I got a sample of this tea from my dad of all people. He’s a big fan of Tea Geschwender’s Irish breakfast blend and that’s pretty much all he buys from there. Whenever he visits, he comes back with random tea samples which often get passed on to me.
I finally pulled this one out of the cupboard after nearly 6 months. No idea of when the tea was harvested or how long it sat in storage. Appearance wise, there was a higher ratio of brown rice kernels to leaves as compared to the genmaicha I buy which made me suspect this wasn’t top-shelf. The tea brewed up pale green and had the familiar nutty, toasted rice aroma and taste. I couldn’t taste anything from the underlying green tea, but that’s not surprising considering the paltry amount of actual tea in this blend. Not a big deal though because that can easily be remedied by adding sencha leaves or a pinch of matcha.
This reminded of the bagged genmaicha from the Asian supermarket I used to drink many moons ago. It’s a serviceable, unfussy tea but not as remarkable as the stuff I get now from online shops.
Flavors: Toasted Rice
Preparation
Comments
That reminds me of some genmaicha I bought from an American shop that had added actual popcorn to make it “look” more genmaicha-like just because so few rice kernals actually pop during the roasting process in authentic genmaicha these days. I couldn’t believe they were adding popcorn to genmaicha. Now I order my genmaicha directly from Japan…
That reminds me of some genmaicha I bought from an American shop that had added actual popcorn to make it “look” more genmaicha-like just because so few rice kernals actually pop during the roasting process in authentic genmaicha these days. I couldn’t believe they were adding popcorn to genmaicha. Now I order my genmaicha directly from Japan…