Takaokaya

Hot: Surprisingly full-bodied, but more on the bitter side as japanese greens go.

Iced: I gave this a cold brew treatment (steeped for 12 hours in the fridge), and the bitter notes were gone. It made a refreshing, vegetal iced tea. I would reccomend this treatment, and for the price this tea is a contender for a summer staple.

This is my favorite everyday green. It brews up very strong when you oversteep as I do, with pronounced, round grassy notes. Probably the best bagged green tea out there.

I wanted a green tea to go with my sweet & sour chicken for lunch, but I didn’t want plain green or a fruity flavored green. This was hanging out in the cabinet from a run to the asian super grocery who knows how long ago.

Followed directions on package for a really short brew time.
Still had to add a lot of sugar to make it drinkable – otherwise it was like drinking hot water that had hay soaking in it all day with a handful of stale popcorn.

Maybe the tea is just old.

Not the best genmai-cha ever in the world, but quite a respectable standard. This variety combines broken green tea leaves with matcha and toasted rice in aluminum-lined bags. I’m a big fan of that rice flavor!

This was the tea that brought me into the wonderful and interesting world of tea! I had gotten this and a sencha in teabag form from a cousin who just came back from Japan. I must have been like 11 or 12 at the time. I remember sitting on my kitchen floor and just sniffing the box for a few minutes before actually making a cup. I had tea before this, but nothing quite piqued my interest such as the smell of houjicha. I thought it was a crazy concept. “Wait. You mean to tell me that this toasty, toasty, cup of goodness is green tea?? Like this neon green one I have sitting next to it on my shelf?!”

Man, little did I know I was in for a crazy ride.

This is my new favorite green tea. It’s vegetal, savory, a bit sweet, and super comforting. I drink this throughout the day, and it doesn’t keep me awake if I have a cup at night. I steep it for two minutes.

This one is not an expert of Genmaicha but I’ve drank enough of it to feel like I can tell the difference between companies… etc. This one I find to be mediocre. It’s good but I just don’t quite find myself being happy with every sip like I do with some others I have tasted. This has happened a few times with other genmaichas that I’ve tried. This one is grassy and has a slight rice flavor but not enough to really get my taste buds going.

Not sure why I love plain green tea so much but glad I do. This one is quite grassy. Very reminiscent of the teas we had while in Japan. Still below Genmaicha in my opinion but for a straight up green tea it’s well balanced.

oh yes, this is a good travel mug tea. make sure you get a stainless-lined travel mug, i notice too much plastic in the plastic ones. at ANY rate, as someone else noted, not my favorite genmai cha in the world, but quite nice for an afternoon spent on wifi at the rec center, waiting while the kiddo was doing his lego club thing. quite nice. i will be restocking once i’m done with this box.

Tea #5 from Considering a new TTB
This is my first time trying Aracha; it’s certainly a strong green tea and one that isn’t really to my tastes. Even with a short steeping time it was a very bitter tea with a strong vegetal flavor. I can normally deal with one or the other, but the combination of the two meant I had trouble finishing my cup.

all i can say is NOM. glad i bought a ton of this delectable delight!

yum yum yum, afternoon of oolongs, and i needed this. GREEN.

started over on the multiple steepings of this for today. first steep – as described before, and i still love it! this stuff will easily become a daily craving for me, so after today i’m going to try to not drink it THAT often (maybe just every 2-3 days?) so that i don’t get sick of it. it is such a strong presence, i can tell that might happen a little too easily.

but for today? i binge! NOM NOM NOM GREEN NOM

oh wow, this tea is GREEN. the dry leaf is bright green, the liquor is a dusky green, and the flavour, well, it is just a complex combination of all green and verdant tones possible! there’s grassy, asparagus, green beans, spirulina, all in a very brothy drink. there’s also a creamy fullness to it that satisfies. just plain good. if you’re craving green tea (yes you do, you know who you are), you can’t get any better than this! there is a tiny bit of astringency, but i’m adding that to the spirulina flavor in my mind.

REVIEW: ARACHA TOKUSEN GREEN TEA

I bought this tea at an import market here in Vegas. It comes loose leaf and vacuum packed into a foil-lined, 7 oz package.

It’s called simply Green Tea because it’s a blend of Fukamushi cha, kukicha and kona cha. The aroma is nice. I brewed it for only a minute or so and enjoyed the flavor.

The flavor was pleasant- nothing special, though. The body was relatively smooth.
I’ve enjoyed other greens more, but as I sipped I was thinking this would be fine as an everyday tea.

Then I got to the final few sips and suddenly it became extremely astringent, like the most extreme brut wine. Yikes! I seriously couldn’t drink anymore- it was a totally different experience in the space of 10 minutes or so.

So…since it was nice until the last bit, I won’t give up on it. I’ll fiddle with temperature, amount of tea and brew time, and – maybe drink it quickly! At $16.99 I’m not throwing it out.

I looked at this tea and I was very curious so I gave it a try. I do not have a great deal of experience with japanese teas so it seemed worthy of a tasting. This one is not for me! Very vegetal with strong flavors of green beans and peas combined and that is just fine; however, the tea liquor is very, very cloudy and the taste is quite bitter.

I really like genmaicha tea, so I was intrigued with this one which is genmaicha with matcha added. Honestly, I can’t taste what – if anything – the matcha adds. It’s still a good genmaicha tea (not the best I’ve had, but decent) but I feel a bit let down because I was expecting something more given the matcha.

92 Rating: Awsome, really Green. Makes a good complex brew that lasts in the palate. Love this tea

Dry leaf; A complex grassy aroma. Color of leaf and stem is a beautiful grassy green.

1st Brew: 2 teaspoons tea leaf for 5 oz of water at 175, steeping 1-2 minutes. I love the complexity and depth of this tea. The brew is a beautiful green color. This tea comes in a Select & Premium version. I really look forward to trying the Premium next.

60 Rating: New Package Update, 2/8/2013
Wow, this tea is all of a sudden very bitter! What a let down, as this was a nice tea in the last package. Seems to have inconsistencies between batches.

A review of Organic Green Breeze by Takaokaya

Company: Takaokaya
Tea Name: Organic Green Breeze
Tea Type/Varietal: green
Region: Japan
Steeping Vessel/Amt. Leaf: cup/ 1 teaspoon
Liquor Color: minty green
Leaf Characteristics:

1st Steeping:
Water temperature: 190 Fahrenheit
Time: 30 seconds

This morning I want to try and make a better matcha than the last one I had; I am using this Green Breeze tea powder and not the Hamasaen brand. As this one is per packet for each use, so I should fare better this time. I open the packet and place the contents in my cup and add some boiling water to my cup. Less than half of a small cup of water is what I use. I stir and stir the tea until the mixture has completely dissolved and what remains is a frothy mixture of the tea.

I seem to have done it right since there is no pastiness; the tea’s color is a mint green, not darkly green and the tea smells smoothly of milk as does my fingers from having handled the tea packet’s content while putting it in my cup. I like the milky scent and when I sip my tea it is rich froth with smoothness of green tea. This tea has a wonderful ‘umami’ taste of green veggies; a bowl of cream of broccoli soup would be a close description of this tea powder. It is so very mild and faintly since nothing is overt in the tasting of this tea.

I think because the packets are pre-measured per serving and all one need do is add water; less than half of a small cup and stirring tea with vigor should produce a wonderful cup of tea as in this instance.

I had purchased this from the Miso International Market and will need to find some more of this. Thank you for this great tea.