18 Tasting Notes
I’m really torn by this tea. It’s actually a very nice tea. It re-steeps well. It has a nice rich flavor. But for the life of me I can’t taste the chocolate or the genmaicha! I didn’t really notice anything nutty about it. It’s just a nice dark tea. So while I do recommend it, it’s not because of anything advertised in its name.
I actually thought they were kidding when they said to steep it for 2-5 seconds. But it’s true and it works.
Preparation
I personally like my Genmaicha to have a distinct roasted rice taste. The tea does have the smell of roasted rice but the taste is a smooth vegetable with just a hint of roasted rice. I tried making it using different amounts, temperatures and steep times but I just couldn’t coax the stronger rice taste I want out of it.
Flavors: Green, Toasted Rice
Preparation
If you let it steep for awhile it will eventually smell of Genmaicha but the taste is always like roasted Kukicha. Really, it just tastes like Kukicha so why not just buy Kukicha?
Flavors: Roasted
Preparation
I found this to be a really bitter tea. Not fun to drink at all. I followed the instructions when making it and I wonder if messing around with the amount and volume might have helped. But I only had a sample. Still, I didn’t find anything in the flavor to really love.
Flavors: Green
Preparation
The tea smells like a particularly sweet (but not cloying) apple cider. The taste is also more apple cider than apple. I actually find the taste to be very cloying (unlike the smell).
When preparing the tea I found it very easy to make it over-steeped. It got bitter very fast. So I use a much shorter steep time. This creates a blander tea but that’s better than an over-steeped tea.
Over all I can’t say I can recommend this tea. Neither the smell nor taste were terribly compelling.
Flavors: Apple, Sugar
Preparation
This is a very mellow yet well defined green tea. Mellow in that it isn’t very acidic. Well defined in that it has a definite green tea smell and taste. It is just so well mannered and refined I felt like I should sip it out of a porcelain cup at afternoon tea.
Flavors: Vegetal
Preparation
I’m trying experiments with this tea since I think the default amount is too strong. I just tried 8 g/16 oz at 160 for 2 minutes. The result is more acidic than I like and very vegetable-y. So I’ll need to try again but maybe this time for 45 seconds (the time suggested on the package).
Tried a second pull yesterday with 160 degrees water but 1 minute steep time and that produced a weak tea.
I tried a first pull using 8 g/16 oz at 160 for 1 minute (rather than the 2 minutes I used before). The result is a much less acidic tea but also, frankly, a less defined tea. The major taste is just vegetable.
I suspect that if one wants to get the best out of this tea one has to use the 3 oz/2 G ratio which means that a 16 0z cup needs roughly 10 G of tea. Which is a huge amount and will not let me sleep. So if I can’t find a better balance I’ll probably have to abandon this tea. :(
For the second pull on the weaker tea I tried 160 for 2 minutes (upping it from the 1 minute last time). It has a taste so subtle it might as well just be hot water. :(
The smell is awesome and I find that if I take an extra long steeping (a full 3 minutes) that it brings that awesome roasted rice flavor into the tea. This is becoming my go to Genmaicha. That or Den’s super green.
Flavors: Nutty
Preparation
I find that sometimes I even need to steep for 4 minutes to really get the flavor out.
i wonder if that’ll work as well on a second steeping? well, i’ll report back in a few…
I do two pulls at 4 minutes each and it works fine. But two seems to be the maximum. The third pool is typically tasteless. I can actually see the rice turning white by that point.
Do you need to know your tea’s temperature with super accuracy and immediate response? Do you want a thermometer you won’t ever have to adjust or worry about? It will just work? Then this is the massive thermonuclear overkill thermometer for you! Man, it works. And to be honest, it really changes how you think about cooking all together since you will inevitably use it for many other things but tea. But I actually bought this specifically for tea because I was tired of crap, broken, unreliable, impossible to adjust tea thermometers.
