Matcha Organic Super Power Green

While matcha lattes have started to catch on in the cafés of Canterbury and London, I don’t have any matcha of my own to try. At least, I didn’t until the Teapigs twitter account started giving away sample packs of this, so I opted in. After all, their matcha lattes (which, incidentially, I always order without the latte) seemed pretty good! Let’s give this a whirl!

And… uh… hm. Naturally, having tried a proper, tea-ceremony style matcha before my hopes for this were already quite high… But having used the 1/4 teaspoon amount of tea as recommended, the flavour is rather weak. There’s the slight dryness and some of the vegetal earthiness in the scent has made its way into the taste, but not by much.

I imagine this needs to have more matcha powder, or maybe it’s just tasteless…

This was the first Matcha I ever tried. I bought it from a health food shop for a small fortune (or so it seemed). In terms of health benefits, I definitely noticed a real boost in energy and a feeling of wellbeing when I drank it, which lasted throughout the day. I noticed that I was much less exhausted in the late evening.

However, the taste was quite bland. It had hardly any bitterness, which is a real plus, but not much character, either.

My confidence in this brand of matcha was not heightened when I saw the youtube vids made by the company that showed how you could blend the match with apple juice or put it on your breakfast cereal so that you don’t have to taste it…

I also found that it was much cheaper to import good quality Matcha from Japan than it was to buy this, although the high price could be the fault of the healthfood shop.

This was sent to me as a review sample.

I can see what Teapigs are trying to do here – they are introducing matcha to the Western world as a health product. They have imported organic matcha (hence the very high price), but it is not neccessarily high quality matcha. The flavour was bland and bitter, and the powder was not as brightly coloured as I would have liked to have seen. You can find higher quality matcha at a lower price (with all the health benefits!) in Japanese grocery stores.

Teapigs products are normally quite good, but I think they are just jumping on the health bandwagon with this one.