NaturaliTea #07: Organic Genmaicha with Matcha

I got this in the post a few days. Since I had gotten into green teas again. My kitchen smells like chocolate cake, except the tea mug which smells like rice cakes. Which is a pleasant scent.

This is only my second time having genmaicha. I like the toasted rice flavour. And I’ve always enjoyed matcha. I still feel like I should be having this in a tea house with onigiri. Thanks to Yunomi for letting me try this.

Marco Polo TTB

THIS BOX IS MASSIVE and there’s so many teas I’ve never had before! This is a definite first.
Nice, sweet, light aroma coming out of the package.
Definitely has that roasted genmaicha smell right when I poured the water in! Now with the matcha, what difference does the matcha make? I haven’t a clue, so that why I’m here to find out!
Hmm.. Tastes like a slightly buttery version of the generic genmaicha I’ve had. Nice, and I can definitely tell the difference between the two.

And back into the box this goes!

Lewis & Clarke TTB

Genmaicha is one of my favorites, so I had to try this one! My serving was the last one in the pouch, so the leaves were rather crushed and I got a lot of tea dust. Dry scent was toasty rice with some grassiness. I considered going for a 2-minute steep, but I was concerned because of the tea dust, so I did 1 minute and 30 seconds.

Once steeped, it smells very toasty with grassy undertones. I was surprised to find a rather strong seaweed taste in this tea, and not at all displeased! It’s also quite grassy. This tea tastes more like green tea than genmaicha to me, which is unfortunate. I can barely taste the toasted rice here, and that may have something to do with the tea dust. I can, however, taste the matcha with its concentrated creamy green tea flavor. A tasty tea, but I can hardly consider it genmaicha because of the lack of rice flavor. :(

A note concerning the rating: My rating for this tea is based upon overall taste, which was decent. However, I am not recommending it because I would not consider it to be good as a genmaicha, which is what it’s claiming.

Lewis and Clarke TTB

This was decent, but I prefer the Den’s version.

I used 176° water so it was not bitter.

It does resteep well, following their standard steeping techniques.

In the later steepings, I got more of the roasty rice, but the first few were all overwhelming matcha.

Light aroma on the unsteeped tea. I’ve tried a few different variations on the steep time etc but it still needs playing around with. In anycase, this tea reminds me of toasty tuna oil, minus the viscosity of the oil. The toasted rice seems a bit heavy, perhaps less rice or a tad less toasted.