold-steeped tea.
Learn more about subscribing to Amoda Tea here.
Taster’s Review:
I was really excited to find Pineapple Sencha from Den’s Tea in the March box from Amoda Tea! It’s a tea that I’ve been hearing so many positive things about on Steepster and one that I’ve had on my mental list of teas to try but one that I’ve not yet gotten around to ordering for myself. So, I’m really happy to have this opportunity now to try it.
The dry leaf looks very much like what the picture above depicts – it’s bright, jade green Japanese Sencha tea leaves with bits of dried pineapple. Some of the pieces of pineapple look a little darker – almost orange – and it almost looks like maybe that could be papaya or mango instead of pineapple. The ingredients list only Sencha, pineapple pieces and flavoring, so maybe my eyes are playing tricks on me.
But rather than actually sampling a piece of the fruit, I just poured the contents of the packet into the basket of my Breville One-Touch tea maker and added 500 ml of water to the jug and set the parameters: 170°F and 1 1/2 minutes.
This produced a very light tasting cup of tea – subtle but lovely! The pineapple is a prominent flavor but I can also taste the light, fresh notes of the Japanese Sencha: slightly grassy and with a hint of butter. There is a nice sweet and savory contrast going on between the two profiles.
And because this is a Japanese Sencha, you know I went in for a second infusion!
The second infusion is even stronger in flavor than the first was. The first was somewhat delicate and with this second infusion, the flavors have developed. The pineapple is well-defined. Sweet, juicy and very true to the fruit. There is no mistaking that this is pineapple! It doesn’t taste candied or artificial. It tastes bright! It tastes like fresh, delicious pineapple! YUM!
The Japanese Sencha adds a compelling contrast to the sweet pineapple notes. The Sencha adds a little bit of savory to the cup, balancing out the sweetness. It also offers a slightly creamy texture to the cup which is quite pleasant.
Overall, a spectacular tea – one I’m really happy that Amoda Tea chose for this month’s box! Thank you, Amoda!