IYEMON Matcha Iri Genmaicha

I’ve been reading this crazy serious tea blog, recently, and I noticed that the author doesn’t steep in pots, he steeps in wide, open bowls. Well, I don’t have hand made, local clay, wire fire glazed tea bowls. But I do have huge, wide, Pyrex™ measuring “cups” that are at least very open and heat resistant. So I have been trying to make tea in those and see how that goes. If nothing else, the clean up is much easier than a tea pot ;-) I have, in the past, used my spherical Bodum™, with the plunger arrangement removed, for this purpose, but the glass is so thin I find there’s a lot of heat lost even in just a couple minutes, and if I’m doing a 15 minute pu-erh steeping, the water can be down to drinking temperature by the time the steep is done. The Pyrex™ is much heavier and should hold the heat better.

It could be completely psychosomatic, but this genmaicha seems to have “woken up” substantially from this steeping approach. I can taste a lot more of the deep green of the tea underneath the very strong roast of the rice which I have mentioned in the past that this variety has. Usually the roast completely overpowers the actual tea, but right now I think I can taste both about equally.

I have also done two steepings of the decaf Darjeeling from TG with this method and the results seemed much bolder, as well.

As promised, more Iyemon tea! This time in the form of genmaicha. I’ve seen genmaicha referred to as popcorny, and this stuff is indeed quite popcorny, both in the taste and in the aftertaste. It’s also slightly sweet, at least initially, which I found interesting, although the sweetness went away as it warmed up. Eventually the sweetness fades to a bitter finish that, combined with the popcorn taste makes for a rather odd aftertaste that I can’t really say I’m overly fond of.

The taste of the underlying tea is kind of similar to the oolong I had earlier this week. Kind of woodsy, skirting along the edges of bitterness/smokiness without never quite making it over the threshold. There is, however, no traces of the matcha that was supposedly iri’d at some point in the creation of this tea. This is not one of my favorites.

Smooth and rich but the taste is flat sadly.
Thank you for the sample Mel!

This tasty tea came all the way from Japan for me. I’m such a sucker for any well-blended matcha and genmaicha tea like the ryokucha from Samovar. This tea is still very fresh, so the genmai is still very “crispy”. <3

This tea has grown on me from the first sip on. It’s real green and lightly murky. Very strong smelling. Thick on the tongue. It is one of the more grassy teas I have tasted. One of the best loose teas I have bought from an Asian grocery store, of course that’s not saying much. The shop Mitsuwa near Chicago seems to have a good turn around on their tea, always featuring a new brand. Of all the Asian groceries, I think this would be the only place I would buy tea.

Anyways, it’s a good blend. Not my favorite genmaicha…but I’ll go through the bag no problem.

I threw a couple of bags of this into a mug to drink during a meeting today and it ended up being really sweet! Just like sweetened toasted rice. First time having that experience with this tea.

Another sample from KiwiDelight. I’ve loved the genmaichas I’ve tried so far, so I was excited to sample another one. The dry leaves are small and flat, and there are some stems included. There is also toasted rice, which is much smaller than I’ve seen before. And everything is covered in a green dust of matcha. I was surprised when I took a sniff, because the dry tea doesn’t smell much like toasted rice, it mostly just smells like grass and leaves.

Well, the toasted rice aroma definitely came out while it was steeping! It made my whole kitchen smell, which was amazing. :D At first when I tasted the brewed tea, I got quite a bit of toasted rice flavor. But it seemed as I kept sipping, it moved more and more into the background and I could mostly just taste the tea. It’s quite grassy, with notes of autumn leaves and some kind of fresh vegetable taste that reminds me of celery or cucumber or something. When I finished the cup, the rice flavor came back as a lingering aftertaste.

I liked this tea, but I really would have liked more genmai flavor.

This is hands down the best green tea I’ve ever had. Very clean, fresh and hydrating, even with the savory genmai. A must-try for anyone who loves the taste of matcha.

i love this tea! Found it in Japan and haven’t seen in my area except in chilled bottles / cans. As someone noted, it’s pretty grassy.