GenmaiCHAI

Hm, thought I logged this one already. Guess not! I love genmaicha, I love chai, and I love the one genmaicha chai mix I’ve tried (Yogic’s with lemongrass) so I was pretty sure from the moment this was announced that it would be a winner for me.

Simmering on the stovetop, this makes my whole kitchen smell amazing. It’s a particularly fragrant chai blend, with tons of chunky spices in the mix. With the toasty aspect of the genmaicha, it smells like I am making chai-flavored rice krispie bars! Which of course now I am dying to do.

The spices in this are a bit unique. I mean, yeah, they’re standard enough but the ratios make this blend stand apart. It’s pretty heavy on the cardamom, ginger and clove while the cinnamon is only a hint in the background. I don’t like very cinnamon-y chais and I adore cardamom so this is right up my alley!

With the genmaicha base I decided to go sugarless, even though I almost always add honey/agave/etc to chais made on the stovetop. Genmaicha + sugar is just not a thing that works in my head, so this ended up being almost savory! Well, I guess as savory as a chai can be. It seems much lighter than other chais because of the green base, this is definitely a winner!

thank you Starfevre for sending a bit of this to sample a while back! A chai genmaicha sounded unique. This blend looks like it has more popped rice than tea leaves.. that’s fine with me.. more toasty goodness! It didn’t seem like there were too many spices though. I went for a 45 second steep after the water had cooled a while. The flavor is great! The buttery toasty genmaicha is nice with a slight spicy flavor. I think that pesky marketspice tea I have may have flavored this one slightly. Luckily, I have all the spicy teas stored together for this reason. This was nice!

So I drank this during a meeting at work so I’m going by memory on it rather than writing this during the drinking like I normally do. So here it goes.

This is a surprisingly good tea for me considering that individually I don’t like more than half of the ingredients. I’m not a big fan of chai, but it seems that this is a good entry into the chai branch of tea, I rarely come across a green chai and the toasted rice adds an interesting dimension to the flavour.

Unfortunately, I still don’t like it. I’m extremely sensitive to ginger and cinnamon so while this nominally tasted okay, I had a burning sensation in my mouth after every swallow that lingered unpleasantly. But I doubt that anyone else has this sensation so the steepster community as a whole will probably like this tea.

A big thank you to teapot1 for sending me this tea! I am really enjoying it!
This tea smells like cloves and toasted rice. Never thought to put the two together, but it seems to work! For most of the cup the flavors of chai vs. genmaicha is pretty even, but as I get to the bottom, the cardamom and clove start to dominate and the rice is less noticeable. I hesitate to add milk for fear of ruining something that is already quite nice, but I’ll have to give it a go one of these cups.
What a strange and beautiful creature this tea is!

In a word – WOW! This has to be hands down the best tea blend I have tried from 52teas (or any other company for that matter) to date. I am very partial to both green and Chai tea which already makes this a winner for me. With this said, using Genmaicha as a base for what I can only rave as a perfect Chai blend is pure genius! The nutty roasted flavoring from the Genmaicha creates a creamy ‘milk-like’ note to this blend that gives it a Chai latte finish – without any milk or calories! If you are a fan of Chai or spice teas this is a definite MUST try! Well done, Frank, well done.