Tea Adventure: Gen Maicha from Tea Licious

Here is the latest “Tea Gang” adventure with:



Gen Maicha from Tea Licious[More company info]This is a Flavored Tea [About straight teas vs flavored teas.]

Time for this little teapot and his humans to take a bow – a Japanese bow of greeting – for this time our tea adventure is a real Japanese treat. I was going to ask Tea Gang member Little Japanese teapot to steep this, but I took one whiff of the dry tea in the pouch, with its richly roasty/grassy aroma, and claimed the honor for myself! (It’s good to be gang leader.)

Starting with bancha (an inexpensive, low quality green tea drunk everyday in Japan), Tea Licious then added the traditional roasted rice. One difference here from other versions we’ve tried is that it has a lot more popped rice kernels.

Water heated to 185° F will steep this tea without cooking it (something that can make the tea taste too spinachy). The steeping time recommended is 4 to 6 minutes. We did only 4 minutes for the first steep and 4½ minutes for the second steep. Both seemed more than ample, and you might want to cut back to 3 and 3½ minutes for the first and second steeps respectively. A third steep is iffy. My humans didn’t want to.

The liquid was a lovely golden color with a wonderful grassy/toasty aroma and flavor, fairly typical for this tea style. The second steep had less of the grassy teaness, which was a bit disappointing and the reason my humans did not want me to do a third steeping. They were quite pleased anyway. Another very suitable version of this popular style of Japanese green tea.

Disclaimer: This tea was provided by the company named. However, any opinions concerning this tea and the company are always strictly objective.

© 2012 A.C. Cargill photos and text – All rights reserved. No copying, posting on other sites, or other uses allowed without written permission of the copyright holder.