Iced latte with a little bit of cold foam!
Picked this up at Toronto Tea Festival in February. I’m such a fan of hojicha, but I already own so many different powdered forms of it that I initially wasn’t going to grab this one. However, having a chance to taste it at the festival really changed my mind. A rich, nutty flavour is almost an expectation for a hojicha powder so that didn’t surprise me. What did catch my attention was the really distinct notes of roasted chestnuts, which felt a lot more distinct to this powder. I was really happy to see those flavours in the latté I’d whisked up today as well!
I’ve also really been reflecting on the use of roasted matcha as a marketing term for hojicha powders, as it seems to be increasingly more commonplace – particularly within café spaces and coffee shops. On one hand, hojicha powder is different from matcha on a technical level beyond just the roasting process. The material often destined to become hojicha isn’t usually shade grown or deveined/stemmed even if it ends up milled down in the same or a similar way. On the flip side, there has to be room for language to evolve/change and language like “roasted matcha” very easily and quickly communicates several things to consumers, such as taste and usage/preparation. There’s a level of accessibility that comes with that, which feels like a net positive because it introduces hojicha to people who otherwise wouldn’t know what it is or feel empowered enough to try it…
But it gets complicated when there are companies out there like Aiya who are actually carrying hojicha powder AND roasted matcha that actually has been grown/processed like a typical matcha.
…so definitely curious what other people think! Do you like “roasted matcha” as a digestible marketing term, or should hojicha just be hojicha??
Tea Photos: https://www.instagram.com/p/DHcAzwQShP9/?img_index=1
Song Pairing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1oqVaQ4SEHg&ab_channel=Where%27sJai
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I understand the point about accessibility, and I do think that anything that makes tea more accessible to people has value. But personally I find it really annoying to have something called by a name that doesn’t tell you what it actually is in any substantive way. If I saw a place calling hojicha “roasted matcha,” I’d likely just go somewhere else if possible (benefit of living in a city!). There was a time when most people in North America had never even heard of matcha, and now it’s ubiquitous – so there’s no reason people wouldn’t also understand what hojicha is if they get enough exposure to it.
I understand the point about accessibility, and I do think that anything that makes tea more accessible to people has value. But personally I find it really annoying to have something called by a name that doesn’t tell you what it actually is in any substantive way. If I saw a place calling hojicha “roasted matcha,” I’d likely just go somewhere else if possible (benefit of living in a city!). There was a time when most people in North America had never even heard of matcha, and now it’s ubiquitous – so there’s no reason people wouldn’t also understand what hojicha is if they get enough exposure to it.