Den's Tea

This one definitely tastes a lot better cold-brewed. The grape flavor stands out better and doesn’t come across as artificial. When it’s hot-brewed it tastes bitter because of the sencha.

The dry leaf is one of the prettiest and most colorful I’ve ever seen. Up above the picture doesn’t show it well. The sencha is very dark green, and amidst them are small pink and purple flowers. Nice aroma too (from the entire leaf).

I’ve been drinking quite a bit of this one lately, and it’s growing on me. It’s totally seaweed snack tea, and that’s a much better thing than I’d initially thought it would be. I’m raising my rating from 82 to 86.

The scent of the dry leaf reminds me of those Japanese rice crackers wrapped in seaweed. Once steeped, it’s very roasty and quite savory. There is a faint note of seaweed snack in the flavor, but it’s not overwhelming, and there’s not much else going on in terms of vegetal notes. There’s a fair bit of sweetness as well, and a little bit of astringency (which is a good thing as far as I’m concerned). It’s not a very complex tea, but it’s pleasant and refreshing. I’m drinking it hot, but I bet it would be nice iced as well.

from yesterday, just getting around to logging it.

This was pretty nice. I had it at home, but I could really see getting this for travel if I traveled more often. Very convenient. It had a nice flavor. I didn’t get a chance to resteep this one, but it sounds like it would do so very nicely.

When I opened the packet, it smelled really good. A great toasty scent.

I had to go look up the directions because it’s not on the individual packaging. Boiling water, 30s. Easy, peasy. I’m used to green tea being drinkable very quickly since it’s normally infused at a lower temperature, and I’m not thinking at this point. (I’d been drinking, to be honest, having just gotten home from the Michigan Cask Ale Festival, I was feeling pretty good and not paying attention to details.) OUCH!! Burned my tongue.

Once I let it cool a little, this tea was quite nice. It was very similar to the loose leaf version of this tea. Very flavorful. Very green. Very toasty. I didn’t think to log it at that point, and like I said, I’d been drinking, so I don’t remember it as well as I should. I just know that I would get this again, especially if I traveled frequently. Den certainly knows what he’s doing.

1 bag in my 15 oz mug.

Sipdown. I received a teabag of this with my sample set… wow, a year ago. It’s still wonderful. I had forgotten how much I adore sencha. The dry bag smells grassy and light and sweet, almost like cantaloupe. The tag is notched so you can stick it on the mug. It’s a small detail but I really like it. I really hate when the tag falls into the mug and I have to find a way to fish it out.

The tea brews up a gentle, light green. It smells grassy and sweet. The flavor is grass and a touch of roasted rice. I’ve had better Den’s Teas, but then again this one probably tasted better a year ago when it was fresh.

This was good for the morning wake up call. It had a robust green tea taste but is not unpleasant. Definitely stronger tasting than the sencha I drank yesterday morning. The tea was a bit cloudy/murky looking maybe from the powder. Good.

I seem to have a lot of caffeine free tea, not really what I’m looking for early in the morning when I’m trying to gate it together enough not to call in to stay home from work today. After some peeking around, I found this green tea. It tastes good… warm and light. Not too grass or vegetable like some greens are. Today is such a dingy day, rainy… woulda been a good day to stay home. But I’m at work, helping with testing like a good counselor.

Ok, I think I’ve officially given this tea enough tries. I tried cold brewing this time with about 2 tsp in my water bottle for only a few hours in the fridge. It was an improvement over the hot version with the apple flavor becoming more crisp and a little more prominent, but the waxy crayon feel/flavor was still there and highly distracting. So bummed cause I really wanted to love this one, but I guess I should also be relieved that there is one less tea out there that I’m constantly tempted to buy?

I couldn’t remember if it was this tea or the grape sencha that I liked, so since this was more readily available to me, I steeped this tea as my hot tea for the morning. Now, looking at my tasting notes, I realize that it was the grape sencha that I preferred, oops. This tea smells waxy, tastes waxy, and has a sort of waxy/greasy feel to it that it off-putting. It’s a real shame because the candy apple taste beneath all that is actually quite nice. I guess I will try cold brewing with the rest of it, and maybe that weird waxiness will magically disappear?

This tea comes to be courtesy of Stephanie. I actually had very high hopes for this tea because I really enjoyed the grape sencha. Unfortunately, it did not live up to my expectations. It started off hopeful with a very candy-like apple scented dry leaf. It actually really reminded me of the smell of apple Jolly Ranchers. After steeping, though, it also started smelling a bit waxy like crayons, which was confusing. The taste of the tea had that nice candy apple flavor, but followed up with a waxy flavor and a greasy feeling as well. I just couldn’t get over that last part. I will probably give this tea another shot as a cold brew, but it was just not what I was expecting and hoping for.

This and sencha extra green are the two teas I am drinking the most lately, my everyday teas. A really tasty sencha for the price, this is a treat in the morning before work although I’ll happily drink it all day. What a green tea should be, at least in my mind, fresh, slightly sweet and full in flavor.

Thanks to KiwiDelight for a sample of this tea!

This is some decent sencha! Nicely sweet and vegetal, like a good sencha should be. Mild and gentle flavor :)

Yum!

The matcha really adds to my enjoyment of this tea. It tastes fresh and more green but still with the distinctive genmaicha flavor. I enjoy this one mainly by adding a sencha to it to cut down on the genmaicha taste a little more but still retain some for novelty.

An interesting take on a cherry blossom green tea. I was pleasantly surprised by the small blossoms and lack of attempt for fake cherry sweetness. It’s more floral than cherry, but not overly so. It’s never going to be a favorite of mine, but it was worth the purchase. Springy and a fun choice for the cherry blossom season. The cons, I find it slightly sour or bitter, even if I turn the temperature down on my tea kettle and it’s a bit weak on the fresh green tea flavor.

This was one of the samples in my Den’s sampler. If you haven’t ordered this yet, I highly recommend it. Only $3.

This tea was very good. I love the toasty flavor the added matcha makes it that much greener. Mmmm. All the things I love about genmaicha.

Last night I finally got around to try one of the samples that I got from the awesome Den’s Tea starter sampler pack (for $3!).

It was tasty and totally what I expected from this: green greenery, roasty roastiness. How eloquent. But you know what I mean, right? ;D Perhaps I thought I would taste more matcha in it but it wasn’t very noticeable. The roasted rice pieces were pretty big in size and they tasted delicious as a part of this concoction.

I like genmaichas a lot but the thing about them is that they are pretty sameyish no matter from where they are. In that case, having it with a few specks of matcha, might be a nice twist that adds a bit of grassiness to the taste as well as uber-cool neon green to the color of the steep. Nice!

After drinking this tea hot and really enjoying it, I decided to cold brew it! I’m surprised because based on the hot tea, I thought it would make a perfect, fruity, refreshing cold brew. Unfortunately, I was getting a lot of the grape medicine taste that I was afraid would happen. I’m not going to lower my rating or anything, because I still really enjoyed it hot, but I won’t be cold brewing it again.

I have to say I was worried that this one would taste like grape medicine. As soon as I opened the packet, though, it smelled like grape Jolly Ranchers. Something about the candy-like smell reminded me of some flavored Lupicia teas that I’ve had, which is not a bad thing! The tea also tasted like liquid grape Jolly Rancher. It sounds odd, but it was actually really tasty. I think this one would do splendidly as a cold brew, so I’ll probably go stick some in the fridge when I wash out my water bottle. Thanks Stephanie for the sample!

T&C TTB 17/23

Tasty roasted cereal. I added honey to see if it would taste like Honey Smack cereal and it does. If I thought I would drink it enough I would definitely order some I just will not add honey because I have not so great memories of that cereal from when I was a kid.

This is my first Houjicha and I’m glad I got a chance to try it.
Thanks bluebell for sharing.

free sample! delicious grassy sencha, quite mild, yet well-rounded. not as depth-y as aracha, or some of den’s other senchas, but this is one i’d consider for an everyday cup (or three).

I have had a few green teas. For the most part I am not really a fan. Too vegetal for me. The toasty with the vegetal was a bit much for me. Not a fan.

Well, although this is better than the Grape Sencha, I still would have preferred it if I had just ordered 2oz of Sakura sencha and 2oz of pineapple sencha, instead of the 4 flavored sencha tasting set.

It is interesting, this doesn’t taste like apple juice, or apple cider…it’s more like a natural apple candy of some kind. Even though I didn’t sweeten it, it reminds me of taffy or something! Not bad, I’ll enjoy all of these cold brewed this summer for sure. Glad I tried them but I know my order next spring will be different :)