I drink a lot of iced tea every day even in colder months, and my consumption pretty much doubles in the summer. I really can’t afford to ice all the teas I’d like to since the bf and I go through about half of a very large pitcher a day—even some of the cheaper blends I like cold like Bangkok would cost an arm and a leg over the course of a hot NYC summer. So, I need a cost-effective tea to make, preferably one that I take no sugar in so I’m not ingesting a truckload of extra calories. I’ll be honest, I like most of my iced tea sweet, even blends that I wouldn’t sugar hot. To me, nothing screams refreshing like genmaicha, so when I saw a 400g packet of this in one of the asian groceries for $4 I absolutely had to get it. Ends up costing about 7 cents a day (15g per a pitcher cold-brewed), not bad at all! Plus no sugar… I can’t even imagine sugar in a straight genmaicha (though I did put it in the strawberry cheesecake one).
This is SO GOOD. Cool, refreshing, crisp and light from the green tea, earthy and nutty from the rice. I think cold brewing it brings out the green base a lot more, as hot this particular blend ends up being all nutty toastiness (which is nice and all, but I like it better with a bit more balance). Yup, definitely going to be drinking this alllll summer. It’s already 95, not really a great sign of things to come, but with the AC blasting and a glass of this in hand I just might survive.
EDIT: Seems like we actually went through an entire pitcher in a day since I just drank the last glass… seems like our cost will be raised to a whopping 15 cents a day!
