Matcha Outlet
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Singing and playing 5 services plus rehearsals this weekend, so I backed off the normal coffee and several pots of tea thing. Hydrating with some home-blended tisane based in roobios, with some ginger and lemon. (It’s pretty good, by the way!)
But I still like a little boost in the cup, so when a trusted friend suggested matcha, and then pointed me toward a sale at Matcha Outlet (formerly Red Leaf Tea), I bought my first ever matcha.
Preparing in the total non-Japanese way using a cup and battery-operated frother, I seasoned the cup at 165° then sifted about a gram into the warmed cup and added about 2 oz 165° water. After “whisking” it into a thick green paste I added the remaining water before drinking.
The resulting cup has an aroma similar to fresh cut grass and is lightly sweet to the taste. A very pleasant drink and I did notice a caffeine-like effect. Though it wasn’t the jolt I get when starting the day with a black tea or coffee, it was mild and pleasantly stimulating..
Flavors: Grass, Honey, Spinach
Preparation
I was watching the Thai BL show Ingredients when the guy made a matcha latte, it reminded me that I haven’t had matcha in quite some time, so I went to make my own latte though not as good as looking as his because I can’t do latte art. Still I’m enjoying my latte but then I went on to the website to order more and it looks like they don’t make the flavours anymore. Sigh, I guess I need to find a new matcha place. I don’t like DT matcha though because their blends are much too sweet for me.
Flavors: Vanilla
Preparation
So this is not my favourite, I actually got it for Mom but she like me preferred the Madagascar Vanilla instead. So I got stuck with this one. This one is sweeter I think. It has more in common with DT Vanilla Matcha minus the sugar of course.
Preparation
While this is not my favourite vanilla matcha from Matcha Outlet (formerly Red Leaf Tea) it is however a pleasant drink to help you wake up in the morning. Of course anything vanilla is fine with me. I admit that I woke up ages before my alarm only to yawn this morning. It rained last night so I’m not cycling into work today. I feel so lazy taking a car but I know if I don’t I will just get splashed with dirty water the second some car comes speeding by. Ah well at least I have my yummy matcha.
Flavors: Vanilla
Preparation
GCTTB
I had pulled this one from the GCTTB because I had purchased a DT’s matcha shaker and had wanted to give it a whirl. It’s been months now that the matcha shaker has sat unused and unopened. Until this moment. The shaker works really really well, btw, and it is totally a simple thing, so I would recommend it to anyone who was looking for such.
This matcha, as others have noted, is lovely. It has a sweet buttery caramel flavour and a bitter note. I may have added a touch more leaf than necessary which has contributed an unwelcome artificial flavour. Also, I am drinking this straight up. I am sure that milk or cream would be a welcome addition and would smooth out the bitterness.
Thank you, VariaTEA, for adding this to the box.
Flavors: Bitter, Butter, Caramel, Green
Preparation
This matcha is quite bitter and the chocolate hints at vanilla, floral (rose), and purfume. It isn’t terrible, but it isn’t rich chocolate matcha either. Don’t dare to make this with water, you will need milk to counter the bitterness. I find sweetened (original) soy milk is best to round out matcha bitterness, but probably any milk would work.
My sample is labelled “Chocolate” and not “Belgian chocolate”, but I assume it is the same thing because there is no entry for just chocolate.
I used half my sample (1 tsp/2.5 g) with 200 mL hot water. I should have used milk because the aftertaste of this matcha is bitter and faintly astringent. This does taste of milk chocolate (mostly aroma of chocolate, less so in the taste) but it is also very floral in a perfume kind of way. I actually really like the flavours, but the bitterness is a dealbreaker. I’ll try it with milk next time, but I’m probably going to pass on ever buying this again.
Flavors: Astringent, Bitter, Chocolate, Cocoa, Floral, Green, Perfume, Sweet
Preparation
Sip…?…down… (718)!
Some hesitation in what to call this as I actually finished off the matcha by mixing it into bath water to have a tea bath. I’ve had this idea of doing a “matcha bath” for a while now, and I realized that I just simply wasn’t going to finish off this matcha any time soon as a regular tea because I just don’t love the flavour all the much.
I think this was a good call – it may have looked like I was pulling a Hozier and taking a soak in bog water, but it smelled amazing (actually a lot better than it does as a tea) and post bath I actually feel like my skin is pretty soft. I’m not totally sure what else to say about it because it was really straightforward to do – but it was honestly just a really nice way to repurpose some matcha I wasn’t enjoying.
I think the next evolution of this would be to attempt to make a matcha bath bomb!?
Drinking this one right now – just hot and straight. I’m not finding ANY rum in the flavour at all today and the matcha itself isn’t really all that nice either, but it’s sustenance and energy and that’s mostly what I need anyway. I shared some with a coworker, who also fails to taste the rum in the profile. What he does taste, though, is yellow sponge cake (like what you get at a gas station in the middle of nowhere during a road trip) and I actually do kind of taste that…
It’s weird.
This is a queued tasting note.
So, I made this one for myself at work while I was sampling; just as an iced latte, which isn’t a huge jump from my typical matcha milk. I will say, that as much as I enjoyed the flavour it didn’t remind me of rum at all. More so, it was grassy/floral with a sort of boozy sweetness but nothing that would immediately be pinpointed to rum; white, spiced, dark or otherwise. So, I’m definitely going to have to revisit this one straight and reassess.
Just a plain, hot mug of this one – and a pretty tasty one, but with a strong floral undertone. Definitely stronger than anything I recall observing with prior tastings of this tea…
I’d like to do a side by side tasting of this and DAVIDsTEA’s new(ish) Wild Honey Matcha just to see what the differences are – obviously the DT tea is sweetened and this isn’t so that’s the biggest difference. Still, I think there could be other interesting observations to be made.
Sipped on an iced cup of this one most of my shift yesterday, with some added in milk for extra creaminess. It certainly wasn’t bad, but the intense sweetness of the “honey” flavour in the blend did sort of start to get to me after a while; it was just very rich and a third of the way through the tumbler of it I was drinking I started finding it to be quite cloying. In the future I think I’d probably have to under leaf it if I made it the same way again so that it’d be a softer/milder sweetness that wouldn’t get as intense so quickly.
Iced matcha, in the matcha maker – about 50/50 with cashew milk.
It was delicious! Very, very sweet with really distinct honey notes and floral undertones. The cashew milk turned out to be a brilliant decision though because it ended up coming out tasting kind of like Honey Nut Cheerios, but without the grainy/starchy element. Really tasting though, and since it was basically my breakfast that morning also quite fitting.
So this is something I’ve wanted to do for a while that I finally made time for…
Gnocchi with matcha sauce! Hawaiian Honey matcha cheese sauce, to be particular. I wasn’t totally sure which matcha flavour would be the best to infuse into this dish; something super fruity would just feel out of place and I didn’t think that one of the alcohol themed ones would work either. So, that sort of left this one? And a bit of sweetness with the gnocchi and cheese? Sold!
Pictures:
The second one is my very dumb, very socially awkward/introverted brother thinking he’s being funny by throwing up a gang sign to photobomb my artistic pictures…
- Very creamy, buttery with a very delicate sweetness
- The sauce had a lovely consistency; light, fluffy and silky smooth!
- Only criticism is that I used a sweet cheese, so with the sweet matcha it’s a bit rich
- Perfectly satisfying and indulgent otherwise
Yummy!
Cracked open this package of matcha this morning!
I’ve been putting off trying this one until I finish off more of my other matcha, but I have an idea for a dish that would use matcha in it, and a gut feeling that this matcha is going to compliment it the most. So, before I go using the matcha in the dish I wanted to try it straight first to get an idea of the actual flavour of it.
Honestly, I kind of expected this to just be a sweeter matcha and to an extent I guess it is that. However, the ‘honey’ note really does come through as distinctly honey in addition to this just being sweet. Not too sweet though, mind you. Oddly, I think the finish is a little bitter too – but I know that’s not from my over leafing or using water that was too high of a temperature. A bit of bitterness kind of works with the sweetness though; it helps keep it from being cloying.
Apart from that, there’s the obvious grassyness and some floral undertone. Pretty smooth, and definitely enjoyable…
Yes, I think this will work beautifully for what I have in mind…
Whisked this one up iced with a bit of agave to help perk up the flavours. It’s a very old matcha so it’s nice the greatest tasting at this point and just visually the shade of green isn’t the most appealing. However, it still tastes of kiwi candy – just in a more muted way. Reminded me a little bit of the kiwi flavour of Hi Chews, which is pretty delicious! It was refreshing and definitely gave me a bit of the energy boost I needed.
Whisked up into cold water to drink during a workout at the gym.
Having something cold for hydration was an excellent choice, but oddly enough I found that this tasted super, super strongly of bananas to me while I was drinking it – not kiwi!? Perhaps it was all the exhaustion because, let’s face it, I’m super not in shape and an hour at the gym for me feels like an ETERNITY…
I must have really been in a kiwi mood this week;
I made this one up as a hot latte yesterday and it was actually delightful! I feel like fruity matcha lattes can be so hit or miss, but this one was interesting in a genuinely good way. It had a lot of overall brightness to the profile, and was sweet and flavourful. I liked that it was still juicy and vibrant while finishing in a really creamy and decadent way.
ONly downside was my dang matcha kept settling to the bottom of the latte faster than I could drink it because I kept having to step away from the mug to help customers. I mean, that’s my job so I’m not complaining about having to help ‘em out. I just wish it would have stayed suspended a little longer so I didn’t have to re-stir everything.
Matcha Milkshake!
So, this one I decided to switch things up and instead of using the vanilla gelato I’ve been using lately, I went with a lemon flavoured frozen yogurt! I still used the same ratio of milk and ice cubes, but I thought the added flavour of the lemon might be really nice with the kiwi!
And it was! I got both of the two flavours, and it was this lovely bright but still really creamy mix of the two. I mean, it’s hard to describe it past ‘lemon and kiwi’ because that’s just… what it was. The level of sweetness was good though, and while it wasn’t the worlds most natural kiwi flavour (kind of had a candy quality to it) I think it was very well balanced with everything else!
I’d make it again, for sure.
Tea and chocolate experimentation, take #2!
This time around I went with a classic; chocolate dipped strawberries! My spin on it, however, was to use a white chocolate base and mix in some kiwi flavoured matcha. Everyone knows that strawberry kiwi is a killer combination!
- Like the grapes, the crack of the chocolate with the juicy strawberry is very satisfying
- The creaminess is really good too
- It’s definitely a sweet treat, but I like that it’s fruity through and through
- Also a touch of a floral quality to the matcha too
- Best part is that I can share with Kandyce who is allergic to cocoa
Song Pairing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xUQNqsO_SjM&index=2&list=WL
