Fur Shark Textures: Four-Year vs Four-Second Hoji Cha
In which I finesse a deep-steamed Yame sencha into a birthday poem for a golden doodle.
Congratulations and welcome. This is a celebration of a dog named after a tea. Or a tea that makes you feel like the way a dog does when you get that spot behind the ears. You know the spot. You know the ears.
You know that whatever I write, I cannot write better than this face faces:
But onto the tea…
In its usual form — as a classic, Yame deep-steamed sencha produced by Hoshino-en at the south-easterly edge of Japan’s Fukuoka Prefecture and sold at Tea Master in Downtown Los Angeles —I’ve been slurping Satsuki for many years. It’s possible this is the one sencha I’ve drunk more than any other. As my tea mind expands and I begin to sail away from my most familiar ports of call, I still find myself reaching for it as an anchor. In fact, I only just opened a new package I had stowed away earlier this month. Of course, when I got it in spring of last year it was 2023 Shincha. Even careful storage in the fridge has resulted in much of its spunk being mellowed out but for a tea with so much umami at its core, it wears no new masks a full nine months after it was produced. That is, before I light it up.
Because this isn’t about sencha, is it? It’s about hoji cha. That best buddy of Japanese teas. The chummy pal. The familiar embrace. If teas were car seats, hoji cha would be the worn-in, sun-soaked leather guts of your grandfather’s boat-like sedan.
In principal, it’s a lightly roasted green tea (could be sencha, could be gyokuro, could be bancha sticks, stems, or any of the above and probably more I’m forgetting). Let’s make it easy and say that hoji (ほうじ茶/焙じ) means roasted. I’ll inch forward a smidge and say it really means light roasted.
Why add the ‘light’ qualifier? You could say it’s in the taste, but really, it’s in the texture.
The roast on the hojichas that have landed on my tongue are not the roasts of their oolong counterparts. These are not guttural yancha roasts, nor carousel-like Tieguanyin roasts, which even when they are only brushed by fire possess a certain boulder-hurling-down-the-canyon echoey depth. Hoji roasts ice skate across the fire. They kiss the flames and run away without telling a soul. They are flame dancers.
This morning I finally wielded the Houroku (焙烙) we acquired nearly a year ago. My better half has been using it to salvage sencha I found unfit for imbibing (at the same time filling the room with an intoxicating scent of freshly roasted tea leaves that chakoro (茶香炉) burners are created exclusively for). The cause for my delay in grabbing the tailpipe-like handle of this piece of ceramic ingenuity seen at many a tea-serious Japanese kitchen? I blame only the sheer volume of tea experiments at the top of my mind at any given time.
In any event, I decided to decant a couple Sakura-tree scoops of Satsuki into the houroku and fired on the stove. Gently swirling the tea leaves around, occasionally walking across the house to blanket our corners in the hot-chocolate-cozy aroma, I went about casting a fiery spell that would turn my sencha into hojicha. It’s a short spell. Easy enough to memorize, even without knowing the exact words. About a minute later, just as the leaves started to lean toward that place you never want popcorn to go, I tilted back the handle and out the leaves slid into my pot.
About four seconds later, I was introducing them to hot water and after just one more minute, I had a nice hojicha. This whole sorcery took maybe three minutes in total. And of course, the tea changes—it’s aroma from grassy to woody, its taste from swampy to lampy umami, it’s color from thick green to crystalline gold—but its textural transition is what felt most inspiring as I write to you now.
Satsuki as sencha has a texture that’s thick, almost foggy, like a mountain mist. Add fire and, apparently, you get wind. The tea in my cup whips around my mouth like a clear winter gust rushing down a valley. As sencha it has the fuzzy motion of an active sea. As hojicha it’s as still as a lake. The sencha soaks into your being and stays. The hojicha pets you gently and drifts away. A mandala of a tea. The hug you need, when you need, for just as long as you need it. A soft, doughy eyed gaze that you know full well, will one day be gone.
Should one even roast deep steamed sencha? Better to stick to the stem teas in the houroku? Or light steamed senchas? Let’s see, friends. Let’s see, another day.
Because, was I even talking about tea by the end? Or talking about my dog—who turned four this week—and is not so coincidentally named Hoji on account of his lightly roasted color?
I’ll let the poem do whatever explaining I can hope for and wish you all a roasty, toasty day:
Fur Shark
Mister
El Señor
Boy
Why dive
So deep
Where morning
Cannot crawl?
Why deny
Daylight’s
Smiling invitation
To dance?
To march?
To play?
To walk?
To patrol?
Oh bother
Oh brother
If I start counting
The yawns
We have left now
Then, maybe I’ll
Finally put the tea
Off until later
But whenever
I leave the archway
Ajar
You parade inside
Seeking triangles
And pinecone chew
Toys
Or do you come
To remind me
How perfect
My pours are
This time
Every time?
Thank you
For the infinities
Lost in these
Leafy waters
How silky soft
You’ve made
My choices
Swim on
Fur shark
Sleep on
My thigh
Your chin
A frozen waterfall
Of dripped truth