Comins Tea – Genmaicha
I first tried Genmaicha back in May with Tea Pigs Popcorn Tea. I loved it then and – with a couple of Comins Genmaicha in hand – I can confidently state that I love it still. In fact, I love Comins version better than the previous one.
Comins Genmaicha is a delightful and delicious blend of roasted rice and Japanese sencha green tea. Although I should be wary of using the word blend as according to Tales of the Tea Trade, Genmaicha “is considered a type of Japanese tea rather than a blend”. I’m not sure why this is, when it’s just evidently a blend of tea and something-that’s-not-tea. Maybe there’s some tea-blend-based snobbery afoot.
As soon as I opened this tea, I was hit with the tasty almost honeyish aroma. If you’re like me, then the next question you’re going to ask yourself is, “I wonder if I can eat the rice grains straight out of the packet?”
Well, having done some research into the matter, I can confirm that yes you can. The crunchy pieces of rice do make a delicious snack. (If you can count two or three grains of rice, as a snack. (Gwyneth Paltrow probably does.) Obviously, I didn’t want to go crazy and consume so many bits of toasty rice that it upset the balance of the tea not-blend.) It tastes like popcorn, specifically, it tastes like the half-popped popcorn kernels that you get at the bottom of your popcorn receptacle, which if you’re me, you eat anyway.
In the interests of science. I also tried eating some of the rice after the tea had been steeped, although that just tasted like over-boiled rice so I wouldn’t recommend it. If you’re ever trapped in a house during a zombie apocalypse with Genmaicha tea as your only source of food, you’re going to be faced with a dilemma here. Do you eat the rice as the tasty unsteeped version, or steep it so you can enjoy a nice cup of tea at the same time? Should I ever encounter this scenario, I’ll let you know what I decide.
You certainly wouldn’t want to miss out on the chance of drinking a cup of Comins Genmaicha before your innards are inevitably eaten by zombies. It’s a very fun drink. I think if I were going to make a tea and rice blend, I’d be tempted to use a brown toasty tea to complement the brown toasty rice but Genmaicha is quite the opposite, the Yabukita and Okumidori green teas here are fresh, sharp and grassy and interact with their carby companion beautifully.
The combination of flavours plays around in your mouth, making this Genmaicha an utter joy. I would call it an absolutely perfect blend if, you know, I wasn’t banned from using the ‘B’ word.
Today’s featured book is Tales of the Tea Trade, a marvellous account of tea travels and a repository of interesting tea information. It was written by Michelle and Rob Comins, the proprietors of Comins Tea.
Interesting! I’ve been calling Genmaicha the ‘B’ word this whole time 🤔