Does anyone drink the Japanese Green Matcha tea? I'm a hot tea drinker but have always drink black teas, and was wondering if anyone drink the powdered tea?
Never heard of it, but I've never heard of most things. "Both matcha and green tea are derived from the same plant called Camellia Sinensis. Matcha is actually 100% green tea leaves that have been ground into a fine powder. It is much more concentrated than regular green tea. In comparison to regular green tea, when drinking matcha, you consume the whole tea leaf!" Looks like it would be cloudy rather than clear. Wonder what it tastes like.
I remembered that I had some matcha green tea, so I looked for it in the cupboard and made myself a cup because I didn’t really remember what it tasted like. The kind that I have is called matcha ginger latte, and it is actually pretty good, I am having a cup of it right now. It does not taste like grass, more like green tea after you added a little milk and sweetener. If you have not had green tea before, it is a light tea flavor, and a pale greenish color in the cup. I know that it is supposed to be healthier than black tea, but it seemed to me not to have as much flavor. Now that I have tried the little matcha packet, I think that I will try green tea again, and this time add a bit of milk and sweetener and see if I like it better. I got mine at the little Korean store down the road, but it is also on Amazon.
Well, thanks a bunch. I have drunk green tea but have always preferred the black stuff. I have never used milk with a tea. I will check out Amazon to see what else they have.
I was into all sorts of Asian teas there for a while. I purchased them online from Generation Tea, Mighty Leaf, and Indigo Tea. I've tried these types: Matcha, Green Gold, Gunpowder, DragonWell, Wulong, Sencha, Golden Dragon, Premium Sencha, Silver Needle, Ti Kuan Yin Select, English Breakfast, Rose Toucha bags, Golden Monkey, Pu-erh Toucha, and White Hair Monkey. Pu-erh Toucha is supposed to have health benefits. It is pressed into a bowl shape and set aside to ferment: Each type requires a specific temperature and brewing time. The greener the leaves, the lower the brewing temperature (because the green leaves are so tender.) Black teas are brewed with boiling water. You'll want to pay attention to this if you buy a good quality green tea...don't accidentally ruin it. I still have many of the above varieties on hand. They don't really go bad, but may lose their potency after a while. Some (like that Toucha), get better as they age. In fact, I had carry out Chinese a few weeks ago and brewed some Dragon Well to go with it. It tasted fine, and it's well over 10 years old...but I do keep them all in vacuum sealed bags..
I also had some green tea that comes in tea bags; so tonight I tried one of those to compare it to the matcha green tea. I definitely prefer the appearance and the flavor of the matcha green tea to the tea bags, and since you consume the whole powdered leaf with the matcha tea, it seems to me that it would be much healthier. I will definitely be getting more once I use up the packets that I have ! I ordered a milk frother so that I can add hot milk to my tea and coffee instead of the cold milk that always cools the coffee down too much.
My son bought a package for me. I tried the Matcha tea. I had three cups at different times. I didn't like the tea much, not nearly so well as black tea. I gave the tea to my son who had bought it for me. I like most black teas. The green Matcha made me wonder why people drink tea.
You have such a way with words, Bill. (Maybe the tea making wasn't complicated enough; what was the water temperature...haha.)
I finished the last of my matcha latte packets, so I just ordered more from Amazon. I am trying a different kind, and this one has other organic in it which are supposed to make it even healthier. I will report back after it arrives and I try some. So far, I am really enjoying the matcha tea.
It is about time for me to order more matcha tea. I forgot that I even had this over the summer, and then just discovered it again, hiding in with my tea stash. We have bunches of mint growing, so I looked up having mint in matcha tea, and it looked like people are doing that; so I tried an experimental cup to see how it came out. I think that I like it even better with the mint in the matcha. I brought in a few mint tops, trimmed off the stems, and put the leaves in the blender with some water and turned them into kind of a green drink. Then I heated my water for the matcha and added the mint and matcha and a little coconut milk once everything was hot. I will use more mint next time. I was worried about getting too much mint in the mocha latte, so I didn’t use very much, and I could taste the mint but would have liked it better if it was a little stronger. Now, I am wondering how the mint would go in my iced chocolate mocha coffee. I think that is the next experiment. I will blend the mint up good before I add the ice, instant coffee,milk, and dark cocoa powder, and then sweeten it to taste.
I had to go recapture the various brewing temps/steeping times for the different types of teas because somehow I lost my original notes. Most websites say 175° for matcha because the greener/younger the tea the more tender it is (black teas uses boiling 212° water), and matcha is the greenest/most tender. But as I visit different sites, I see that the water temps and steeping times for the various teas are all over the place. So who really knows? As Bill Boggs said earlier, many of the really green teas do have a grassy taste to them. I used to keep track of how I liked the different teas I tried, and my notes on a couple of them say "grassy flavor." My mother was British, and I grew up drinking fresh-brewed A&P¹ black tea...always with milk and sugar. As an adult I developed a taste for the green teas at Asian restaurants...never with anything in it. I got Chinese carry out last night and brewed some green tea at home to go with it. I keep thinking about switching from coffee to tea (black or green), since the caffeine in tea seems to be more mellow with a longer-lasting lift, while the caffeine in coffee seems to be an intense jolt and then a crash. I should at least change over in the afternoon. ¹A&P started out during the Civil War as a mail order tea supplier...The Great American Tea Company. Six years later they changed the name to The Great Atlantic and Pacific Tea Company, or A&P.
Experimenter that I am, last night, I made my usual cup of decaf coffee, but I heated it with mint leaves and let it steep for a little while on the stove, like you would do with tea. Then I added some of the raw cacao powder, some sweetener, and coconut milk creamer, and it turned out to be delicious . I have decided that I need to do better at harvesting my mint (we have LOTS of mint !) and then I am going to dry and powder it , like the matcha tea is powdered tea leaves. Then I can just add a spoonful in my coffee or tea when I want the mint flavor. I got another little bag of matcha tea from Walmart, and used a teabag of the vanilla/coconut tea (which I didn’t like much just plain) and then added the matcha and whizzed up mint to that. This is pretty good stuff ! We went to Home Depot today, and I got a seed packet of lemon balm, and I am going to try growing some of that next, and it should be really good in tea, too.