Vitalife Matcha

I am a huge fan of Matcha which is a finely hand-ground powder from green tea leaves.

Vitalife Matcha is of very high quality, as is evident by the look, feel, and flavor of the Matcha itself. This is a very strong and bold Matcha, with strong vegetative and somewhat grassy tones to it. It is very thick and rich as a good quality Matcha should be, and stands up fantastically to milk and sweetener if you prefer your Matcha served as a latté. Because the flavor is so strong and intense, this would make a fabulous iced chai latté!

The dried Matcha powder has a brilliant shamrock green color, has a nice finely ground appearance with a soft non-gritty texture. The aroma of the dried leaves as well as the brewed liquor has strong green vegetative overtones, with the scent of fresh tea leaves, and a smooth and mellow earthy quality.

Even though the flavor and experience of this fine Matcha is what I love the most about it, I also love the fact that Matcha is one of the healthiest beverages in the world. I recommend reading Vitalife’s article on the Health Benefits of Matcha on their website to get an idea of exactly how many health benefits Matcha tea has. Delicious, nutritious and at only 56¢ per cup ($15.99 for the entire tin) for a Beginner’s 30g tin of Vitalife Matcha, it is a great value for Matcha as well!

I am nearly at the end of this tin, which is good. It is starting to go a bit stale and I have had my eye on other matchas for a while. I decided, since it is cold and rainy, that I will treat myself and have a matcha hot chocolate. Yummy! Used a little too much matcha, but the bitterness of the tea complements the sweet chocolate well.

I have been drinking this a lot lately. I’ve been trying it with different juices. Carrot and apple juices work well with matcha, but I also tried cranberry juice, which, apart from looking REALLY nasty, tasted really, really strange.

Backlogging from this morning – I ran out of juice for my usual matcha OJ, so I dug the (ancient and disused) juicer out of the cupboard and made mango juice because we had tons of mangoes that needed to be eaten. Matcha mango juice is my new morning love! So refreshing, and I loved the sweetness of the mango juice against the slight bitterness of the matcha.

I froze some of the smoothie I made earlier, and I’m eating it now. It has turned out really well and it is like eating ice cream. Yay! I love the versatility of matcha.

I was inspired by the matcha recipes thread on the discussion page, so I made banana matcha smoothie with this:

4 bananas
1 and a half kiwi fruit
100ml milk
3 tablespoons honey
Handful of ice

It was delish! I’m freezing some for later because I made quite a lot too much (I had to use all the fruit that was getting a bit overripe) so I’ll see how that is.

I had this earlier with orange juice. It was so good, but it looked so nasty!

My very first matcha!

My first thought upon opening the package was that it was very, very green. The powder was very fine and it looked kind of moist (is it meant to be like that?). Anyway, I sifted a little bit into my bowl and poured the water on top. After I whisked it, the powder had dissolved fully. the liqour was very smooth and it tasted sweet on the tip of the tongue then turning quite bitter, which was nice and refeshing.

Very impressed!