Yunomi

Sipdown 36 – 2024

I don’t drink a ton of green tea anymore, but a few weeks ago suddenly got this urge to have some. I didn’t really have any on hand, so of course had to make a Yunomi purchase (also pre-ordered some One River Tea 2024 harvest).
This was the first on deck. It’s nice! Mostly getting roasted seaweed with a touch of cooked greens.

Reviewing this tea as part of the Intermediate course offered by the Global Japanese Tea associate. I’m not sure of what to put this under MY14 or this one but this one seems more fitting. One doesn’t often think of oolong when they think of Japan but if they market this more they will give other countries a run for their money.

I’ve not had a Japanese oolong in a few years so I was excited to try it. I decided to try using a shiboridashi to brew it during our class session. Glad I did. Though I’m sure it would have made an exceptional brew with a kyusu too. The dry leaf is very reminiscent of an oolong with its curled features. The aroma is so lovely. Mineral and fruity with hints of apricot. The wet aroma is gorgeous. Buttery, fruity, and tropical florals and a bit of slight butter. The flavor is high in apricot notes and tropical florals.

Huh, I never wrote a note for this tea?
And I thought I prepared it a few times! But I had 15 grams, which means like I had it just once?

Prepared as on label: 5g tea, 5 minutes, 90°C water. Definitely smells smoky, but in flavour it is rather like a coffee tea! Definitely and distinctly coffee.
Nice and round mouthfeel though.

Happy belated new year! I’ve been absolutely slammed at work this week, so this tasting note is a few days late, meep!

I’ve started a low-key tradition of beginning the year with a gyokuro. I have no idea how I got into that habit but I like it. Something about a brothy, deep, green brew just fits conceptually with both the dead of winter and a fresh start. I didn’t take adequate notes on this one and unfortunately it was a sipdown so I won’t have a chance to take more, but one thing I specifically remember being struck by is that it wasn’t quite as thick as some other gyokuros I’ve had. Not the thinnest, but also not the richest. Very middle of the pack in that sense. Enjoyable though!

Weird that this is listed as Yunomi brand tea when Azuma is the farm that produces and sells it. Oh well! I got this in a hojucha lovers collection at a stand outside a store in Kyoto earlier this year and am just now getting around to trying it. I’m on my second cup already, so I must be liking this quite a bit! It says on the package that it is for baking and lattes, so I prepared this in oat milk which is adding a creaminess to the cup. It has a nice smooth roasty flavor to it, maybe a little nutty. I can pick out the hojicha when I focus on it, but it’s easy to get lost in the comforting aspect of the overall cup. I could mindlessly sip on this all day!

A sipdown! (M: 3, Y: 53)
Last 4 grams used western and steeped just right… I wish to know how long steep it was.

Definitely the smoke isn’t overpowering the black tea itself. Which I think it is great. The flavour of black tea is smooth and almost velvet-like, a bit sweet as well, brown sugar and malty notes.

I won’t re-order right away, but it has high chances if I place an order on Yunomi again.

Sipdown 45

Did a very short cold brew to finish this off, and it was quite tasty. Added a tiny bit of honey and mixed it with mango juice. Super refreshing.

We went to a really good teppanyaki restaurant while we were in Taiwan – so good that we kept going back. The only problem is that it puts everything like it back home to shame. We’ve got hibachi places but they’re the standard fare. I love that, I grew up on it being the fancy “going out” meal for my family, but now I’ve had better and I want more of THAT. They served buckwheat tea with our meals. Tea-averse partner was super into it, so I bought him a couple of buckwheat teas from Yunomi to try out at home. What I really want to do is find out whether I can brew up the buckwheat that’s in my pantry cabinet, but that’s an experiment for another time!

So this tea! It is really hot right now, so I made a cold brew pitcher. It sat in the fridge for a few days because tea-averse partner kept drinking other things (insert eye-rolling emoji and crying emoji). Eventually I just started pouring mugs of it and putting them in front of him, mostly because I wanted to try it too! The great news is that this really can’t oversteep. It just gets deep, nutty, and roasty. Basically tastes like childhood. And really nice as an iced tea on a hot day. Partner approves too!

Made two lattes with this already! The flavor is remarkably like the other peach matcha I’ve tried from Yunomi. The matcha was a whisper of green in the drink, the ratio of sugar to matcha seemed a little more on the sweet side than the apple flavor I had a few months back. not my overall favorite, but it does get me excited to move on to the mango flavor I got!

Whoops! I’m already about halfway through this bag, and have yet to write a note about it! It’s been my daily green for about a month now, and I get pumped up to drink it every time. The creamy mouthfeel with the vegetal bite hit the spot every time. I foolishly thought this tea would carry me through the season, but it’s clear that i’ll be on the hunt for a late season sencha soon hehe UwU

Cracked this open to enjoy while at work today. The black tea was refreshing and robust, i steeped it for much less than my usual teabag method – only 2mins. Sadly, did not get any citrus from the brew, I think the black tea base was much louder than the mikan dust. before I began brewing the teabag, I could have sworn that the mikan was sugar for a moment – that’s how fine the grains were of the chopped dried fruit. But alas, the black tea was much louder. Perhaps the citrus will come out more if I ice it.

Began this tea as a side by side with the Minami Sayako cultivar oolong tea from my last Yunomi tea order. As soon as I tried the teas side by side, I immediately decided to just drink them one by one. They were extremely different, it seemed superfluous to do a side by side for such different teas. this one is a late summer 2022 harvest. The brew was much much lighter than the Minami, more akin to a silver needle brew color – almost silver. The leaves were also much smaller than the Minami, but that might have just been the sample bag. I got bright lemon and heady florals on each steep. this tea is very reminiscent of a Lishan oolong, all flower and no bite. the soup was thinner than I am used to with such a green oolong, but that says nothing on it’s character. I was not as much of a fan of this one as the other oolong.

Began my session with this tea as a side by side cultivar comparison with the Tachiho cultivar oolong I got from my last Yunomi order. As soon as I began though, I realized how different they were and just drank them one by one. This one, the Minami Sayaka cultivar, is from summer 2021. From the jump the brew was a deeper gold color and developed into a soft gold till the end. There was a light roasty nuttiness on the top of the brew, giving it a distinct soba cha/hojicha flavor that reminded me where this was grown. The leaves were larger than the Tachiho as well. The floral note that wove itself in and out of the brew was wonderfully refreshing. I’m over the heavy florals of most green oolongs, but the light roast of this tea helps to mellow the bouquet in such a pleasant way.

Happy 101st tasting note to me!

IT’S FINALLY TIME! I’ve finished all the opened samples of my Japanese greens, so i can treat myself to a new spring 2023 tea! WOOOO. This fukamushi is remarkable – it was chewy and intense for the first three shakes of my kyusu, and kept it’s savory twang until steep 5. The wet leaf was very interesting as well, reminded me of my favorite shrimp chips. I know, sounds gross, but it propelled me to make another round as soon as the first leaves were spent. yayyy tea!

Drank this for the National Coconut Day sipdown prompt!

I had tried a serving of this chai mix before, when I first received my last Yunomi order, but with unsatisfying results. Followed package directions and the chai it produced was… not quite right. Too filmy, not sweet enough, and not balanced in terms of spice, tea, and coconut. I initially used 300ml of coconut milk as directed, but it was a lil too muddy and had a mouthfeel that didn’t sit right with me. Finally got around to tinkering with the formula right before my birthday trip to NOLA. The trick was to more than double the volume of liquid and add a touch of sweet. It completely changed my mind on this mix. I love the toastiness of the Hojicha used in this chai blend, it’s warm and unique. All it took was 350ml of water, 350ml of coconut milk, plus a scant teaspoon of honey for a lil sweetness. Much better

Probably would skip restocking this tea for myself. Making chai the traditional way is too much of an annoying mess for me, and I think I’m over coconut in tea. But if you love making chai on the stovetop, this was a very nice pre-portioned mix.

Sipdown!

Taking my time with the send-off of this tea today. It was a delicious place holder while I wanted for my 2023 harvest senchas to finally come to me. We’ll see if I can wait until the day’s over to dive into my new tea. I’m jonesin’ over here!

My spring 2023 sencha came in and it’s taking me all my willpower to finish this tea before i pop any of them open. Looks like I will be finishing this tea up sometime this week. Ahhhh the restraint is killin me!!

Love when these lil green bullets go plink! into my kyusu <3
I’ve been craving a nice savory, chewy sencha; and while I impatiently wait for my 2023 sencha from Yunomi to arrive I decided to crack this open to scratch that itch. It’s delightfully green and easy to drink down. Hope I don’t have to resort to grocery store sencha before my yunomi order arrives.

In the meantime, it’s so fun to watch the lil green pellets expand and unroll themselves. There’s all sizes of leaf matter, dust to float in my cup, chopped leaves, and full length with stems. The brew has a fun asparagus savory twang , turning into a lime green brew after a few steeps. Most of the time i spent with this tea was brewed with the lid off, mostly to watch the leaves do their thing, but also because of my unpredictable office water temp.

I’ve had this style of tea before, probably in a fukubukuro Yunomi has done in the past. I also remember that I used to put the dry leaf on freshly steamed rice and crunch away… now just the thought of that gives me the caffeine shakes lmaoo

This is the last of the three sakura teas I got in Japan! I was intrigued by this one because it was described as having sugared cherry blossoms. I did notice a tiny amount of some sort of sugary lumps in there, but it’s minimal. The sencha is bright and crisp in this, but not puckering. The sakura is a little more subtle than one of the other two sakura teas, but it’s really nice. It has the lightest bit of that grassy pucker in parts of the sip and my mouth is left feeling dry after sips. I had a cup of this yesterday and was enjoying the three steepings more than I am now. Not sure if I steeped it different or if I’m just having an off day.
I will say… the packaging on this is gorgeous. The bag has sakura leaves printed on it and has strands of fiber running through the paper.

Sipdown! a farewell session of this tea this afternoon. Such a plesant and straightfoward quality genmaicha. Getting ever closer to unleashing my spring sencha……

Cracked this open as soon as I finished the Obubu sample I got from Yunomi. Genmaicha has been my go to afternoon tea treat as of late.

This genmaicha is so surprisingly sweet! The soba used in this blend has a deeper nuttiness compared to the mellower sobacha used in Obubu’s genmaicha. In addition to a subtle difference in the popped rice; this blend uses some beautiful forest green sencha, which is what makes this blend so airy sweet. The bancha in Obubu’s blend did add some nice nuttiness to go alongside of the already nutty soba.

Did not intend for this to be a comparision note, but I could’t help myself hehe. both teas are excellent genmaicha options, depending on tastes. I’ mhappy as a clam to be enjoying both!

This was my most anticipated tea in my last Yunomi order. I am a huuge smoked tea lover and the idea of using cinnamon wood to smoke a tea was impossible to resist. Finally cracked it open today and the hisssss of the compressed packaging was so satisfying. The dry leaves were large and lightly curled, and I knew they’d expand to show bigger leaves. I was a bit nervous at how intense the smoke was on the dry leaf, a little peaty, a little too backyard propane bbq. I could sense the cinnamon faintly, it almost smelled like cinnamon oil rather than ground cinnamon.

The brew was exquisite! it wasn’t as intensely smoky as I feared when smelling the dry leaf, but the smokiness lends itself to a sort of lit incense quality when playing with the cinnamon spice aspect. The cinnamon is a little hard to describe, it’s clearly there, but not in a way it would be in a chai or an autumn inspired blend. It has a veiled quality, very much present, but in a subtler, more spicy and almost numbing way, like a cinnamon oil. The combo of the smoke and the hint of warming cinnamon makes this medium bodied tea so intricate and fun to drink. It really make me want some pulled pork hahaha.

I also read on the package that they use a traditionally cultivation method called Chagasuba, which just means that the tea bushes are grown in cultivated grasslands and the tea is shaded using the grass, as well as used as compost to enrich the soil and reduce the environmental impact. Cool!

A true sipdown tea!

Didn’t realize that I still had this one before cracking open my sinchas. hehehe oops! I was too excited to get them going. Luckily, there was only about two-ish more sessions left in this sample tea. Finished them in no time. I had to be more mindful of my steeps throughout, which can be a struggle at times for me haha. Each brew resulted in bright lemon, creamy avocado, and wonderful vegetal notes. I was given a sample of a different grower’s kamairicha when I got my sincha in from yunomi, so I’m blessed with more of this tea type :)