Ryokucha

TRY THIS TEA!!! This is with out a doubt my favorite morning tea, it has a fantastic strong taste and creamy texture heavy notes of the brown rice come through perfectly with the grassy flavor of the tea.

mmm I"ve had this twice now with drastically different results…
first was at 160 degrees with a 2 minute steep time and it was sublime…
second was at 175 with a 2 min steep and I thought it was too spinachy…
How strange… so I’ll be experimenting with this more to figure out all of the little nuances.
Also it seems like using too much tea can drastically impair this teas flavor… more testing to come… obviously…

Enjoyed Ryokucha first thing this morning as it has been highly noted that it could be considered a meal in itself… I can see that it comes from the matcha powder and brown rice which add the creamy/roasty mouthfeel.

About the roasted brown rice.. I was initially put off by what smelled like rice burning while it was brewing…I wonder if I’m brewing it too hot (tho it says 180-190 degrees on the canister) BUT it has sucha sweet & creamy green taste that I shall definitely be keeping this one in the morning lineup. Goes great with my everything bagel/cream cheese.. I can see it pairing well with other breakfast foods.

It’s also labeled as a coffee converter ;)

My favorite tea! The smell. The taste. Just beautiful.

A Genmaicha cousin with added matcha powder for that electric green look and extra vegetal punch. Whether good or great is hard to say. But costly, is surely is.

COST
A pretty good tea, at $7/oz this is an expensive tea for daily consumption. I’ve found this tea is enjoyed by many people, both tea lovers and coffee hogs. Its smooth, bright, and as always too expensive.

TASTE
A vibrant green grass flavor emerges through a subtle background of rice and slight seaweed. The mixture of rice, leaf, and powder means that the refined subtle flavors of each component become lost. So for those of you who like to hunt your taste buds for comparisons to other foods and lands — the  terroir terrorists — you’ll need to look elsewhere.

PSYCHE
After drinking a cup my psyche becomes concentrated leading to a narrow focus. Very similar to the psyche offered by a good Sencha or pure Matcha. More so that a standard Genmaicha. This is both good and bad, ala tunnel vision phenomena. Cold sweets and jitters coming from black-darjeelings are usually not present.

BREWING
Although the Samovar people say you should try using boiling water, which I did (once), I’d avoid the straight from the kettle method. I find letting water cool to around 85º C is best. The marketing material suggests a large range of water temperatures, which I agree with. Genmaicha’s are known for being robust under harsh brewing conditions, the rice acts as a buffer. So this tea is perfect for the bumbling brewer in your house, who can’t be bothered to cool their water.

ETC
The matcha powder to rice/leaf ratio changes depending on which area of the bag you spoon your tea from. The powder has a tendency to fall to the bottom since it is fine. This means sometimes there is far to much powder or not enough. Not sure if there’s a fix. The rice does act as a powder carrier, and is itself a vibrant green.

Very strong toasty flavor….almost overpowering, but not quite. There’s still some nice tea cutting through that gives it a good balance. Very substantial feel and flavor. Nice for a change of pace.

I was/still am a coffee addict, and this was what got me into tea. The toasted rice adds a nice “cereal” taste for the non-tea drinker. Once I got used to this everything else in the tea world has tasted wonderful.

I heart genmaicha teas, I heart matcha powder. Samovar put the two together for an epic win! everyone has some pretty decent reviews already so I’m going to leave it at that!

picked up this tea a little while back and im not to sure about it. i love the taste of green tea, and at first this has a nice bold green tea taste. but then the rice takes over and im left with a toasted cereal flavor in my mouth. the texture is good, one other reviewer said “buttery” and thats about right. i think i would enjoy this a bit more if it didn’t have the puffed rice added.

This is one of my favorite green teas. A perfect way to start the morning!

I’m not a fan of green teas, but this one was a delicious tea that grew on me. I made a green tea ice cream with this tea and the flavor was amazing after letting stay in the freezer overnight, the rice really complemented the creaminess. I need to order some more Masala Chai from Samovar, I’m certain I’ll pick this one up again.

Complex tea. Malty, full bodied, leafy, with a brown rice and milky flavor. Very good and energizing (matcha powder). Good alone as a meal or mixed with wheat or put in soup with rice, vegetables, and salmon for a great meal.

I had this at the Samovar in MC and it was OK. The color as fantastic but as a genmaicha iri matcha fiend, I wasn’t really impressed with the flavor. I was looking for a more nutty taste, but it fell a little flat.

I recall someone previously saying this tea was like crack cocaine? A worrying thought that crack fiends might have entered the tea industry and started putting more unwanted additives in tea along with the pesticides and whatnot. What a combination, that along with our now poisonous water supplies in the US!!! Regardless, I’m happy to say I have no idea what crack is like and this tea is pretty good nonetheless. Not nearly as good as the blend I make myself, though!

word….
this tea is superb…

Brews up an intense lemon-lime green color. Smells roasty. Silky smooth mouth feel. Tastes liked puffed rice and sea weed with a little vegetable sweetness like carrots.

An interesting tea. This was my first foray into such a potent green. This tea is a hit or miss with me, I love it sometimes, and sometimes I just couldn’t imaging ever wanting another cup of it.
This tea was also very temperamental, at least for me. It requires a fairly precise steeping time: Too short a steep and the matcha overtakes the other notes of the tea, and too long creates a rice taste I would rather not experience more than once.
The great redeeming feature of this tea, and the reason I keep it around, is the matcha. This tea is enough to wake you up and keep you going for quite some time.

I got the Kevin Rose starter set for a gift. Trying this tea for the first time it smells like popcorn or a box or Quakers puffed rice. I enjoy the taste of the Matcha powder, almost frothy…in a way

Loved it. Buttery, light, grassy…delicious.

Earthy tones, toasted nutty rice… a nice wake me up tea on a cool September morning.