Strawberry Genmaicha

This dry blend smelled so deliciously of strawberries but once steeped all I can smell is the roasty, toasty rice. It is so unbelievably savory. I wasn’t too sure I would like it, I’m not a big fan of green tea anyway, and that toasted smell was making me wary of the whole thing. It no longer smelled like sweet, juicy strawberries, more like burnt Rice Krispies. I was happily surprised when I stated it to find that the strawberry sweetness is still there in the background and not overwhelmed by the toasted rice. I’m even enjoying the rice. It’s more subtle than I was anticipating. I’ve even starting to smell the strawberry again. This is only my second time trying genmaicha (I think) so I’m still very much learning my way around it. The last cup I had was brewed hot and came out bitter.

Morning cuppa.

I kind of like the simplicity of this one; it’s just Genmaicha with strawberry – no frills, straight to the point. I do find that the strawberry is actually almost a little too bright to really work with the roasty rice but that might just be because the leaf I measured out this morning had a lot of strawberry in it. Plus, while it treads that line very closely I don’t think it actually crosses over it.

I’m feeling this one.

Ugh – I just finished writing a tasting note for this and the interweb gods decided to destroy it and it just feels weird writing the same thing all over again. So I’ll try to summarize without getting all flowery or magniloquent.

I’ll just say this: This was last week’s Tea of the Week – it’s simple yet delicious. Bright strawberry flavor, warm, roasty-toasty genmaicha with a hint of creaminess from the Matcha (I use Matcha infused Genmaicha). A really nice cuppa that’s almost sold out.