A Korean made Organic Brown Rice with Green Tea from Daehan Tea.

This tea is known better as either Genmaicha or Popcorn Tea. Either name effuses the correct picture though. This brews up aromatic and comforting. The roasted notes making it into the aroma nicely while keeping the senses from getting excited.

In the mouth this brews with only the tiniest of astringency and vegetal undertones. The rice takes care of calming both down.

Morning Cup #42

What’s in your cup?

Ito En is mostly known outside of Japan for their bottled ready to drink iced teas. This isn’t without merit. They make some of the finest bottled pure and flavored teas around. Their quality doesn’t go down with their loose tea. I’m super excited to have a chance to review some of their blends.

The loose material appears jagged and choppy with greenish brown hues throughout. I didn’t note any stems. Once brewed this Hojicha produces an enticing yellow-gold liquor.

The dry leaf aroma is subtle with a twiggy overtone and hints of burning leaves in Autumn. Once brewed this tea proves very aromatic, the scent literally filling the room. The aroma holds mostly fired notes like roasted leeks, but without the sweetened edges.

Hojicha has a distinct flavor profile. This is true of all Hojichas. However this Ito En Hojicha provides a bit more depth than those I’ve sampled from other brands to this point. It’s smoother without the bite, but retains some of the palate drying astringency expected. Notes of sticky rice and fired wood are hidden as undertones.

Hojicha Roasted Japanese Green Tea

Fans of  Hojicha, Genmaicha, Tie Kwan Yin or nutty teas are likely to enjoy this tea greatly.

The 3:15 PM brand teas are bagged, not loose. But the bags are much larger than usual in order to accomodate both tea leaves and the milk powder that’s included. The dry aroma is slightly sweet, but toasty. I wouldn’t smell too hard though, as you’re likely to end up with milk powder in your nose.

When brewing I like to leave the bag in an infuser. It helps to keep clean up simpler. The bagged material produces a Khaki colored liquor which is completely opaque. The resulting aroma is fairly identical to that from the unused bag: slightly sweet and toasty.

The flavor is one which I think would appeal to coffee drinkers everywhere. It’s roasty and creamy with hints of sweetener (because it contains refined sugar). While there’s a notable drying of the palate, the roasty taste sticks around through a very long tail and leaves you yearning for more.

I recommend this tea to coffee drinkers everywhere, fans of honey or sweetener in their tea and fans of milk tea.

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What exactly spurred me to sign up for the World Tea Expo is something I can’t reveal much about at the moment, asside from the fact that it does indeed relate to The Project.

I learned something while out in Las Vegas… though it wasn’t related to gambling, adult inhibitions or travelling. Indelibly I learned that my greatest strength and passion is, and likely has always been, with people. What makes us tick individually. It turns out that this year’s World Tea Expo, for me, ended up being all about the people.

While Saturday certainly marked a wonderful close to a beautiful and full day of tea related adventues… it was the people I met that day which truly energized me. The wonderfully high quality teas and the colorful array of accessories were really only icing on the cake.

I ate breakfast Sunday at the Roundtable All-Day Buffet at the Excalibur. The buffet was just $25 to come and go for as many trips as you’d like within a 24 hour period. My dietician would have been aghast at the prospect if she knew… but what happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas… right? I actually ended up eating rpetty well there. Fruit, eggs and grapefruit juice were what appealed to me and I chose rather appropriate portion sizes. In case you’re wondering… I did go back for lunch and dinner… but I had a middle meal during a Tweetup I’ll mention later.

Sunday and Monday were where it was all at. Two more sessions: “Selling Your Tea Online Successfully” and “Creating A Menu With Cost & Creativity in Mind” bisected my morning and afternoon. Both presentations were steller! I couldn’t have been more pleased with the investment I made in paying for these two sessions.

Michael Cramer of Adagio Teas covered a wealth of great information related to community building… engaging and keeping your customers on your website and helping with conversion of simple visitors into customers who buy your products.

Melinda Decker, owner of LaTeaDa Tea Room in Clinton, IL provided an interesting presentation as well. While her ideas mostly focussed on her more traditional Victorian style tea house… she provided a number of robust and reusable ideas for making the most out of the materials you buy, simply by using the same ingredients to make multiple products… such as a cake, cobbler or pie being turned into a dessert in a glass.

I spent the rest of Saturday, literally networking with people. Hitting booths, talking people up over tea, getting my business cards handed out and really just getting to know people.

I ran into Jack Cheng of Steepster.com, Lindsey Goodwin of VeeTea, The fine guys over at Village Tea, Ty Beddingfield of Gamila… the inventors of the Tea Stick and a plethor of other completely wonderful folks on Sunday. Several of these folks, plus Ilya from Adagio Teas showed up for an evening Tweetup after the expo floor closed and we had some grub and drinks. In particular, Ty and I really talked for a while about ideas and things. A wonderful day.

After dinner Sunday night, I hit up Cherry, a dance club over in the Red Rock Hotel. This club was one hell of an experience! I thoroughly enjoyed the hours spent there dancing and admiring the crowd. I really get energized when a club is as alive as Cherry was that night. Rare I think, for a Sunday night.

Now it’s Monday morning. The sun is up… but I’ve been awake for hours already. To protect myself some from JetLag I have always tried to awaken as close to Eastern time as possible. I worked out in the rather meager (by my standards) health club in the Excalibur… an amazingly expensive $20 a day on top of the room bill.

After breakfast at the buffet again, I made my way over to the expo for some tea and my morning session: “Reaching Beyond Your Front Door For Additional Income” and then on to my afternoon session: “Price it Right & Sell it Smart.”

Ronald Eng of Kopius Teas put on a wonderful presentation. Very well spoken with great diction and clarity. His ideas were understandably expressed and he was very energetic about answering questions. A serial entrepreneur, Ronald had some great ideas and concepts to share.

Robert Hedrick of Holton & Heath also had some great insights on proper pricing, commodity vs exclusive and the power of branding potential. This was a also a very good presentation.

The rest of my “day” on Monday was spent scurrying around making my final connections with brands and companies, procurring more business cards in exchange for mine as an attempt to build more outlets and opportunities for me to grow with the tea industry over the next couple decades.

I did end up linking with Ronald Eng and Emilie Yanagi of Kopius Teas, the people at Zojirushi North America, a couple great folks over at TeasEtc, Maria Warman from Art of Tea and I cannot forget Nora of Golden Star Tea who has an amazing sparkling bottled tea beverage presented in a chapagne bottle!

At the end of the day I ran into May King of the new UK tea brand, MayKing Tea as well as a few other friends including Norman who is starting a tea garden in Hawaii! I ended up going out dancing with these two and we had a wonderful time out at Margaritaville down the strip after throwing back a few drinks at Liquidity, a bar in the Luxor Hotel & Casino.

I don’t want to leave anyone out… but I’m HORRIBLE with names… I ended up meeting several hundred people at the expo and coming away with some great friendships made over the three day event.

I have to recommend this event to anyone starting a new tea business, or anyone already in the industry!

I’ve already made the decision to head back to Las Vegas next year for another round of tea education. Maybe by then I’ll already have a small presence in the tea industry and be ready for some thoughts on expanding to becoming a tea brand. Here’s to the future!

Help a good cause: CharityWater.org

Wednesday is Green Tea, White Tea, Rooibos, Oolong and Tisane (Herbal) Review Day!

For the uninitiated, Hoji-cha  (Houjicha) is a roasted Japanese green tea. Earthy in flavor and relaxing to drink it’s a great tea for a late meal or snack.

Quick Info
FAB* Rating	3/2/2
Company	Yamamotoyama
Blend Name	Hoji-cha
Blend Base	Green Tea
Country of Origin	Japan
Package Type	Tea Bags
Price per Package	$4.99 USD via Amazon
Quantity	25 Tea Bags
*Flavor, Aroma, Boldness

The flavor of Yamamotoyama’s (Yama moto Yama) Hoji-cha plays with the tongue. Light, earthy and not too bold, it’s comforting but begs you to drink just a little more. You can taste the carbon from the roasting in every hot sip. I couldn’t expect anything less from an established Japanese brand.

The aroma from Hoji-cha is something unique. Reminiscent of burning leaves it conjures mental images of camp fires and relaxing with friends. Things I remember fondly from earlier in my youth.

Yamamotoyama’s blend is lighter than most, crafting a subtler play on the palette. Definitely enjoyable.

However, for as much praise as I can give this blend of Hoji-cha, nothing in particular stands out to me about it. I wouldn’t consider it memorable or particularly classic. It is true I’ve never been wholly impressed by Hoji-cha’s in general. But I’ve always given teas a fair sip even if they’re not my favorite. All told though, with this blend, I could take it or leave it and there wouldn’t be any regret.