House Foods

If you haven’t tried Mugicha- you’re missing out! This is a unique, easy to prepare bagged Mugicha (roasted barley tea) that is incredibly popular in Korea, Japan, and China.

I often will brew it cold overnight and drink it throughout the day. When I lived in China, and couldn’t drink the water, I would drink Mugicha by the pitcher-full all day- just add boiling water to the bag continually. It has a roasted, light and rich flavor. A bit toasty, a bit nutty. Yum!

I really like this “tea”, both hot and cold, tho I preferred it hot. I originally tried it since I wanted a healthy non-caffeinated tea-like drink. It’s popular in Japan as a summer drink, but don’t see any reason not to drink it year-round. I find I would drink quite a lot of this, refilling the teapot a few times.

Sadly, I eventually discovered that if I drank much of this I would have a slight headache later in the day or the next morning and it would linger all day. It took a while before I made the correlation. Searching the internet I discovered that some people are allergic to it, and a headache was the usual result.

I don’t know how common this allergy is, but should you find you get a headache after drinking it, note this could be the cause.

However, I can’t rate this poorly since it’s not the fault of the tea per se – just an oddity with my body chemistry. It is well worth a try!

I became obsessed with barley tea after trying it in a Korean restaurant. I was suspicious of this brand because I never usually make tea from teabags but my suspicions were thrown out the window after I tried this tea for the first time.

It’s extremely easy to make but I think the flavor does improve when the water has been heated. For iced tea I steep the bag(s) overnight and for hot tea I use boiling water (212 F) and I steep the tea for a couple of hours. Barley tea tastes great with some honey added or by itself. I have yet to try a wedge of lemon with my tea but I’m sure the citrus would contrast well with robust barley flavor.

This is probably the most successful you can be making a tea with water from a tap (GASP!) The flavor balance of the toasty and light mugi is great, but heating the water to steep it gives it a pretty bitter flavor (and I love bitter.) Definitely easy on the wallet though, so this is usually my go-to mugicha.