In the 1920’s an entrepreneurial tea merchant came up with the idea to make a new type of tea by mixing grains of roasted brown rice with the lesser grade bancha leaf, calling it genmaicha (genmai=unpolished brown rice cha=tea). |
Genmaicha was a clever use of the two commodities cen- tral to Japanese lives, rice and tea. Called the “people’s tea” be- cause it was originally drunk by the peasant class, who could ill afford most of the expensive Japanese teas.The addition of rice made the tea more affordable, stretching it out and making it go further and last longer. In English genmaicha means “rice tea,” but |
Both bancha and lower grade sencha can be used to make genmaicha, but most is made from bancha leaves. Bancha is a common class of tea, plucked following the first and second flush of sencha.Bancha grows everywhere sencha does, in all three of Japan’s major tea growing regions, Uji, Shizuoka, and Kyushu on Honshu Island.Both sencha and bancha are sun grown teas, and both grow on the By the time bancha is ready for harvest, Bancha is processed the same way as sencha, using the fukamushi method of deep After being steam fixed the bancha leaves go through several Sometimes matcha is added to genmaicha, covering the leaf and healthy tea.The roasted rice mellows the bitterness and astringency of The addition of matcha to the genmaicha gives you a little Enjoy. |