I recommend using rather lower temperatures for the tea. It is quite bitter and abrasive at the 100 degrees mentioned on the website.
When dry, the leaves smell quite a bit like hojicha. There are notes of toasted bread, hay, salep drink and vanilla ice-cream. Once wet, the aroma reminds me more of yancha (Tie Luo Han in particular). Specific notes include toasted peanuts, cinnamon, popcorn, curry leaves, and roast beef.
The tea tastes very toasty, bitter and woody with a decent sweetness as well. Because of the somewhat overwhelming bitterness, I didn’t find many associations beyond coffee among the immediate flavours.
More complexity is noticeable in the protracted aftertaste, once some of the bitterness subsides. Dominant flavours there are nutty predominately, such as hazelnuts, nutmeg, and tree bark. Later on in the session, a distinctive tree sap sweetness appears too.
Flavors: Bark, Biting, Bitter, Bread, Cinnamon, Coffee, Dark Bittersweet, Hay, Hazelnut, Meat, Nutmeg, Nutty, Peanut, Popcorn, Sap, Spices, Sweet, Toasty, Vanilla, Wood
