Hoku

I don’t think I’ve ever noticed how much weird stuff is in this sachet. Not only the green oolong balls and some flower petals, but chunks of dried pineapple, a ton of little silver dragees, pink peppercorns, and some bizarre spiky light blue candy thing (?).

I accidentally steeped this a little longer than I normally would but it seems to have suffered no ill effects. Lupicia’s flavored oolongs seem to be remarkably robust to differences in steep time and temp. This certainly makes them good traveling teas! I know I can take this oolong sachet with me and not have to worry about fussing with water temps or things like that.

I tend to like Lupicia’s flavored green oolongs and this one is no exception. It’s like their pineapple oolong, but instead of pineapple and coconut it’s pineapple and guava. So it makes a fruitier and more refreshing cup rather than the creaminess that the coconut brings. Also I love guava so it’s extra awesome. I would love to have enough of this to try cold steeping it as well because I bet it would be outstanding. Maybe I’ll be able to pick some more up eventually!

TTB Tea #13:

Another tea that isn’t on the website. I’m glad it’s here though because the tiny and tightly scrunched oolong leaves could almost be mistaken for green unless inspected carefully.

1 bag (3.4g)/6oz water.

In addition to the leaves, I can see yellow strands of something I assume to be flower petals, pink pepper corns, and silver balls… odd. The aroma is very fruity with a hint of floral.

After 3 min. the liquor is a medium peachy golden color… the kind that is lovely in a tea cup, but ugly in 1970’s flooring lol.

The aroma is that of pineapple and peach… I’m assuming the “peach” is guava- I have no clue what guava smells or tastes like.

The flavor is exactly what you’d expect from the aroma. Fruity, but not overly sweet… kind of the difference between fresh pineapple and canned. This is fresh. You can almost taste the firm texture of the fresh pineapple. The fruityness is grounded by a smooth, light oolong base. Quite lovely!- and I don’t even especially like fruity teas… or fresh pineapple for that matter lol.

Holy Fruit Salad, Batman! Thats what this smells like, a fruit salad on a summers day. This is a sample of some Hawaii only tea that was brought back from a recent trip. Generally I like it. Its very interesting in the sachet, with little silver balls and whatnots. It tastes a bit like a fruit salad as well, which makes a good tea for a morning like today, where the temp is going to be way up high. A refreshing oolong.

Sipdown! (9 | 411)

Man, I’ve been sucking at sipdowns this month. I blame my husband’s parents both staying with us, one after the other. I don’t tend to drink much tea when we have house guests… :(

Anyway, this might be my favorite of Lupicia’s Hawai’i collection. Not that that’s saying a lot, I find most of them to be quite generic and very similar to one another. But this is the only oolong, and it has a nice, mild pineapple flavor to it. Apparently there’s guava as well, but I’m not sure I notice it next to the pineapple. Very smooth and subtle, sort of like their Kotobuki oolong.

I’m not gaga for it, which I’m actually not displeased about, since this is one of the blends that is exclusive to the Honolulu store. That would make it a bit hard to restock! :P

Drinking this today for National Virtual Vacation Day, as I would like to go back to Hawaii, which is where I picked this up a few years ago.

In typical Lupicia oolong fashion, this tea is filled with delicious flavour and a fantastic base tea, and therefore is quite enjoyable. Someone below commented “fruit salad” and I would not disagree. I don’t think I could identify the flavours in a blind tasting – there’s what seems like a coconut aftertaste, tropical fruits, and a good dose of florals. Ah – pineapple and guava. That explains all but the coconut, which could be a figment of my imagination. The best part about Lupicia’s oolongs, though, is that the tea base is actually very present and typically, good quality. My perfect flavoured tea is one that balances the flavour of the tea itself with flavourings, and although the flavourings are potent here, the tea is not outmatched, which just makes for a great experience.

Can you tell I’m enjoying myself on “vacation”? Haha.

Hoku is a Hawaii exclusive and I have to say it does reminds me of Hawaii. It is a light flavor tea, you have to steep it in hot water for more than 5 minutes to let the flavor out. I think it’s best for cold-infused tea, rather than hot tea. The smell of tea is remarkable, it’s floral, sweet, like sitting in a flower shop. I personally like to drink it after dinner since it’s Oolong (less caffeine) and make me relax, a lovely bedtime tea :)

Sipdown (510)!

Many thanks to Kittenna for sending some of this my way! I was very excited to try it; Lupicia teas are certainly not the most convenient thing to get a hold of in Canada which is so sad because they’re generally SO GOOD. This one in particular really seemed like something I’d enjoy though; an oolong with pineapple and guava!

Honestly, the most interesting thing about this tea for me may actually have been the super unique looking sugar sprinkles/crystals in the blend. I’m usually pretty neutral about sprinkles in my tea, but these things were damn stunning! I did take a photo for my Instagram and I think you can kind of see them in the photo? But very unique, for sure.

Photo: https://www.instagram.com/p/Beq_ogoF7vC/?taken-by=ros_strange

Flavour wise… This was pretty good!

I wasn’t actually sure if I liked it at first because it does come off initially as very highly floral, and those notes can be a little overwhelming right off the bat. However, once I had kind of acclimated to that wave of floral top notes I was really able to get into the rest of the profile and deeply appreciate the tropical fruit notes. This one is certainly pineapple flavoured – that much would be very obvious even if I didn’t know what was in the blend prior to steeping it up. It is weird though because it was a very sweet, and almost candied tasting pineapple but at the same time had a lot of the freshness and natural taste of pineapple juice. So, sort of like having a foot on either side of that line.

As for the guava, I do think it was present in the profile but certainly not as heavily as the pineapple and not in a way that I think would be clear if you weren’t already familiar with the ingredients. It was certainly more of an undertone, and I think if it did anything at all it was just add a little contrast to the floral aspects and depth to the overall tropical profile. Still pleasant, but not the star and those guava notes, in my opinion, shouldn’t be the reason you get this tea because I think if you’re hoping for those element then you will be disappointed.

Overall? A very nice tea though! I greatly enjoyed the cup and it’s something I’d really happily drink again if it was more available to me from here in Canada.

Even 3 years later, this tea is still good. I picked this up from the Ala Moana store in Honolulu in 2011. It has a nice pineapple and guava taste at the end with a clean oolong taste up front. It is naturally sweet, but doesn’t have the complexity in flavor that most oolongs have.

oh dinosara even if i hate all the other teas in our swap…this one makes it worth it. I am loving this tropical taste. Lupicia does flavoured oolongs in such a way that i love them. the pineapple, guava delicious yummy taste to this is everything i wanted it to be. EVERYTHING.

Another Hawaiian flavored tea bag from Lupicia. At first when I opened the packet and took out the sachet, there looked like there wasn’t enough in there. Lo and behold… after steeping the bag was full, the leaves really plumped up and unfolded nicely. The tea has a light fruity scent both before and after steeping. The taste is mildly fruity too, it is nice in this tea I get the tea taste and its not over powered by fruit. It doesn’t need sugar to make it taste good but with sugar added, the fruitiness comes out more. When I looked at the dry bag, it looked like there was a couple konpeito candy pieces too so added sugar is not necessary.