I love Hojo Tea and Mr. Akira Hojo is always wonderful to work with. If you've never purchased any of his tea, I highly recommend him. T...

I love Hojo Tea and Mr. Akira Hojo is always wonderful to work with. If you've never purchased any of his tea, I highly recommend him. This particular tea was a sample that came with a Kobiwako Hohin I purchased from him. Some of his teas are very expensive, but you get what you pay for. He has many very affordable teas as well. I am yet to have a tea by him that disappoints me so I went into this with the hopes it would have the same high standard as every other tea I've had by him.

Leaves soaking around the 7th infusion. Bright, plump, and beautiful.
There was 4.9g in the bag. I did not use the guidelines that are recommended on the website, but the method I used was very close since it's standard gong fu brewing.The gaiwan is 60ml.

I used 100C water and rinsed the leaves twice. The room filled with a soft, floral and lightly vegetale smell. Since I'm sitting in an 30C (≈ 85F) room, that made the heat bearable.

For the first brewing the tea had a very full, round, soft mouth feel. The first sip gave me strong notes of grass and hay. For a moment I had thought I was drinking a nice gyokuro is sencha, but much less intense. There was a small, honey-like sweetness at the back of my tongue. It was exactly as he describes on his website.

I had difficulty catching the true color. In person it has the usual light green of a "green" oolong.
The second cup was much less vegetale and the honey sweetness began to flower more. It was very smooth and pleasant.

The third brewing was wonderfully floral. A sweet, but not overwhelming taste rolled over my tongue. It reminded me of a nice, gentle jasmine. They honeyed aftertaste became stronger on the sides of my tongue.

The fourth was very similar the the third, except that the liquor was much softer and buttery than the prior three.

Come the fifth brewing and the flavor was beginning to disappear. The aftertaste remained as it was before and the liquor was still incredibly buttery and smooth.
Liquor for the second brew
I had thought that perhaps I wasn't brewing the tea for long enough, so for the next two infusions I let the leaves soak several seconds longer. I was right. The liquor was once again deeply floral and sweet.

From there on out the liquor remained deeply floral and sweet but it did not change very much. While this tea was pleasurable, at the same time it didn't strike me as anything particularly special. I enjoyed the floral, honeyed taste and the buttery feel of this particular Dong Ding.

However, something I've begun to notice lately is that greener (so lightly roasted) oolongs aren't quite doing it for me anymore. I had my first one several years ago and then didn't touch them much for the last three or so. I spent most of that time drinking Japanese greens, various whites, and familiarizing myself with the very wide world of Chinese greens.

Wet leaves after the second brewing.
As I've continued to drink greener oolongs a lot the last year or so, they've begun to lose their zing to me, again. They're good, but they lack the complexity of many other teas I drink. A good TieGuanYin can do it for me, but even then, it has to be an exceptional one for me to say it's anything more than average. I find that greener oolongs are more about aroma than they are complexity and flavor.

Rating

Overall, I'd give it an 8.5.

Part of the reason I've been drinking greener oolongs an awful lot for the last year or so is because I've been introducing my friends and family to the world of fine tea.

Japanese greens are one of my absolute favorites, there's just one caveat with this: most people detest the green flavor of a rich Japanese green the first time they taste it, so I tend to stay away from that. I understand why a lot of people don't like it, it is admittedly and acquired taste. To avoid this I'll start by giving them something less intense like genmaicha, wakayanagi, or perhaps some lower grade sencha in the event I am dead set on having a Japanese green.

I normally let my friends and family decide what they want me to prepare by letting them smell the aroma and examine the leaves.
Even though I let them examine everything I can always make an educated guess as to what they'll choose. I'm almost always right.
It'll be one of my greener oolongs or a jasmine. If they're not overly sensitive to the green smell of Japanese greens (and some Chinese depending on what I have in stock) and pick up on the floral notes one person may choose that, but not the whole group.

The point I'm trying to get across here is that I think green oolongs make for a great introductory tea. Their aroma is incredibly pleasing. I never tire of the smell of TieGuanYin and I don't think I ever will. There are some very fine green oolongs out there I've experienced and would love to again, but a vast majority that are affordable are a little above what I'd call average in terms of liquor complexity.

If you like greener oolongs or tea that is very floral and sweet, I recommend this tea. It was very pleasant and was exactly what I expected. Mr. Akira Hojo never fails to please with the quality of his teas.

If you would like to purchase this tea, please email Mr. Akira Hojo at info2@hojotea.com

Here is the pdf with prices for all his teas. 

This is part of my Sample Demolition: Verdant Tea series.  I find one of the best ways to tell the quality of a tea is to throw it into...

This is part of my Sample Demolition: Verdant Tea series. 

I find one of the best ways to tell the quality of a tea is to throw it into a gaiwan and brew it gong fu style. For any quality black, oolong, or puerh that I have had, it can stand at minimum five brewings before beginning to lose flavor. This one barely managed to, but it is nothing to hoot about. I like grandpa style as well, but I only had five grams so went with gong fu.

As for this tea, it began to lose it's flavor around the third brewing. The sweet aftertaste remains, but that's about it. The tea itself isn't bad, but there isn't a redeeming factor strong enough for me to say that it is good either. Three stars it is for this tea: average, and I'm being a little nice with this.

Upon opening the bag I was met with a nice, sweet, floral scent. I was pleasantly surprised, it reminded me of honeysuckle and orchids. The downside of this surprise is that it reminded me of Golden Fleece. I find Golden Fleece to be very floral and sweet, but lacking any depth. To be fair, Verdant Tea is the only vendor I've had Golden Fleece from and I've seen it elsewhere. I'd be willing to try it again. Lack of depth is what I was afraid would happen with this tea.
Wet leaves
I used 5g/120ml and 100C water. I rinsed the leaves once before moving onto the first brew.

The mouth feel was very robust and rasping. Considering I was expecting something like Golden Fleece and not an Assam, I was rather surprised. Very short taste and mouthfeel, though your dry tongue remember it was there. If there was no after taste, this tea essentially tasted like an Assam (Irish Breakfast comes to mind first) with a much higher astringency than usual.
The aftertaste was floral and tasted just as the tea smelled: honeysuckle and orchid lingered on the sides of my tongue.

Liquor on the 2nd Brewing
I became excited with the second brew. It was much less astringent, the mouth feel was much smoother, and both the maltiness and sweetness had increased. The increase in malt wasn't a big hit with me, but the change in mouth feel was a good sign that the tea may begin to flower into something very nice.

It didn't. Generally speaking, so I'd say 9/10 times, if a tea does not start to get going by the 2nd or 3rd infusion are either absolute crap, or average. That is this tea, if that's all you really wish to know, save you some reading time.

The third brewing resulted in a brewing equally astringent to the first, but with less malt and sweetness. At this point my tongue felt like sandpaper from how astringent the combined three brews had been. I sipped on some water to help re-hydrate my tongue and the floral notes spread all across my tongue instead of just the sides. I thought that was very nice.

Leaves after 3rd brewing
For the fourth and the fifth brewing the astringency finally began to die down tremendously, as did the maltiness. The sweetness stayed more or less the same in both brewings. Sadly no more depth or complexity to the tea.

The 6th brewing had a nice aroma, somewhat chocolatey, it was not present before. The liquor however, was now almost tasteless.

Dry leaves, I apologize for the quality
Despite this I decided to give the leaves one more try. The liquor was several shades lighter than the 6th. All flavor save for a tiny speckle of sweetness was gone. Slightly more astringent.

Overall I enjoyed this much more than I did Golden Fleece, but still wasn't much of a fan. I felt like the Golden Fleece was missing a lot of something, namely depth. While this tea had no depth and complexity, it had the strong, astringent body to make up for that, but it was no saving grace. To reiterate myself from earlier in the post, if you take the sweetness away from this tea you may as well have an especially astringent CTC Assam. That is not at all what I was looking for or expecting in this tea.

If you would like to try this tea, you can purchase it here.

Packaging for 25g For about the next month, posts that will be following this will be reviews on various samples (5g), and full size ord...

Packaging for 25g
For about the next month, posts that will be following this will be reviews on various samples (5g), and full size orders (25g) from Verdant Tea that I have sitting around. These include:

After I finish off reviewing these teas, I will not be buying from Verdant Tea again.

The tl;dr version of this is that they lied about the age of the trees they were sourcing for various pureh cakes that were being sold. If you'd like to look into it more:
Considering I am a fan of their Yunnan White Jasmin, Laoshan Black, Autumn TGY, Reserve TGY, and their customer service was fantastic, I was sad to find this out. I don't feel comfortable buying from a company that can't follow their own principals: trust and transparency. They broke my trust, so they'll no longer be on my vendor list. I do not hold any vendor to a "God" standard, and if this was the first issue that has arisen from Verdant Tea I'd let it slide. This is the second.

I don't feel as if I was duped by any of the tea or wares I've bought from them, but I don't want to take a chance either. There are many other vendors I can and do buy from. Everything they sell I can purchase elsewhere.

Sometime after this I'll make a different review post about my overall experience with VT. Up until this it was very good. If you wish to continue buying from them, go for it! My values may not be the same as yours and it isn't my business as to where you're buying tea. This second offense hadn't come to my attention till a few days ago despite the fact it happened several months back. I think this is important for people to know so that they can make educated decisions. Leaving the interwebs for several months really cut me out of the loop of things.

Until then, here comes a whole lot of tasting! As I make the reviews I'll add a link next to each tea. The date that the review is posted to the blog will not be the day I brewed the tea. I have a nice queue set up.

You're now ready to plunge into the world of tea. Since you've begun lurking various forums or reading a blog post, you've proba...

You're now ready to plunge into the world of tea. Since you've begun lurking various forums or reading a blog post, you've probably seen different types of brewing methods mentioned: western, grandpa, Gong Fu, and Brewing Matcha depending on where you've been reading.

Assuming you are brand new to tea, I don't suggest spending a lot of money on any tea supplies yet. You can get the bare basics for all the following brewing methods without breaking your wallet. I'll include links where you can find affordably priced tea ware.

If there is any one thing that a person new to tea should be doing, it is drinking tea. Play around with different brewing methods, temperatures, leaf to water ratios, and find out what you personally like. 

Western Style Brewing

Mug with brewing basket, pitcher with strainer, teapot
This is the type of brewing you are most likely very familiar with. You take x, typically 4g//8oz of loose leaf, or perhaps some bags, throw it into some hot water for three to five minutes, strain the leaves or remove the bags, and you're done.

If you don't have one, I highly recommend getting a basket brewer for a mug. Mine is from Teavana, I bought it during my noob days. It's lasted forever so I think it's worth the $15 I paid. Upton Tea Imports has a nice selection of various brewing baskets. I've heard a lot of good about Finum's filters. You can find basket filters for dirt cheap on ebay, a friend of mine bought his for $1.29.

UTP also sells many glass tea pots, but you can find pots just about everywhere. When looking for a pot, make sure it either has a built in filter or a large, wide, and deep brewing basket to allow the leaves to properly open up.

Grandpa Style

You don't get any easier than grandpa style brewing.

Best tumbler ever, leaves brewing grandpa style at 1min/6min
You take a tall, wide mouthed glass, throw in some tea leaves (but less than you would Gong Fu, which is covered next), and then some hot water. The cooler your water is to begin with the longer your tea will last.

Here's a few more pointers:
  • As said, don't use too many leaves. When I'm making tea grandpa style in my glass tumblr (12oz/350ml) I'll use 3g of tea instead of my usual 5+ grams. This helps prevent you from choking on leaves and getting them in your mouth. I cheat because my tumblr comes with a "strainer" I can stick in to prevent the leaves from coming up to my mouth.
  • Use a tea that doesn't get bitter easily. Most oolongs are good for this. Longjing is another good choice. I've never brewed Puerh grandpa style, but I've heard it can come out fairly decent. I do not recommend Japanese greens unless you like a bitter mess. Experiment and you'll find what you like and dislike.
  • Never let the water level get below half full. Top up around 2/3rd full. Try to increase the water temperature as time goes on. For later infusions, pour with vigor to move the leaves. This'll help distribute flavor.
  • Later into brewing cover your glass. 
I'm rather fond of this method. Whenever I review a tea (assuming I have enough leaf) I will have at least one elongated session that is done grandpa style.

I bought my tumblr from Tiger Lily Tea, it's fantastic and I highly recommend it. If I remember correctly it was around $20.

They don't always have the tumblr in stock, but they do have several different varieties. Their website does not have most of the teas or ware offered at the shop, so I recommend messaging them over Facebook or through the contact option on their website.

Gong Fu Cha

Gong Fu style brewing is one of my favorites. It can be done with a gaiwan or a small teapot.
Depending on the tea, you'll use 5-7g of leaf per 100ml of water. Since this is a strong concentration, brewing is very fast. The first several brewings are less than 10 seconds. You'll see this in a vast majority of the posts on this blog.

Four of my gaiwans. 120ml/120ml/120ml/60ml
Here's how a typical session will play out:
  • Bring your water to the appropriate temperature. 
  • Heat up your brewing vessel.
  • Pour out hot water. Add leaves. Place lid on brewing vessel, gently shake three times. Enjoy the aroma of the wet leaves.
  • Pour hot water along the rim of brewing vessel. If this is a puerh, oolong, Japanese green*, or black tea, rinse once, twice, and sometimes more for a very good or aged tea. Rising means pouring out the water you just poured in and discarding it. This is to open up the leaves. 
  • Pour hot water along the rim of the brewing vessel. Place lid on vessel and pour out liquor in less than 10 seconds into your cha hai (pitcher) or cups. 
  • Repeat, adding two to ten seconds per each additional steeping. It depends on the tea and your own preference.
*If you are making a high quality Japanese green (gyokuro or sencha) in a hohin, divide the amount liquid volume by five. So, for example, 200ml/50 = 4g. Or I recommend .6g/30ml for sencha and 1g/30ml for gyokuro. I usually use this. After this, everything is the same. For a visual, here is Mr. Akira Hojo of Hojo Tea brewing via the first method.

Now where can one obtain a gaiwan or hohin at a reasonable price?

Yunnan Sourcing has a wide variety of affordable gaiwans. I have this one and this one, both of which work just as well as two of my more expensive ones. YS also has some sets for a fair price.

For the full set, Tea Drunk sells a reasonably priced set. Its more than what you'll pay at YS but it still isn't horrible, all things considered. My two expensive gaiwans cost more than this set on their own.

Hojo Tea also sells gaiwans and your other gong fu needs for a fair price (scroll to almost the bottom. They're above the copperware). 

Artistic Nippon and Thes-Du-Japon [2] offer a ceramic hohin for a fair price.

Brewing Matcha

I really like the instructions provided on /r/tea for preparing Matcha. I couldn't put it better if I tried.

Fresh from /r/tea's faq:
There are probably a few ways you could make it but the the way it's most recognized is with the use of a chawan (Tea bowl), and a chasen (Bamboo whisk).
  • You start by putting hot water into the chawan to warm it up and put the chasen in the water to make it more flexible for the whisking process.
  • When the bowl has warmed up, take out the chasen, dump the water out and dry the bowl off. Then add about 2 grams of matcha in the middle of the bowl.
  • Then pour some new hot water (around 70-80 Celsius) into the bowl in a circular motion to let the tea move around and get your chasen ready.
  • Take your chasen with your thumb, index, and middle finger and whisk it in a up and down, zig zag motion. Usually you would do this until it foams up and gets a nice grassy green color.
You can drink it however you want but I would recommend not to add anything and just enjoy the flavor that the matcha offers. Everyone has different taste though and I'm a strong believer that the best cup of tea is what taste the best to you, so add anything you like!
(Thanks to /u/MisterSpencer)
Usucha, or thin tea, is prepared with approximately 1.75 grams (amounting to 1.5 heaping chashaku scoop, or about half a teaspoon) of matcha and approximately 75 ml (2.5 oz) of hot water per serving.
Koicha, or thick tea, requires significantly more matcha (usually about doubling the powder and halving the water): approximately 3.75 grams (amounting to 3 heaping chashaku scoops, or about one teaspoon) of matcha and approximately 40 ml (1.3 oz) of hot water per serving, or as many as six teaspoons to 3/4 cup of water.
Wikipedia has a more detailed guide, which also includes tons of other info on matcha.
If you like pictures, WikiHow has a less traditional preparation guide.

Japanese Tea Ceremony

The Japanese tea ceremony is called Chanoyu, Sado or simply Ocha in Japanese. It is a choreographic ritual of preparing and serving Japanese green tea, called Matcha, together with traditional Japanese sweets to balance with the bitter taste of the tea. Preparing tea in this ceremony means pouring all one's attention into the predefined movements. The whole process is not about drinking tea, but is about aesthetics, preparing a bowl of tea from one's heart. The host of the ceremony always considers the guests with every movement and gesture. Even the placement of the tea utensils is considered from the guests view point (angle), especially the main guests called the Shokyaku. (Source)

Something I am asked very often by friends and family is how I became so interested in tea. The next question is how I came to know so much...

Something I am asked very often by friends and family is how I became so interested in tea. The next question is how I came to know so much about tea. My family has begun to call me "tea-tea" after my younger sister conjured the nickname. Despite the fact I tell my friends I'm far from a "tea master" several insist I am.

How I got into tea is a lot more boring than people assume. From others I've heard that they walked into some Mom & Pop tea shop, tried tea XYZ and were converted for life. Others went to China, India, England, Japan, or elsewhere, and had a taste of a quality loose leaf.

I tried Twining's Irish Breakfast Tea. Super exciting right?

Growing up I had access to the bottom of the barrel quality tea: Lipton Tea bags and their iced "tea" sugar mix. Because of this I was sure I didn't enjoy tea for the longest time. I would load it up with sugar and call it a day. It was bland, bitter, and all around terrible. In fact, when I was little I heard of the Japanese Tea ceremony and the first thing I thought was: "Why would there be a ceremony about tea? It isn't even that good."

Twining's had much more flavor than Lipton. My mother had won this package of 20 teabags, among other stereotypical Irish things at a St. Patrick's Day event. I was sure I knew everything about tea after that. Black tea was the only good tea and green tea was horrible. It was bland and bitter, who would like that?

And then I stopped drinking tea for a while. Despite this, I'd talk about how much I knew about tea and loved it. Did you know green tea and black tea come from the same plant?

Because of this tooting of my own horn, my grandma bought me Bentley's Classic Tea Collection for Christmas around '06-07, I don't remember which. I was ecstatic. 120 tea bags, six different flavors. Who could ask for more???

I never finished them. Last year I gave away more than half to a friend of mine because there was no way I was going to get through them all. They were not foil sealed so the Earl Grey tainted the Orange Spice, which tainted the Peach, which tainted the Raspberry which-- they all tainted each other and made their already horrendous green tea even worse.

Sometime around 2007-08 I found anime. I was a weeb for a while and it makes me sad. This new found love (and lack of actual knowledge) of Japan and their culture, I loved green tea. It was the best thing in the world. Little did I know that green tea I was chugging was generic, pan fried Chinese teas.

Around the same time, for Christmas, my mom bought me a teapot very similar to this. Same design, the spout is just on one of the corners and stubbier. I was so happy! I now had a pot and a strainer. This meant I could make all of the tea. I had no loose leaf and didn't know where to get it, so it sat dormant in my room.

Come sometime early 2010 I was wandering around in a mall with a friend of mine and my eyes landed on gold: Sencha. I didn't actually know what this was, but it was from Japan (it said it was authentic and high quality so of course they're telling the truth) so I had to get it. The package said I needed to use 4g/8oz, use fresh boiling water, and let it steep for three to five minutes. It was from the Metropolitan Tea Company. 

I thought it was terrible, but I drank it anyway because Japan. I began to lose interest in anime and grow out of my weeb phase, and so tea left my life again for some time. I was still an expert though.

Around six months or so later I found myself loving tea again. It kept coming back into my life for years, and I had matured enough to realize I didn't know diddly squat. I had done a little reading on Japanese teas (specifically sencha) and soon understood why I thought that it was so horrid. The brewing directions were very wrong and the leaf quality was... not so great.

I kept reading and reading. I learned of this cool tea called Gyokuro. It was really expensive and shade grown. I learned about oolong's beyond the faux Wu Yi oolong tea bags I had sitting in my room. I learned about Yixing and the deep, dark rabbit hole that it is. I learned about the various Japanese kilns (Bizen anyone??). I discovered yellow and white teas, puerh, and a whole world of knowledge. After collecting all sorts of information over a year or so I was a wealth of knowledge. I knew how each category of tea was processed. I could tell you all the major growing districts in China and Japan. I knew what FTGFOP meant. I knew all the main brewing methods, what the general steeping temperature was for each category of tea and the appropriate tea to water ratio before you began to tweak. By looking at leaves I was able to determine if it was of reasonable quality or not. I had discovered numerous reputable vendors.

Yet, at the time, that was all in theory. It wasn't until sometime late 2011, early 2012, that I was able to put my knowledge into practice. At first, I was devastated. I couldn't pick up on all sorts of subtle notes that people said some tea had. I couldn't tell people what I thought the tea taste like other than "good" or any of the main categories (vegetale, floral, earthy, savory, spicy). Even then, sometimes I wasn't sure what category the tea fell under. I read on many blogs that as long as you drank tea every day, took notes, and continued to read you'd start to be able to talk about tea in depth.

A few months went by and I still couldn't do it so I started to give up on trying to figure out what I was tasting and just enjoy the tea. Sometime after, out of the blue, I had found I was able to talk about what I was tasting. I recognized that flavor! I knew how to describe how the tea felt in my mouth. My love for tea was rekindled once more, as it had started to deflate slowly.

I continued to grow from there and find myself where I am today. My tea journey was anything but exciting. Slow, broken, and pompous for quite some time.

So good reader, if you are new into tea, remember this: if you can't talk about what you taste too much, do drink tea daily. Try to drink it in smaller amount (less than 100ml brews) in order to appreciate and taste the tea more. Do try all sorts of tea, you never know what you'll like. Do play with the leaf to water ratio and temperature of teas. You may find you like a tea at a higher or lower concentration, a lower or higher temp, than what is recommended. Do join communities like Tea Chat, /r/tea, and local communities to learn more about tea. You'll never know everything!

Do not get discouraged. You'll get there. Keep at it and before you know it, you'll be able to talk tea. I wasn't very confident in my ability to speak intelligently about tea until sometime late 2014, and even then I felt like I still didn't know enough. Now I know I can talk intelligently about tea, but I also know there is a wealth of knowledge I can still obtain. 

However, if you are very new to tea, I don't recommend investing a lot of money into tea ware. As I did many, many times, after the initial zing of tea dies off, people lose interest. Most never get back onto the boat many times like I did, only to plunge face first into the depths of tea.

In my next post I'll talk about how you can get into tea if you're not already. I'll include everything from the bare basics to fancier, more critical styles of brewing such as Gong Fu cha.

Willkommen!

My name is Ian. I'm another tea aficionado trying to spread the love and keep track of my thoughts. Mostly tea and vendor reviews, brewing information, and information on tea ware. All reviews will be my honest opinion of the tea regardless of how I obtained the tea.

Updates every 2-4 days.

Have any questions? Want your tea reviewed? Email me at zenchaichimi@gmail.com

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