Komodo Pantry's hand roasted hojicha

From my original Amazon review:

I bought this on sale to give it a try. At £5 for 50g it's definitely a decent buy, it won't 'wow' you if you had premium hochija before, but if you're curious to try, I can recommend this while it's on sale. at £10 though, that's where it's an eyebrow raiser, for example: you can get Yamasan 150g for like £14, and they're fine too.

Things I liked:
The packaging, looks well-designed.
Hand roasted and small batch (probably why it's more expensive).
It's fairly fresh, my batch as shown in the pic was from 21/11/2024.
Medium roast - smooth and toasty, absolutely no bitterness even when brewed for long and high heat.
Multiple infusions, I usually do 2 long infusion and it still retains flavour, you can probably do 3-4 shorter ones.
Nicely roasted fragrance from the leaves, not too strong.

Overall, it's decent, good value hochija on sale, if you're new, hochija is easy to brew, cold or hot, you can always enjoy it. I brewed mine strong so it's darker colour (in the pic), if you brewed light, you can get a very nice clear amber-brown.