Genmaicha Extra Green

Afternoon cuppa….
I really like this genmaicha! The color is very green due to the matcha & it’s a bit sweet, with the toasted rice. It’s a nice counterpart to the rice pu-erh I had this morning but this tea seems a bit relaxing to me right now. see previous notes if interested. :)

I’ve had a very stressful week traveling for work. No sleep. Working with annoying people. Argh!

I took a bunch of tea with me to try. While I didn’t have ideal brewing conditions, I was still able to make a few awesome cups. This one was great! I produced a lovely murky green. And it tasted so rich and toasty. And smooth and green. Genmaicha has always been a homey comforting flavor so it’s hard to go wrong with it. This one however, is comforting and delicious. I usually prefer mine without matcha, but it works in this one.

Story time:
a colleague I had been traveling with had been eying my teas with distrust for days. I’ve been drinking super bright Japanese and korean greens. Finally, he commented that my tea was really green. I offered to let him try some but he declined saying that all teas were the same. " I’m having some right now." he show me the no name green tea bag provided by the hotel. I had tried it and it was truly terrible. How can you say all teas are the same when you yourself stated how different they looked? I am baffled!

I also room temp brewed a bunch while traveling. Easier than getting hot water all the time. My colleagues were so amazed. “are you just soaking your tea leaves?! The water is not hot.” they looked super skeptical when I explained about cold brewing. No one wanted to try any. Sad.

I got one colleague to try a coconut rooibos by adding cram and sugar. She liked it! Finally, a success story.

I’d read about certain green teas having a post-apocalyptic, glowing green color — the sort of color that makes me think of some of those post-apocalyptic games I played (can’t now remember, was it Fallout? Half-Life? Doom? All of them?) but I’d never actually seen a tea that color. Until tonight. Whoa. Amazing green!

This is the last tea in my sampler, and the fine, very green dusting of the matcha over the leaves and rice is pretty cool looking. It looks like bright, lime-green powdered sugar over long pointy/twisty leaves. It smells juicily vegetal.

I steeped according to the pamphlet instructions: 30 seconds/boiling. The liquor color is a glowing green, not as lime-like as the dry leaves. More tending toward avocado.

The aroma is classic toasty rice, a smell which to me is somewhat similar to the way the old maids in the popcorn bag taste if you chew on them as I’m prone to do. It’s the primary taste as well, with a fresh green tea underlay.

I like the flavor of genmaichas whenever I drink them. I don’t often sit around thinking that they’re just the thing that would hit the spot, though. This is a good, solid genmaicha and I can see ordering it again, but I think the others in the Den’s sample were more suited to frequent drinking as far as my tastes go so I ranked this one a bit lower than the others.

Got back late last night from my trip to Michigan where I sadly had hardly any tea. So what better way to get back into the swing of things than to drink my favorite tea.

Oh…and some good news…I’m engaged!!

This review is for the bagged version that I received in my sampler, not the loose leaf version.

After all these flavoured teas tonight, I felt like I needed something straight and reliably delicious. I was going to go upstairs and grab something from my Verdant stuff, but as it happened, my Den’s sampler was downstairs (I was weighing potential mailable cardboard boxes), so I was lazy and selected two teas from it! Not regretting that decision at all!

So opening up the lovely foil-wrapped package, I’m greeting by green powder everywhere and a lovely toasty rice/green tea aroma. Mmmmmmm. I was a bit sad that the matcha had come out of the bag, until I realized that had it not come out, that would indicate that the teabag was entirely non-porous and therefore useless for brewing tea. So I guess it’s inevitable. Haha.

I wasn’t really sure what parameters to use for the teabag, so went with boiling water for a minute, resulting in tea of a cloudy yellowish colour. The aroma is typical of genmaicha: toasty rice.

Taste-wise I’m finding this to be a very smooth genmaicha. I can’t really say that the matcha is at all apparent. The tea is slightly sweetish, with a lovely toasty rice cake flavour.

Not bad, but I prefer my unbranded years-old genmaicha, probably because it has more flavour. I have higher hopes for the loose leaf version of this tea, which I’ll try another day. I think this entry was really meant for the loose leaf version, so I’m reserving a rating until then. This tea bag version would probably rate about a 72 on my scale.

Still working on my limited sample supply – going to run out soon and need to place an almighty order from Den’s. I do love Den’s Tea!
This is my second steep tonight and just as wonderful.

In all honesty, it’s difficult to find a Genmaicha with Matcha I don’t like. I love the toasty smell and taste, the sweetness of the matcha, the cloudy green color. This one is slightly better than Holy Mountain’s and Upton Tea’s but only slightly. In fact, I’m not even sure it isn’t exactly the same. Clearly I need to do a Genmaicha taste test and comparison. But that will have to wait until after NaNoWriMo. Meanwhile, I’ll just say “Mmmmm! Genmaicha with matcha!”

I know I’m not supposed to make tea this way, but it tastes so good when I don’t follow directions. I used 2 tsp with 8 oz of 208 degree water for 3 minutes. Yeah, its green but it tastes nutty and toasty and way much better than the last time I made it. It smells just like it tastes too. I can drink this green tea made this way. I’m thinking my love for Yunnans and Assams is making me jaded. Now I have to try some macha.

I was most excited to try this from my Den’s Tea sampler. This one was really pretty as it steeped.

I like this – it’s nutty and kind of sweet in addition to the obvious cooked vegetable taste. I’m really liking the sampler so far. I’d order this again! I’m also thinking that this would be good iced with some sweetener. Has anyone tried it iced? I need to start thinking about what tea would be good iced, because it’s really starting to get hot out. My days of drinking hot tea are numbered, I fear.

This is a murky, mysterious green cup of tea! I feel like I’m looking into a swampy portion of the ocean. I smell seaweed, popcorn, barley and a little bit of toast and fish. First sip: I’m extremely surprised at just how salty it is! There is definitely a heavy seaweed note paired with burnt or toasted popcorn. The finish is pure sea water. I feel like I’ve just gulped in the sea – plants, barnacles, fish & all! It’s a little too strong for me to truly appreciate, but I am impressed that such strength comes through in a teabag.

I’m trying this blend in its teabag form, although I did get some of the tea loose-leaf aswell as part of the Green Tea Beginners sampler-thingy. The tea bag was just covered it matcha and the tea turned the water a bright green shade that looked very much like watered down matcha tea. The taste is an interesting mix of the matcha’s grassiness and the genmaicha’s roasted, malty flavours. I think the matcha has the edge in this tea, especially as you get down near the bottom when some of the powder has settled.

This seems to be a similar idea to Samovar’s Ryokucha, but I think the Samovar version is superior simply because it has more complexity and depth of flavour and because the malty genmaicha is the dominent flavour note.

Yummy. Can definitely taste the sweet matcha, though not terribly specifically, but more as a muted sweetness that makes the popcorn taste not so strong. Interested in trying this in a teapot, not a bag like I had to use for work.

Where do I begin with this tea!?!? It’s certainly a different experience than Sencha. The instructions states that you should only steep this tea for thirty seconds. Thirty seconds!?!? Well, during the thirty seconds of sleeping, I could pull myself away from the glass. The smell, it just transported me somewhere else. It was bliss. It smelled like toasted peanuts, popcorn, sweet caramel and butter. Oh god, it was like a movie theater. The smell is amazing, I can’t get enough of it. Now the taste, well that was an interesting experience. When you initially drink it, it tastes like water. You’re wondering where the taste is. It’s only when you swallow that ten thousand flavors rush through your throat. Okay, I exaggerated a bit, but suddenly you taste AND feel roasted nuts. Haha, it hits the back of your throat. Either that or I actually have a piece stuck at the back of my throat right now, haha. The color’s a bit disgusting. It looks like dirty dish water, a opaque yellowish green. I loved the first few sips, but I quickly got sick of it. I mean I still love it, but I definitely can’t do more than a cup of this. It would probably tasted better as I’m eating it with something.

I am finishing the last of the Genmaicha Extra Green that I received as part of the Green Tea Sampler pack from Den’s Tea. Yum! Delightful roasted rice flavor, sweet green tea, just a touch of bitter, delicious! Green tea doesn’t get much better than Genmaicha!