Toasted Rice

This basically just tastes like toasted rice. I always forget how much I love this flavour until I have it! Maybe I do need a genmaicha or something similar in my cupboard, for the yums.

After a chaotic morning and early afternoon of middle school, I popped down to the lounge to fix a big mug of this to regroup with because genmaicha equals comfort in my little corner of the tea world, and I’m trying to use up the last few bags of this while I wait for my Harney order. It’s not the very best genmaicha I’ve ever had, but I think it’s decent for a bagged variety, and it is very forgiving on long steeps. I haven’t ever had it go bitter on me.

Compared with a nice loose-leaf Genmaicha this isn’t anything special, but as far as bagged teas go this is one one of my favorites. I like to keep this on hand when I know I won’t be around a kettle. You can pretty successfully brew it with hot water from those water coolers that most offices and schools will have around.
The green tea base is unremarkable but ultimately inoffensive. Not particularly bitter, grassy, floral, or anything that would have given it some character. If I didn’t know it was a sencha I probably wouldn’t have been able to guess. The rice gives some toasty-ness but is a bit stale tasting compared to my favorite loose genmaicha (Harney’s). But overall it makes for a decent brew under less-than-ideal conditions.

In my experience, genmaichas vary a lot in quality, apparently because some producers avail themselves of the opportunity to use very low-grade green tea as the base, knowing as they do that the popped rice will dominate anyway. Adding to the unpredictable quality of genmaicha purchased without first testing (or even after, since batches may vary greatly as well), is the age of the popped rice.

Many kinds of tea have an excellent shelf life—as evidenced by the fact that the “use by” date is generally three years out from production. I’ve consumed plenty of tea way beyond its expiration date, much of which has been perfectly potable. Perhaps the age would matter more with the highest tier teas, but for mass-market produced teas, even the freshest batch may not be that great to begin with, so what’s a few years? The same thing happens with spices at the grocery store, by the way. Those bottles have been sitting there for ages and may literally be years old when you first open one! The best place to buy spices is from somewhere like Penzey’s, in my opinion, but that’s another story.

Genmaicha is more finicky because the popped rice can go stale, and once it does, the tea is ruined. This Numi Toasted Rice tea (in effect, genmaicha, though they recently appear to have removed that part of the name from the label—perhaps gringos found it too scary?—is very fresh and tasty, and the underlying base tea is not murky and brown but beautiful greenish yellow, the surest sign that they did not lie when they claimed “organic sencha” as the number one ingredient.

The popped rice flavor is also fresh, so together the fresh and high-quality sencha and the fresh and toasty rice add up to a fine genmaicha—surprisingly so, given that it’s found in a filter bag! I received bags of this tea in some boxes of the Numi sampler (which by the way I highly recommend since it features 18 different teas—that’s why I bought four boxes…). I’ll probably purchase a full box of this genmaicha in the future.

Day one done. During the coffee break, I snagged the one and only bag of this. From memory, it was pretty decent. But I left it steeping until I finished my mug because the string broke off and there were no spoons to fish it out.

So that said, yeah, it got a little bitter near the end, as any green tea would, really. But it’s a pretty good genmaicha. Toastier than I expected, so I’d say it lives up to its name in that respect.

Too bad this world revolves around morning people. When you’re a night owl and you have to get up at 5am, it’s teh sadness.

roasty toasty yummy nutty puffed rice cereal! yum yum yum.

i keep inhaling this, it is so my thing. hojicha & genmaicha, you are my green tea loves!!

the flavor of the tea & the aroma of the liquor both match up pretty impressively.
i don’t think i’ve ever had a tea do that before!

anyway it’s delicious….and the liquor is a beautiful light peridot. it steeped up very clear & crystalline at first, with the green shyly infusing into the water. i’ve noticed with organic greens it takes a while for their color to reach its full intensity, or so it seems.
after 3+ mintues of steeping this finally became a fuller celery green that was slightly cloudy.

i can’t say i’m an expert on genmaicha, but i had Teavana’s and that was far weaker than this, seeming to lack body and a truly toasty quality. the rice in this really comes through, which i heartily appreciate.

so glad i decided to a get a box. i expect i’ll run through this one quickly!

I can’t get passed the smell on this one…smells skunky. ek! The coloring is that of a pale Green taste, maybe, closer to a white. It does have a slight rice taste. I’m not saying it’s awful but I am not going to give it a thumbs up either. The smell is really what throws it off for me.

I got this on sale at Sprouts, so I figured I would try it. At first sip, I thought I was drinking seaweed. Surprisingly good seaweed. This is the only toasted rice tea I have had, but I like it. It has a simple nutty (and seaweed-y?) flavor that is enjoyable. Though I wouldn’t buy more of it if I was given the opportunity.

Deliciously nutty.

Light toasted flavor, slightly buttery. Doesn’t bitter quickly which makes it a bit more durable in an office setting when I can easily get distracted and leave the bag in too long. Lighter on the caffeine than a regular green tea.