Eden Organic Kukicha Twig Tea (review)

Name: Organic Kukicha Twig Tea

Brand: Eden Organic

Type: Kukicha, roasted

Form: Paper Tea Bags, individually wrapped

Cost: About $3.30 or so for a box of 16 tea bags.

Review: I drink a lot more tea than I actually review, and, in truth, I seldom write up teas that I don’t like. Maybe I ought to reconsider this policy, but I generally feel more comfortable directing people to teas than away from them (Note to readers: Please let me know how you feel about this.).

But in the case of Eden Organic Kukicha, I feel a need to make an exception.

My process for reviewing teas is not as simple as one might think. I don’t, for example, just make myself a cup of tea and start writing about it. I usually try a tea several times before I review it. If I don’t care for it, I will experiment with steep times and water temperatures to make sure that I am being fair.

And I am trying to be fair.

But I just don’t like this tea.

The tea itself is one of the inexpensive bagged varieties found at my local Whole Foods. As I have stated before, I don’t believe in tea-snobbery, as I know that tasty teas can come in a variety of forms and at every price.

Now I love kukicha, (tea made from stems and twigs, instead of the whole tea leaf) but it can be somewhat expensive.  I wanted to see if this inexpensive brand might be something I could enjoy every day.

The packaging (box and pouch in which the tea bag is wrapped) is very pretty. I noticed that the paper tea bag was filled with what could best be described as  kukicha “dust”. I realize that dust and fannings are standard for paper tea bags, of course, but was wondering how tea twigs would taste in such a form.

I sniffed the bag and got a very weak “roasted” nose off the dry leaf. The tea infused to a somewhat muddy medium copper (think old penny).  The nose remained somewhat weak, with the expected roasted notes dominating.

The real trouble started when I tried drinking the tea. The only way to describe this tea is as follows:

Imagine that you have a charcoal grill. Now imagine rinsing the inside of the grill with hot water. Now imagine collecting that water and drinking it.

What I taste in this tea is a whole lot of charcoal and not much else. I didn’t pick up, for example, the nutty or even coffee-like notes that I have come to expect from a good roasted kukicha or hojicha. There just wasn’t any substance to this tea.

Even worse, the “charcoal” reminded me a  bit of liquid smoke: There was an artificiality about it which made me wonder just what sort of fuel was used in roasting the tea. (In fact, I had some difficulty getting the taste out of my mouth after each sampling.)

I should note that Eden is a good company that makes a lot of good products. I am just not sure what they were thinking about when they produced this tea.

Recommendation: Give this one a pass. I mean it. Don’t even bother.

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Tagged as: eden organic, kukicha, tea, tea reviews