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

Drank this tea with ashmanra’s prompt : “Tea with three words in the name”

Another fun concept for the sipdown challenge! The possibilities are so vast! In the end I chose this random white tea that has been chilling in an ornate metal tin in my cupboard for a while. I truly do not know where I got this tea , all I know is that it is a Chinese bai mu dan. I suppose, what more do I need to know?

The scent of this tea on the dry leaf is a gentle melon – refreshing, delicate and creamy. Brewed this up in my gaiwan, only to be hit with the most uncanny watermelon flavor on the nose as well as the brew. Like, straight up fresh cut watermelon from a roadside stand, heavy and ready to be sliced into. So intensely juicy that it made me wonder if this is a flavored blend! On further inspection, the watermelon is too subtle and not like any watermelon flavoring i’ve ever had. It leans on the side of the last bite of watermelon before the rind. It’s got me wondering how good a cold brew application will treat this tea… hmmmm

Sipdown!

Finished up this tea in the gaiwan this past Sunday, it was very pleasant way to spend a day. After filling my gaiwan, there were a few crumbs at the bottom of the bag – definitely not enough for a full session, or even a small one. So I tossed those leftover bits in my ever growing Everything Jar. Gonna wait a little longer and toss a couple more teas in there before I give it a test steep. Cannot wait for whatever zombie brew it’ll produce hehe.

As I steeped this tea while doing my silly little tasks, I found it to be very soothing to watch the tea deepen in it’s golden color as the brews progressed. It gave me a warm honey flavor throughout with notes of dry prairie grass and a touch of vanilla.

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!!

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.

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

I have been trying to hunt down the ID for this tea all week hahaha. This tea is in a tin labeled Doke Black Fusion, and I know that I finished that tea so so long ago. However, from all the pics of that tea i can find, the actual tea in the tin looks and tastes nothing like it. Wracking my brain, I came to the final conclusion that it must be this cask aged dian hong that I rehomed. I have a vague memory of putting it in a tin after receiving it eons ago. Not sure if that was the move, any sense of the barrel aging has drifted out of this tea. What’s left is a very generic black tea. I’m not even getting anything interesting from the dian hong either. bummer. Into the Everything Jar it goes!

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!

Had this with friends recently, I received this tea from another friend, so I’m considering this a friendship tea lol. I gongfu’d it on a majorly rainy day, and it kept us happy and warm while we chatted the afternoon away.

This tea is very reminiscent of Nepalese white teas that I’ve had before. Soft hay, malted milk balls, a little bit of an overripe stonefruit tossed in there. A friend even mistook it for a black tea! I always enjoy unconventional tea growing regions/methods, and this is a fun one to try the next time you’re making a What Cha dream cart.

Drank this one for the final prompt of the month: “National Sense of Smell Day”

CW: Serious injury

This prompt actually makes me hella sad. I chose this tea because it was one of my partner’s favorite teas of mine. Last October, we were at a friend’s basement show and my partner fainted out of the blue, falling on a concrete floor. She suffered a concussion and almost died in the hospital. It was a very traumatic time for obvious reasons, and as a result of her traumatic brain injury, my partner can’t taste or smell for the rest of her life. once those plates in your head have shifted, there is no going back.

Drank this tea to honor my partner’s loss, and so that I can get rid of it. I’m very close to this being a true sipdown. Most of the flavors I’m getting are hefty florals from the green oolong and jasmine. Perhaps there is a caramel note to it, I am finding the thick body to have some creaminess to it. I also see a slice of coconut or two in the blend, but I get no coconut notes in the tea at all. I also think there is supposed to be bergamot in this blend, but I simply can’t tell with all the other over powering floral notes.