Nio Teas

Nio Teas Advent Calendar 2022 – Day 10

This is a lovely kukicha! Very nutty, sweet, and smooth with a light flavor and echoes of kabusecha-like vegetal and umami notes. There’s a lingering sweet and creamy vegetal finish as well.

Subsequent steeps lose a bit of the creamy vegetal quality in favor of a more refreshing grassy flavor profile, but still very smooth with a light sweetness. A pleasant tea for a pleasant Saturday evening! :)

Nio Teas Advent Calendar 2022 – Day 9

I haven’t had a ton of bancha, but I find it to be a very cozy and comforting tea.

This has a lovely soft and mellow dry grass and haylike flavor. It makes me think of the warm summer sun shining on tall grass, maybe with a few wildflowers mixed in there too. There’s a nice nutty, grainy note as well, almost like a genmaicha (but obviously not that strong). I love the lingering soft and sweet hay flavor.

Cozy and yummy!

Nio Teas Advent Calendar 2022 – Day 8

I made it, the last green tea of the day lol! Apparently December 8th is green tea day, I somehow ended up with 5 of them from my 7 advents. Actually super happy to see a regular sencha from Nio today though, there’s been a lot of everything else but. Regular, unshaded, non-deep steamed sencha tends to be my preference.

Steeped it at 160°F because that’s the lowest temperature on my normal kettle and I didn’t feel the need to go lower for this tea. The description calls this sencha light, but I’m not finding that. To me it’s actually somewhat intensely vegetal in flavor, almost like a kabusecha, with plenty of umami. The usual steamed spinach is present and accounted for, plus fresh wheatgrass and perhaps some other leafy greens. It’s very smooth and silky, with almost no bitterness. There’s a hint of floral at the end of the sip.

Subsequent steeps are lighter and grassier, with perhaps even a bit more of the floral finish? Interesting how my experience doesn’t seem to align much with the tea’s description ha ha, I guess I’m doing it wrong! :P Still, a very enjoyable sencha.

Nio Teas Advent Calendar 2022 – Day 7

Morning matcha! Prepared as a concentrated iced oat latte, about a teaspoon of matcha for 4 ounces of liquid, unsweetened.

Oof, for some reason this came out quite bitter? Odd because I didn’t even use warm water. It has a powerful vegetal-grassy and seaweed-like umami flavor, more on the savory side than sweet overall. Very intensely “green” in flavor, with plenty of steamed spinach and fresh wheatgrass.

Not my favorite, just because of the bitterness mostly. The reviews on the website don’t mention it, so not sure what that’s about… I guess it’s just me and my preparation.

Nio Teas Advent Calendar 2022 – Day 6

This has a lot of leaves for a stem tea. It tastes like a somewhat lighter gyokuro to me. It’s not quite as intense as gyokuro, but it has a similarly rich steamed spinach and kabocha-esque flavor with a slightly thinner texture. Starting in the middle of the sip, there’s quite a lot of nuttiness which is nice, alongside light and sweet hay notes.

Second steep is much lighter in body and has a fresher, grassier flavor to it, along with a sparkling mineral finish. I still catch some hints of nuts and hay, but they’re much fainter than the first steep, and they’re joined by a nori-like seaweed note. Very light astringency at the end of the sip as well. A touch of floral perhaps?

Yummy tea, it’s nice to have that smooth squashy gyokuro flavor without it being quite as intense and heavy. Not knocking gyokuro at all, but you don’t always want that much oomph in a tea. :)

Nio Teas Advent Calendar 2022 – Day 5

Odd steeping parameters for a hojicha, 160°F? But I followed them, because why not.

It’s definitely a dark roast hojicha, very deeply toasty with an almost charcoal note to it. It’s not super strongly flavored though, although that could be due to the low water temperature I used. But kuki-hojicha does tend to be more mellow in general. Still very cozy, smooth and dark with woody notes that turn to dark roast coffee as I hold the tea in my mouth for a few moments.

Not terribly complex, but a perfect tea for December! Although, it was 75°F here today… (sighs)

Nio Teas Advent Calendar 2022 – Day 4

Steeped this one up in my pretty red Tokoname-yaki kyusu instead of lazily using a gravity steeper (like I usually do). ^^’ I followed the steeping instructions provided and used 150ml of 150°F water for 45s, 20s, 20s.

The leaves were quite broken, maybe because of the small sample size. I think because of this, I got a bit more bitterness than is implied by the description. But otherwise it actually tasted a bit like a kabusecha to me, thick in texture and fairly intense in flavor with a good balance of sweetness and rich umami. Smooth vegetal notes of corn and kabocha combined with the freshness of wheatgrass and a touch of apple at the end of the sip. The second and third steeps were more onto the grassy and seaweedy side of things, still with that moderate bitterness in the background.

Not my favorite sencha, but I enjoyed my session this afternoon. :)

https://www.instagram.com/p/ClwzDnHOFI0/

Nio Teas Advent Calendar 2022 – Day 3

Matcha time! Okay, so I don’t really ever drink usucha at this point in my tea journey. For some reason it’s just not my thing, I usually only drink matcha cold with oat milk. But I wanted to be sure I could taste the matcha bit better, so I compromised by doubling my usual matcha:liquid ratio and making a sort of cold matcha cappuccino with no sweetener (usually I add a bit of maple syrup). I used a teaspoon of matcha (the whole sample) and shook it with about an ounce of cold water, then topped up to 4 ounces with oat milk.

This is quite a light-tasting matcha. It doesn’t have an intense umami flavor, more of a light and refreshing grassiness combined with creamy nutty notes. The description mentions sweetness, but I’m not finding much of that (though it could be my preparation). Mostly it’s light and refreshing with a bit of richness coming from the nuts and creamy texture, with a seaweed-like umami (more nori than wakame) showing itself in the finish. There is a touch of bitterness, it’s very slight but does bloom a bit at the end of the sip.

I could see this one being nice for the morning when you want something bright and refreshing, and not as heavy on the intense umami richness. :)

Nio Teas Advent Calendar 2022 – Day 2

Hopefully this is the right tea, the card just said “Murasaki Sencha”. But it definitely looks like a fukamushi so this seems correct! Steeped according to the directions, 5g for 150ml of 150°F water for 45s, 20s, 20s.

I don’t honestly have a lot of experience with fukamushi sencha, mostly because I generally drink a lot of Obubu teas and it’s not one of their normal sencha (although I think they do offer one?). But this has a lovely, super smooth and mellow vegetal flavor. Honestly it’s not that far off from a kabusecha, it has the same rich umami notes and silky texture. Spinach mostly, with some nice nuttiness to it. There was a lovely tart passion fruit aroma to the dry leaves, but I only get a hint of that in the taste. It’s at the end of the sip, alongside a slight astringency and touch of bitterness.

Subsequent steeps are much more deep green and taste strongly savory and marine, with more grassy notes and hints of floral. I no longer taste the fruitiness in the finish.

Tasty tea! I’m really liking having a Japanese tea to sip each day. :D

Nio Teas Advent Calendar 2022 – Day 1

Will from Nio Teas was kind enough to reach out to me and offer to send me their tea advent calendar, to which of course I said yes! I was expecting it to arrive late, and yet to my surprise it was delivered this afternoon, right on time to be included in Day 1!

Starting off with a bang with a gyokuro! I honestly rarely drink gyokuro, though I do enjoy it when I do. I think it’s just an intimidating sort of tea because it’s expensive. But onward we go! I used Nio’s recommended steeping parameters that were included right on the packet (love that!) – 5g of leaf for 150ml of 145°F water, steeped for 2 minutes and then 20s.

I find this one to actually be quite light for a gyokuro. It does have that sweet vegetable-laden umami bomb sort of flavor, but it’s less intense than I would expect from my past experience with gyokuro. But I haven’t tried very many, so take that with a grain of salt. Deliciously sweet steamed spinach and creamy kabocha notes along with hints of fresh seaweed. Then in the middle of the sip, a toasty nutty note appears. I see their description mentions hazelnut and I think I agree with that, it’s definitely a toasted hazelnut though. The end of the sip is soft and refreshing, with a definite apple skin flavor mixed with freshly cut grass. There is a slight hint of bitterness throughout the sip, but it’s very gentle and adds a nice contrast to the sweetness and the richness of the umami.

The second steep is more savory and grass-forward, with less of the creaminess and sweetness of the kabocha. Still delicious, but more sencha-like compared to the first brew.

Maybe it was a bad idea to drink this at 6 PM, I’m already feeling the rush of energy… I forget that gyokuro is one of the only teas that actually affects me this way. Oops?

A great start to the advent though! ❤

A very smooth matcha. Not silky but reminds me of drinking milk. BTW you will never get a milk mustache like they have in commercials because they use other things to create that. Anyway, Milky mouthfeel with bits of silt. A very fine, smooth powder. Umami and marine notes in the dry taste. Hey! If you haven’t stuck your finger in your matcha and tasted/felt it. DO IT. This matcha is so well prepared I didn’t really need to sift it. The color is good. Nice deep green The liquid is an even deeper green. This is a matcha that could be used for lattes but there are interesting nuances I’m picking up that would be completely covered by doing that. So don’t latte. Here and there I am picking up vegetal notes but also umami. Minimal notes of milk and slight, very slight, grass.

It says to use 1-1.5 g per matcha session but there is only 2g…. So I used the whole thing.

Tea samplers are my bane. A good, good bane. But I have a hard time passing them up.

Smooth with a bit of astringency that makes it somewhat more potent. It is a briskness that is awakening but turns smoothly to umami and bits of vegetal notes. There is a bit of silt at the end with a lingering briskness.

Update: NIO Advent 2023
Mostly the same notes. But an interesting side of asparagus served with this one. This one is good on its own but I think it would also be good as a latte.

The first time I had this tea, I was blown away by how much flavor it had for a stem tea. With most stem teas, the stems take away from the flavor, making it less intense and less savory, but in this karigane, the stems only add to the flavor. This tea is almost like a gyokuro, but instead of a powerful savory flavor, you instead get a nice light fruitiness. When you cold brew the tea, it takes on a beautiful milky color and the flavor is incredibly sweet and fruity. It’s teas like this that I can drink all day!

Here is the link of the tea:
https://nioteas.com/products/gyokuro-karigane-sakamoto-sakamoto-green-tea#what-does-this-gyokuro-karigane-taste-like

Hmm, I have received a sample quite long ago. But week or so ago I have received an e-mail from the company how I liked it. Honestly I have to say I forgot a bit about this one and I can not remember it much. So I took it once again (few last leaves) and writing this review.

If you are reading this Will – it is because of you! (No offence)

On small resealable bag (as just a sample) there is 60°, 1-1.5 min. I had to buy a thermometer as I don´t want to ruin tea like this one. So, first steep – 1.25 min, 58°C or something, 1 tea spoon, 250 ml mug, ball strainer. (I need a proper teaware)

Appearance: cloudy, light green, with lots of “dust” of tea, I guess my strainer mesh is not fine enough. So it looks bit like matcha on the bottom.

Aroma and taste: Honestly, very complex. Spinach, flowers, lots of Umami. Aromas are almost same, but add a freshly cut grass. It also smells like meadow.

Ahh, I think I love it! (Keeping 100 for something really extra)

Let´s make second brew now.

Second brew is very similar: Color is more vivid, so does tastes and aromas.