I'm not amazingly experienced with Matcha, but I usually find them to have some combination of sweet, bitter, buttery, and seaweed flavors. The best matchas I've had have kept these taste characteristics in balance, though I have a fondness for when the bitter and the butter tastes pop out a bit more strongly than 'balance' would permit.

I've played around with this one at a lot of temperatures by now, and found I like to brew it a little hotter than the 160 degrees recommended by the company. When you brew it at 160, the butteriness and seaweed dominate the taste, but without enough of a bitter or grassy counterpoint for my own tastes. When I raised it to somewhere between 170 and 180, I more reliably got a complex taste that was at the same time more sweet and more bitter. Brewing it much below 160 produced an exceedingly buttery tea, to the point of blandness.

Bottom line: this is a mid-grade matcha - satisfying, tasty, and energizing in that wonderful way I get from matchas. It doesn't compare to the very best I've seen, even in my very limited experience. But, it's not overwhelmingly expensive, especially for an organic, such that I find myself drinking it more often than I would the very good stuff.


Also: I should say, for full disclosure, that I don't have the proper bowl or whisk for making this stuff. I found that a small kitchen whisk works, though it doesn't produce as good a froth. Alternately, brewing it in an airtight container and shaking it very vigorously seems to produce an excellent froth, even if the method is a bit barbarous.

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Comments:

Jenna Walkling wrote: on January 27th, 2014

I truly like your writing style. Excellent review!

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