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I’m back from my travels! This was also from The Book of Tea, from which I took a handful of samples before heading back. I realized on the train home that the samples were in the most accessible part of my luggage, so I brewed this one with the hot water that was provided. There’s something uniquely enjoyable about having a hot cup of your own tea while looking out at the ocean view along the California coast! Even the name of the cafe car is the Seaview Cafe—truly we’re spoiled to be living in such a beautiful place :)

The sachet contained sencha leaf bits and dark orange-colored toasted rice kernels, and was tinted green by matcha. There weren’t many black soybean pieces in there, or at least I didn’t find them. The tea brews up to a rich green tint as well. It’s nicely smooth and savory, moreso than the typical genmaicha. The soybean adds a very distinctive dimension. This might sound terrible to some, but it was “oily”—not in any offputting sense of the word, but rather, the natural oils of the rice and soybean had come through the toasting, and made it a very rich tea heavy on the grain notes. The nori (seaweed) quality of the tea was milder than the average sencha. Overall, it was a very substantial and highly unique genmaicha. If you like genmaicha and soybean, as I do, you’ll probably enjoy it!