“Best enjoyed by August 2011” Um, oops.
It’s not that I haven’t had this tea in over a year, it’s that I apparently suck at FIFO’ing my tea; I’ve been using the fresher packets with no knowledge that this one existed. But I dug it out while doing tea inventory and kind of felt bad for neglecting it.
So today I find out what, uh, “aged Genmaicha” tastes like. It’s not bad. Just kind of flat and not a whole lot of flavor. It’s still got the nice toastiness I love from the brown rice, but that really dominates over everything else. I guess the rice doesn’t lose its flavor as quickly as the actual tea.
Japanese greens are wonderful, but they seem to go stale so much more quickly than other teas (the processing method, I believe) so I try not to keep a lot of them on hand at once. Too bad it’s not really economical to order one packet of tea at a time with shipping costs and all.
It’s kind of a shame; this is one of my favorite Japanese green teas when it hasn’t been lost in a dark corner for years. I am sorry, tea, I will try to be a bit more vigilant about drinking you before you go stale >:
