Genmai Cha

As with the Vanilla Green, the Genmai Cha tea has been a very welcome companion! No longer do we have to go to the nearby ($$$) restaurant to get this tea. We found it here on Adagio and fell in love. The tea is warm, nostalgic, with the great green tea flavor we love and appreciate- sometimes smooth, sometimes a little rough. The rice flavor is a wonderful complement and we are on our next big bag of it. <3 A very loved tea- definitely try it!

Hmm…so I decided to not follow the brewing recommendations for this and I’m thinking that was a mistake. I did drink this one on previous occasion, but I don’t really recall how it tasted. It didn’t really stand out much in my mind, though. I brewed it with about 5 grams in around 90-100 ml of water and it mostly tastes like burnt rice. I can’t really taste the tea at all, but there is quite a lot of rice mixed into this, more than what I’m probably generally accustomed to with genmaicha. Tried another steep since the rice was not soggy, basically the same. I will make sure I steep according to their instructions the next time I try this.

Opening the bag, it has a very toasty, popcorny scent. Once I brewed it (2.5 grams, since the gram amount below rounds down to 2) , it had a slightly fishy and toasty aroma. The taste was similar, but milder, and more floral in the aftertaste. I’m thinking about increasing the amount for the next time. I also tried resteeping at near boiling water, for five minutes, and got the same taste and aroma.

This is my first genmai cha, and it’s very interesting. The popped rice flavor really comes through, and the tea is slightly salty. I like it, and it’s certainly different from other greens.

Good, but a bit too bitter to be up in my favorites. I steeped for 3 minutes at around 190, so I may need to play with the parameters a few times to get it just right. The toasted rice flavor was very nice, but I would have enjoyed it even more if the bitterness of the green tea was toned down just a tad.

Tastes like warm rice krispies

I’m not a huge green tea fan, but Genmai Cha is one that I really enjoy. This particular one has a lot of flavor and smell to it. The grassy-ness competes with the toasty-ness for dominant flavor. While the tea is still hot, the grassy flavor/smell wins out, but as it cools, the toasty flavor/smell starts to dominate. I can easily drink this without any sugar or milk or anything, there’s plenty of good flavor already. There’s no bitterness.

So this morning I took some with me in my tea tumbler (after brewing it up in the one touch). Brewing it in the one touch wasn’t the bad idea. The bad idea was carrying it in the tea tumbler. When I got to work and poured my first cup it tasted burnt. This was not the way I wanted to start my Thursday.

I naturally did not want to review those two cups of tea. So instead I heated the water to 180 and opted to break in Mr. TEA infuser to steep the leaves and toasted rice. I will say this Adagio does use a lot of toasted rice in their version of genmai cha. I’m not against this (I for one love the taste) but I’d like to see some green tea in there too!

A word on Mr. TEA. He’s a pretty cool guy who hangs on your tea cup while he steeps your tea in his “pants”. Yeah, I thought of this one after I started sipping…but let it go in favor of enjoying my tea. He does a great job at steeping tea, the trouble comes when you need to clear out the tea leaves. It’s a little bit of a pain in the pants…pun intended! Thankfully I found that you CAN flip said pants inside out (do this carefully) and everything cleans up pretty well.

Right, back to the tea! Once again I get that really great taste of the toasted rice mixed with the vegetal taste of the green tea. But unlike the Shirakawa from earlier this week, I don’t get a specific veggie jumping out at me. Which makes me a little sad because spinach is my jam. There is the hint of a grassy flavor on the finish, but only a hint. I’m not saying it isn’t a good cup of tea. Just that the flavors were more pronounced in the genmaicha from Steepster.

Perfect for movie time, no need popcorn.

One of my favorite teas. Tastes like warm sweet liquid rice cakes. Perfect at night before bed, helps me avoid snacking & makes me feel cozy.