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This is one of the most interesting and delicious oolongs I’ve ever had.

The dry leaf fragrance is roasty with a hint of cannabis.

Again I steeped 2g in my 50ml gaiwan in 96C water for 1min.

The flavour of the first steep is complex – coconut, roasty, honey, granola, brazil nuts and dates. This is amazing, I love it. The finish is fairly long and carries the sweet notes through.

Second steep, 1min again, is quite smokey, almost like cigarettes except not unpleasant. The second steep lacks the complexity of the first.

Third, the complexity comes back with a layer of orchid.

I got I think five or six steeps out of this, but the first was by far the best and most interesting. I wish more of the granola qualities shone in the latter steeps – if I could get multiple steeps that were the same as the first, I’d be drinking this all the time.

I will need to try steeping western style to see what kind of results I get. Even with the less impressive subsequent steeps, I think I will need to pick up more of this.

This mornings cup. Steeped for 3:30 and it was malty, bold and delicious.

Finally sitting down for a gongfu session with my Kickstarter rewards. We had another power outage today (second one in the last month, and third this year for this area apparently. Grump.) so I was really craving a cup of tea by the time the power came back on.

The dry leaf is tightly rolled green nuggets that smell sweet, floral very creamy.

Steeped 2g in my 50ml gaiwan with 96C water. The package directions recommend 3g for 150ml, but 1g just seemed like such a tiny amount of tea for this. I think 2g was a good choice.

Steeped leaf has a surprising smell of brown sugar and kale, but the tea soup is pale yellow and both tastes and smells like the dry leaf.

First steep for 1 min is floral, fruity and creamy, with a slight tang on the finish. It has a medium body.

Second steep for a minute again has a slightly tart note on top of the orchid and creaminess, though is otherwise very similar to the first steep.

Reading the tasting notes in the description, I definitely see how this tea evokes fresh air. It’s got this sort of quality that’s both light and substantial – hard to describe, but quite lovely.

This was pretty consistent through four steeps. For my fifth I reheated my water (I’d just been pouring from my kettle as it cools) and ended up with a nice caramel note and a not so nice melted plastic note. I was hoping a sixth steep would be good but now there’s a weird cardboard taste coming through.

I’m not sure what happened here. The first four steeps were lovely and definitely worth drinking, but I think I’m done now.

No detailed notes on this one, but I am really into these malty Darjeelings. Quite a nice one.

Meh, this is a pretty middle of the road Darjeeling. No real muscatel notes that I picked up, just that sort of spiced, ashy taste I sometimes get from Darjeelings. I’ll try it again with slightly cooler water next time. 93C seems to be my sweet spot for Darjeelings.

What a stressful day. This is one of my dependable go to teas when I need something easy to sip.

Today’s cup had a new floral note to it when it cooled down, among the usual, malty, fruity flavours.

Always a happy tea for me.

My sweetie made a pot of this today, but I really wasn’t feeling it. I couldn’t really put my finger on any of the notes in the tea, aside from there being a bit of a bitter undertone and it tasting really different from other green teas.

This is a cool tea, but looking at my previous note, I see that I observed that it’s not an easy sipping tea, and I’ll concur with my previous conclusion. I think next time, gong fu and a small quantity.

Another really lovely flavoured houjicha courtesy of Yunomi.

I had my first experience with noting the flavour of osmanthus just the other day, when sampling Tea Ave’s osmanthus oolong. It was really nice to have that experience to compare this to.

This has a lovely osmanthus flavour – that slightly floral, sweet, peachy flavour. It combines beautifully with the roasty notes of the houjicha. I didn’t notice much in the way of orange, but I also didn’t miss it either – this seemed just right, and well balanced just as is.

I’m really excited to try more flavoured houjicha in the future. They two I have from Yunomi are just delicious and a very unique tea experience.

I’m not much of a houjicha person – I’m just starting to appreciate roasted teas more – but when I saw these flavoured hoijicha on Yunomi and then reviews here, I was really intrigued.

This is really excellent. The dry leaf is rich and roasty smelling, with a note that keeps making me think really milky milk chocolate, but I don’t think it’s actually chocolate.

I’ve tried this twice, once steeped per the directions on the packet – 2tsp, 2min, 90C, and once as a latte, 2tsp, 94C, extended steep and then into the blender with sugar and warm milk. It is awesome both ways.

The flavour of it is just so soothing and relaxing. It’s sweet and delicately roasty, with that same note that I want to associate with chocolate, and then there’s a lovely flavour of roasted pumpkin seeds (shelled) and just a hint of zucchini.

I’m really into this as an evening drink. It feels like the perfect thing to sip while winding down.
Thank you to Yunomi for the sample!

I had a pot of this tea today with brunch and it was amazingly mediocre. One tea bag was not enough to make a pot, so it was weak and watery. A fair bit of cream and sugar made the whole thing passable, but bleh. I really wish more restaurants would serve decent tea.

On the bright side, the rest of brunch was fantastic! We went to Neechi Commons and had the Talia breakfast, which is a skillet with really good fried potatoes, bacon, kale, mushrooms, onion and red pepper, topped with poached eggs, and fresh fruit and toasted bannock on the side. It was wonderful.