Rating: 50
Today is Festivus, and while I’m fairly certain I’m the only person on Steepster that observes it, I’ll throw a “Happy Festivus for the Rest of Us!” out there anyway.
And now I’m going to air some grievances about this tea. Sometime in the past I needed to put some extra things in an Amazon cart to get free shipping, so I decided to add some roasted buckwheat (sobacha) and roasted barley (mugicha). The packaging for this says “Black Tartary Buckwheat” by Ulthmok… the listing claimed it was Himalayan, but everything on the actual package says it is from China…
Not that I expect a lot from cheap Chinese tea left in an Amazon warehouse, but this is just nothing like the sobacha I had in the past from Japan. Is it just a different type? A different roast? The unfortunate victim of being a cheap Chinese product in an Amazon warehouse? All of the above? It is just sooooooooo flavorless! If I try brewing it hot with boiling water, one teabag left to steep indefinitely in the cup, it just tastes like slightly roasty hot water. Adding a second teabag doesn’t help much, either.
It is alright as a hot cuppa if I make green tea and throw a teabag in to steep with the green tea, producing a slightly roasty/nutty cup not that unlike genmaicha. The green tea adds the needed body and a bit of flavor backbone. But this came as a pack of 50 teabags, and I felt I’d have this in my cupboard forever at that rate, so I started throwing 4-6 teabags into a liter of cold water overnight and drinking the cold brew, which is also pretty decent. The super long steep brings out more flavor and the thinness of the brew isn’t so noticable in an ice-cold beverage. So hopefully I’ll use these up within a few more pitchers.
It was meh all around, and I couldn’t be arsed to make a full Steepster database entry for it because that felt like more effort than the tea was actually worth.
Flavors: Nutty, Roasty, Watery
Preparation
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This tea may not be good for anything else, but at least your review of it made me chuckle. The worst teas make for the best Steepster notes! :)
Happy Festivus!
Happy Festivus! That is a very appropriate Airing of Grievances. Now I want to try sobacha, but not that brand!
There used to be a house down the road that had a lit Festivus pole in the window. Made me smile every time I drove by.
Ah, I go classic, so my Festivus pole is unadorned aluminum. :-) Thanks, everyone!
Happy Festivus!
Belated Happy Festivus!
This tea may not be good for anything else, but at least your review of it made me chuckle. The worst teas make for the best Steepster notes! :)
Happy Festivus!
Happy Festivus! That is a very appropriate Airing of Grievances. Now I want to try sobacha, but not that brand!
There used to be a house down the road that had a lit Festivus pole in the window. Made me smile every time I drove by.
Ah, I go classic, so my Festivus pole is unadorned aluminum. :-) Thanks, everyone!
Happy Festivus!
Belated Happy Festivus!