Hojicha de la Creme

backlog and sipdown :)

Thank you to TeaEqualsBliss for sending me some of this tea! This is one that I’ve not yet tried from Art of Tea, but have been wanting to try for some time now.

This is an incredibly rich and flavorful Hojicha. The toasty flavor of the Hojicha combined with the white chocolate and vanilla makes for a wonderful combination. Smooth, sweet and creamy. Very yum!

This is my first hojicha tea and I must say I have been missing out! Perhaps it’s the flavoring of this one that is making it so magnificent, but I thoroughly enjoyed this tea… perhaps even a bit too much (my cup was empty before I knew it and I was shaking it trying to get one last drop). I’m getting a toasted rice with a caramelized sugar appeal to it with a dash of vanilla. Both flavors are there and known, but they don’t compete trying to win center stage, they are equals. I get a more vegetal taste that is slightly bitter on the back of my tongue and as an aftertaste, which I don’t mind since it lets me know that this is in fact a green tea and the vegetal and slight bitterness plays out well with the other flavors. I think I will have to go pick some of this up today in a nice 2oz pouch…perhaps even 4oz depending on the price hehe :-D

Found this tea from a local cafe!
Interestingly, while I’ve enjoyed flavored sencha, I haven’t enjoyed flavored houjicha as much in the past (I’ve had vanilla houjicha before, maybe others, but that’s the only one I can remember).

This begins with that familiar roasted aroma, but ends very sweet. The presence of the white chocolate seems to add some real sugar to this (though, probably not a lot). I think their description is somewhat accurate— especially in the aftertaste, the aroma and flavor are like toasted marshmallows. Pretty good.

That being said, I still think I prefer regular houjicha to this. But, Art of Tea has created a unique and enjoyable blend that, I’d guess, many would really enjoy.

Roasty and creamy. Comforting, but ultimately unremarkable. This resteeps well without losing flavor. It also doesn’t oversteep easily, which is nice.

Sipdown! Thanks for including this in my Secret Turkey package, RogersCK!

This is a strange little tea. It has a strong vanilla scent from the dry leaf, which I was going to call more creamy than beany — except that it’s really both.

The steeped tea is a cloudy orange brown and looks like an amber beer. The flavoring must have an oil component because something visible is swirling on the surface. It smells like creamy vanilla, and that’s pretty much how it tastes.

It’s quite sweet, and I’m not getting much of the hojicha. I was looking for a toasty edge and I suppose it’s there if I try really hard at the beginning of the sip. But from then on it’s all vanilla all the time.

I steeped following these instructions on time and temp:

http://theartofjapanesegreentea.com/how-to-brew-hojicha/

I am not really sure where I come out on this one. It’s not that I hate it (although it’s not really for me), it’s that I can’t figure out why I chose it. I think I probably didn’t and it was probably a tea of the month selection.