I picked up The Drip Tea Royal UVA tea on special at my local Asian supermarket. They always get me with the teas near the cash registers and trying a drip tea looked interesting. The store sells a milk tea in bottles from the same brand that is pretty tasty so I assumed it would be a similar tea. The brand is KIRIN Gogo no Kocha and have lots of affordable choices available at multiple stores near me. The Drip Tea Royal Uva was $1.99 Cdn for 5 sachets. Looks like it was a good deal as when researching it for this post, they sell for about $3 Cdn in Japan.
It isn’t quite full drip tea tea but half drip, half tea bag. You open the little sachet and pour the water through while it sits on your cup. But the water does go past the sachet and there is no way to stop it other than having half a cup of tea.
You just (carefully) rip the tab off at the top, pull out the cardboard pieces and sit them on your mug. Add 150ml boiling water (less than a cup but it was strong enough at 225mls in my mug) and as it is mostly fannings, it brews quickly. It is not quite the dust you get in many tea bags, but not full loose leaf either.
On to what tea it actually includes? That part is complicated. The box mentions it is a green tea, a black tea and a red tea. The ingredients do show that it has Broken Orange Pekoe with hints of apple and mint. I got no hints of apple or mint but it is a smooth cuppa and makes a good afternoon tea.
Like most orange pekoe, it is fairly hardy, a little malty and doesn’t oversteep too easily. Great because the instructions don’t really tell you how long to leave it steeping for in English. I found a website with instructions for 2-3 minutes and that seemed to work for a smooth cuppa. Royal Uva by The Drip Tea tastes great served with some milk.