Inoki Bathhouse
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Day 25 of the 2024 Inoki advent calendar. This marks finishing off all of my 2024 advents, just in time for the 2025 season! I’ve already got a little stack of boxes for this year – Plum Deluxe’s Hannukah samplers and Tea Thoughts’ winter countdown. 52teas incoming. And I’m doing the advent swap. That feels like a good number – any more will be just about impossible for me to keep up with.
This reminds me of a Taiwanese high mountain oolong. There’s just a green lightness to it. A bit of light roast, and a bit of creaminess. Great choice to end the calendar on.
Day 23 of the Inoki 2024 advent calendar. I had some trouble whisking this and ended up having to use a frother. I think maybe either my whisk is too big or my bowl is too small – will try a larger bowl next time. The powder is bright green and made little pastel green bubbles. It might have been sitting around too long, though (it’s got to be at least nine months old, probably a bit older). The flavor is fine, vegetal, but one-note, which makes me think it’s gone stale.
Day 22 of the Inoki 2024 advent calendar. This is surprisingly mild relative to other forms of butterfly pea flower I’ve had. For the first steep, I added lemon juice and honey and allowed to cool. It ended up tasting like very lightly sweet lemonade. For the second steep, I didn’t add anything, overbrewed, and drank it hot, and it was still surprisingly tasty. Gently tart, overall just crisp and easy to drink. No bitterness or anything.
Day 21 of the Inoki 2024 advent calendar. Gong fu, though in retrospect it might have been better to steep this Western-style. Roswell Strange did a beautiful job of describing the complexity of this tea, so I recommend reading her note for that. I found this rich, thick, and layered, but to some degree it may have been wasted on me since I’m just not a huge fan of this flavor profile, particularly with the tannic and drying note at the end.
Day 20 of the 2024 Inoki advent calendar (finally getting close to the finish line!). 52teas might have shifted how I experience genmaicha. This one is fine. It’s exactly what you expect from a genmaicha: roasty rice, vegetal green tea. But it’s just making me want a marshmallow-y 52teas genmaicha instead…
Day 19 of the Inoki 2024 advent calendar. I remember enjoying Nepalese teas, though I haven’t had one in quite some time. This one did not disappoint. It’s surprisingly fruity, with a ripe peach or plum note so strong it’s hard to believe this isn’t flavored. Very slightly tannic and drying at the end of the sip. I wish I had more!
Day 18 of the 2024 Inoki advent calendar. This hojicha is on the green side – a little more vegetal and less roasty than the ones I usually go for. It kind of fits the transitional vibe of early fall, plus I got three very solid steeps out of it, so I’m pleased.
Day 17 of the (2024) Inoki advent calendar. I’m trying to finish off any lingering countdown boxes before December! Aiming to get fewer this year, so they hopefully don’t end up languishing in the proverbial cupboard.
Brewed this up Western-style. I wasn’t really sure what tea I was in the mood for, but as soon as I took my first sip, I knew that this hit the spot. It’s the kind of tea that commands your attention. Not in a bad way! It’s very tasty. More in an “I am here and I will not be ignored” way. Brisk without being particularly tannic, strong notes of cocoa and smoke. This feels like hot chocolate’s big sister – all grown up and has seen some s***.
Day 16 of the (2024) Inoki advent. Day 15 was the silver moonlight wild white, but I seem to have drunk it all and not made a tasting note, and I don’t remember anything about it because it was a while ago.
I couldn’t get the steeping parameters of this right. 1 tsp wasn’t enough leaf. So I added the rest of the packet to the resteep. But I probably brewed too long on the resteep, because it came out a bit too tannic and drying. I still got some malty and dark stone fruit notes, but ultimately I don’t think I got the brewing right and don’t know whether it would be more complex and/or enjoyable with a better brew.
Day 14 of the Inoki advent calendar. I screwed this one up! The brewing instructions say to use one flower/mug. But the flowers were so stuck together that I thought they were all one flower and ended up accidentally brewing up three! I did resteep them separately at least. Good news is that I got a solid second steep out of the flowers individually. I liked this best as an iced tea made with the second steep – that brings out the sweetness and anise notes in a way that’s refreshing, floral, and summery.
Day 12 of the Inoki Bathhouse advent calendar. This was pretty but I found the flavor a bit meh. Sort of a generic “Chinese green tea” flavor with maybe a hint of floral if I really look for it. I really liked the flowering rose, but this one just didn’t have that same vegetal-floral balance.
I feel like flowering teas are meant purely for aesthetics, they always taste so bland and similar to each other.
I got some jasmine flowering green when I was in Taiwan and, while it wasn’t the absolute best I’ve ever had, it was a solid jasmine that held up well to grandpa-style brewing. I haven’t had that experience stateside, though. Maybe it’s also a freshness thing?
I had some flowering teas from Teavivre that were pretty decent!
Day 11 of the Inoki advent calendar. This is a nice ginger – zingy with a hint of sweetness. It reminds me of Fever-Tree ginger beer, just without the sugar. It even resteeped well, which doesn’t always happen with ginger. Just needed a long brew time on the resteep.
Day 9 of the Inoki advent calendar. I have a migraine so this was very welcome. Apparently the aroma is quite strong, as my partner can’t be in the same room with it. He says it smells like toothpaste. Which, yeah, I suppose it does have a somewhat toothpaste-y flavor. Sweet, menthol, gently cooling at the back of the sip. Nice when I’m not feeling well. Although now I can’t get that toothpaste comparison out of my head…
Day 8 of the Inoki Bathhouse advent calendar. Gong fu. This tastes like the mental image I have of a Chinese black tea: rich, chocolatey, chicory-esque. Slightly astringent, but when I overbrewed the third steep by 20 minutes it didn’t get more astringent, which I found impressive. Solid entry in this calendar.
The lid fell off my gaiwan teapot while I was pouring out the third steep. It shattered. I felt weirdly sad and guilty because it’s one of the first pieces of teaware I bought on my first trip to Taiwan, and I have really fond memories of that trip. But I guess the bottom piece will now get to have a second life as a pitcher and it could be worse.
Day 7 of the Inoki Bathhouse advent calendar. This is the kind of chrysanthemum I’m used to – little fluffy yellow flowers. I had to drink my second steep the day after brewing it. Turns out I like chrysanthemum even better iced than hot, surprisingly. It’s floral but more in the savory way of chamomile flowers than the softer way of lavender or rose. I can see why Roswell Strange described it as peppery – there’s a little tingle that lingers after the sip, not as harsh as ginger but notable. Now I get to file away chrysanthemum as a good option for iced herbals when the weather gets hot.
Day 6 of the Inoki Bathhouse advent calendar. Tbh, I’m just generally not a fan of ginseng. It’s like ginger’s more earthy, less zingy cousin. This seems like a decent, even good ginseng to me, but I’m not a good judge and I still don’t like it because it’s just not to my taste.
Day 5 of the Inoki Bathhouse advent calendar. This might be my least favorite tea so far of this advent. I don’t know if it’s me or the tea, but I feel like this is just ok. I liked it best as an iced tea – somehow the general hay/vegetal flavor was more enjoyable cold. Maybe because it’s not a flavor profile I typically think of for iced tea, so it was a pleasant surprise. Hot, it’s just… a bit nutty, a bit hayish, and a bit green-vegetable. But not really enough of any of those things. And a stronger steep just made it drier rather than teasing out the flavors better.
Day 4 of the Inoki Bathhouse advent calendar. Love Japanese greens, so this was right up my alley. Off the bat, I really liked the color of the steeped leaves – a slightly less green version of how cooked spinach looks. As for the flavor, I was expecting something hojicha-esque but this wasn’t really. It was more like a mix between sencha and a light hojicha. Vegetal with a bit of nuttiness. This got finished off quickly!
Day 3 of the Inoki calendar! This was a more elaborate blooming tea than I expected. It gave me fond memories of the first time I visited my partner when he was living in Taiwan – I drank so much blooming jasmine tea when I was there. I was just starting to get into tea and I would drink the bloom grandpa-style, just topping it off periodically. This is obviously a different floral note, but it has that same balance of floral note to vegetal green. Three solid steeps from this. The rose is definitely present but it’s not overwhelming the base. This was such a nice stroll down memory lane!
Day 2 of the Inoki advent calendar. Made this gong fu, currently on steep 6 and still going strong. I’m going to have to stop after this and hope I can still sleep tonight XD
This is incredibly buttery, creamy with floral undertones and no harshness at all. Even this late steep still has a butter cookie quality to it. I’m inclined to agree with Roswell Strange that this might be flavored given how rich it is. That’s ok, this tea is delicious and I am finding it hard to care about whether it’s flavored right now.
Bonus advent calendar! Roswell Strange made this calendar sound so appealing that I asked for it as a birthday present. It was so pricy that I couldn’t quite bring myself to buy it myself, but that’s what birthday presents are for :-)
So, day 1! This is a surprisingly large flower. The only other time I’ve seen a chrysanthemum tisane this big is The Qi’s royal chrysanthemum. I’m more used to seeing it as small flowers. Since it is so big and beautiful, I brewed it in a glass mug for maximum prettiness. This flower isn’t just pretty, though. It’s delicious, too – earthy and gently floral. I got a bunch of resteeps out of it too. Feeling optimistic that this will be a good calendar!
