Dong Suh

My latest pitcher of this tea has a slight gingery note about it. Not sure how that happened because I really dislike ginger, so there is no way that it was contaminated by anything else gingery in my pantry. Well, the roasted barley taste is strong enough that I can pretend to ignore the ginger, so all is well. I just hope the rest of my tea bags are ok..

Finally bought a pitcher for my new place, which means barley tea time! Woohoo. I’ve missed drinking barley tea with my meals. Plain old water just isn’t as delicious.

As a Korean American, this is definitely a staple in my pantry/fridge. I always have a pitcher of this stuff on hand and basically drink it like I would water. If you’ve never had barley tea before, I suggest going to a Korean restaurant because my non-Korean friends either loved it or were weirded out by it. Most authentic Korean restaurants I know of have barley tea either hot or cold, so then you can form your opinion without brewing a whole pitcher of it.

Sometimes there is something so nice about being able to open a teabag and pop it into a cup. I would say that loose tea TASTES better than bagged tea, but I love the simplicity of a teabag (not that loose tea is all that complicated).

Anyway, this tea has a bit of a funky smell and I can’t really put my finger on why it’s so strange. It might be the mixture of chamomile, honey, green tea and apple. I am excited to drink this tea as it’s a Korean green & I love tea from Korea. The taste is actually very pleasant. It’s a very smooth and mild green tea, but with the nice crisp finish of a green apple. The apple is a bit too artificial for me, but it’s still a decent cup. Thank you so much, ToiToi for the teabag!

Going shopping for this actually wasn’t my idea. A fellow writer/editor I know wanted to visit a Korean superstore I’d mentioned in passing. I didn’t think we’d locate this mysterious tisane she mentioned, but – lo and behold – there it was. I brewed it up that night. (It was a teabag, so no special instructions were needed.)

What to say…

The liquor smelled like Frosted Mini-Wheats and tasted like a cross between barley and buckwheat. I mean that in the best way possible. It’s not the great herbal I’ve ever tried, but in a pinch it certainly works. And I got a good story out of the deal. Can’t argue with that.

you have to try it cold. put 3 or 4 teabags in the small cup with hot water, then you pour it in 2L empty bottle then add cold water to just before the neck, then you put the teabags and fix their strings with the cap. store it in the refrigerator and drink it as like water.
it’s one of the most popular way to drink corn tea in the summer.

Novel, like many other Korean teas. I got this as a gift from a Korean friend, and it’s fun to have every so often. Apparently I need to try it iced!

As others have said, this is definitely a different tea. I find it novel and tasty, but yeah, not a staple. I got this tea as a gift from one of my Korean friends. I’ve also had Korean barley tea and brown rice tea. Apparently the Koreans love making tea out of everything.
In summary: a fun/novelTEA (pun obviously intended). Tastes like popcorn =)

In my experience, I’ve found that people tend to approach barley tea with some hesitance, and it becomes either a love or hate beverage for those who are willing to try it. Personally, I had no idea this had even existed until I visited a Korean restaurant near Atlanta, and was pleasantly surprised! The aroma doesn’t try to mask anything, the grain smell of barley makes itself clear, and the taste is satisfying and dull, with a hint of natural sweetness. I agree with the other reviewers, I’ve found that it is an ideal iced tea, especially with the size of these particular packets, but it makes for a fine hot beverage as well in the morning. Please don’t pass up on a chance to try it!

Ok, I have had this sitting in a pitcher in the fridge, with the loose roasted barley in it, continuing to steep and perhaps add a bit of flavor.

I had a glass of this, and not only was a it still sweet, but creamy. Barley tea – creamy??!? Wow! It was a beautiful golden color, like a beautiful ale. Sweet, creamy, and refreshing.

Had this iced yesterday, it was so deliciously sweet! Sweet? That was really unexpected. Iced is really the only way to drink Barley Tea.

I saw this in the local Asian grocery store and bought it, pretty much just so I could try it and log it here.

This tea takes me down memory lane. Set the way-back machine for longer-than-I’d-like-to-admit-ago. The summer of my junior year of college everyone I went to school with was getting an internship somewhere. And I had NO idea what I wanted to do. I didn’t want to just go home and spend the summer doing odd jobs, but I didn’t have a clue where I wanted to go and work.

I ended up getting bored one night and reading the endnotes in my personal organizer/calendar. It was one my mother had bought me, called WeMoon. And something caught my eye – they took interns! The calendar was produced out of a women’s commune in Oregon, near Portland. I’m not a particular radical anything, but when given the chance to live on a commune? How could I pass this up? It was such a different experience from pretty much anything else I’d ever experienced that I remember much of it very clearly.

One particular memory, relevant to the issue at hand is of this: one of the women who visited boiled some veggies for dinner, then poured the cooking water into a glass to drink later. When I looked at her funny, she said it helped increase the amount of vitamins you got from your food. It struck me as odd, but hey – do what you want.

So how does this relate to tea? This corn tea? It’s really the essence of roasted corn in a glass. Like you took a roasted ear fresh off the grill and managed to distill it into a glass. The smell is just like smelling corn boil on your stovetop. Or popcorn from two rooms away.
The taste is a naturally sweet corn flavor. It’s a little jarring to get it from a cup of warm liquid rather than gnawing on an ear, but it’s good.

This won’t become one of my staples, because when I’m drinking something warm and wet, I tend to want it tea flavored rather than vegetable flavored. But this was a really interesting experience, and a wonderful way to be reminded of that summer in Oregon.

So lately, as I’ve been living in Seoul, I have been drinking this delicious tea. It’s amazing.