Frosted Carrot Cake Genmaicha

This tastes more like Carrot Cake if steeped 175f 2 minutes. The steeping instructions for 200F for 60 seconds is meh and I didn’t get good results.

I got raisin notes, carrots, lots of toasty rice notes, and fresh green. Pretty good, and lightly sweet. A fun blend!

Backlong….

One of my 3 samples….the genmai cha was the most prominent note, though as the tea cooled, I did notice more of the carrot cake notes, mostly in the spices and sort of sweet and creamy frosting notes. I can’t recall much, as I used the whole sample in my travel mug. I will likely get more on a future order.

I am a terrible night owl. On my days off I cannot help but stay up till 3 or 4 sometimes 5 in the morning and then sleep until 12-2 in the afternoon. I got up at 11:00 today and already feel that fuzzy feeling that tells me I didn’t get enough sleep.

At any rate when I woke up I knew I wanted to start the day with this tea.
I taste a faint hint of carroty cake in the tea…not terribly distinct…a bit disappointing because I adore carrot cake almost as much as my Dad does. (Preferably with real cream cheese frosting…not that sickingly sweet crap that some places put on the cake, then I end up having to scrape it off.

But, despite that…I am not at all apposed to getting more of this, because I do taste some other flavor that just makes me want to have more.

Jury is out on whether or not I’d recommend this tea however:)

Love genmaicha, flavoured or not. And carrot cake is my favourite cake, so naturally, I just had to pounce on this.

The roasted notes from the rice goes so well with the cake spices here, which I find are the dominant notes altogether. In particular, although I don’t see it listed as an ingredient (perhaps it’s part of the natural flavouring), I get ginger above everything else, then the cinnamon trails behind. There’s a touch of sweetness, perhaps from the dried fruits in here, but I can’t discern what they are, and I can’t taste the icing note either. I think what would have worked here is slightly more fruit to balance out the strong spice notes, like more raisin. Hell, I don’t even like raisins in desserts, but this make me think of Della Terra’s Oatmeal Raisin Cookie—I think it was called—and how the raisin note in that would be right at home here.

The heavier ginger note here also reminds me of Butiki’s take on carrot cake.

This tea is a combination of two of my favourite things: carrot cake and flavoured genmaichas. When I saw this, despite having a bunch of tea and not really drinking much of it these past few months, I decided I HAD to have it. So, I placed a Black Friday order and grabbed a sampler pack of teas that sounded just as tasty as this one.

I got my package a couple days back and it smelled AMAZING but unfortunately I have been crazy busy studying for exams so it wasn’t until today I got a chance to brew some up. This was obviously my first choice. I brewed the kettle to 200F as per instructed and dumped the whole sample into my 16 oz mug. Then I really hoped I would not mess up the brewing since this was my one shot (unless I ordered more).

I then decided to make pancakes (which went horribly thanks to Bisquick mix as opposed to my usual Aunt Jemima mix pancakes or ones made from scratch). I only mention this because it postponed my drinking of the tea so by the time I got to it, it had already cooled a fair bit.

Anyways, as I drank, I definitely got some grassiness from the base (which gets stronger as it gets colder) but it is not particularly offensive. One thing I noticed was that the spices usually found in carrot cake were present and blended perfectly with the toasted rice of the genmaicha. Both elements were boosted as it simultaneously was a super toasty genmaicha tea and a very comforting mug of carrot cake spices that help create the “cake” component in my mind. I don’t know how much “frosting” I am getting but there is a slight sweetness in there that could be interpreted as cream cheese icing.

All in all, it is a good tea. I don’t know if I would get more as I have many other genmaichas that I need to drink up first but it was certainly fun to try.