Kimberley's Kyusu

Hey there Teacups! Day 6 of Blogmas is here and today I’m going to be reviewing Zenkouen Tea Garden’s – Genmai-Hojicha. You all know I’m a huge fan of both Genmaicha and Hojicha so I was really glad that Yunomi included this in the box of teas they sent me for this Teamas series. I’ve never had a Hojicha based Genmaicha before so going into this tasting session I was really excited to see if would enjoy this just as much as I enjoy Genmaicha and Hojicha separately.

I had wanted to sit and do this tasting session with my Gaiwan but with the festive season being a hectic as it is and my body not giving me much of a break at all from daily pain I simply couldn’t do it so I steeped this one western style this time around. I’ll do my best to  try and do a tasting session with my gaiwan at some point and document it over on my Instagram. Here’s what Yunomi have to say about this blend over on their website: ”A blend of toasted rice and organic roasted leaf stems”  | I love that often Yunomi Teas descriptions are quite short. I spend so much time reading long descriptions of tea over on website and I wish that more were like this and just straight to the point.

Tea Tasting Notes

I’ll admit I was a Little worried I thought that maybe because both the tea and the rice in this blend are roasted that there would be too much roastiness to this tea and that I wasn’t going to enjoy it because of that. But that wasn’t a problem with this blend at all. In fact in terms of roastiness this tasty blend is just roasty enough. It’s sweet, nutty and perfectly balanced. I love it served hot both with and without milk and honey but it’s delicious iced as well especially as a latte. It really is an absolute pleasure to drink and honestly I’m not surprised at all about that. I always know that with Teas from Yunomi I’m getting excellent quality and they are yet to let me down at all.

This blend also compliments meals very well so I would recommend drinking it along side lunch or dinner. The hojicha unlike others I’ve had is much more of the savoury side and it has a subtle bitter note while the rice adds a nice natural sweet note that rounds off each mouthful perfectly. I can see myself drinking a lot of this throughout Christmas because its a great grounding drink towards the end of the day, it will be perfect to have after Christmas dinner and a welcome break from all the food over the festive period as a whole.In terms of mouthfeel its smooth but not as light as other Hojicha I’ve had. This one bridges the middle ground between a light and heavy mouthfeel but that’s not a bad thing at all. It has a nice rich brown, caramel colour liquor and a toasty aroma. All in all I really enjoyed this tea (I totally knew I would) and I’m really thankful I was given the chance to try it and feature it during this series. I’m so glad I could start of my Genmai-Hojicha journey with a blend of such great quality. I’ll definitely order more of this in the future as I know it will be a great tea to have in my collection.

Overall Teacup Rating: 5/5

If you want to find out more about Yunomi Tea and purchase some of this fantastic tea for yourself, you can do both here. As always if you have any questions at all either stick them in the comments or send them to me on Twitter/Instagram @teaisawishblog and I’ll answer them all as soon as I can.

Speak to you all again soon. Happy Steeping – Kimberley

*The tea featured in the post was gifted to me for the purpose of this review. All opinions are my own and have not been paid for.*