Oi Ocha Green Tea
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Ratings & Reviews
Page 1 of 1 page with 2 reviews
79 Aroma: 7/10 Flavor: 5/5 Value: 4/5Tchuggin' Okie (417 reviews) on Apr. 6th, 2025
ITO EN's Oi Ocha has become my favorite straight Japanese green tea pretty quickly. It was one of my favorites of several teas in my daughter's pantry in Bangkok, on decent water (reverse-osmosis filtration of the otherwise risky city tap water), and seems even better on my mineralized but filtered well water at home.
The dry-bag aroma is predictably ricey, slightly vegetal and slightly grassy, but well-balanced. The tea brews up a light yellow if hot-steeped the wrapper-recommended 30 seconds, but I went with a couple minutes to be more consistent with other green teas. I also swirled the bag back and forth, as with most teas, to maximize flavor; this actually is recommended explicitly on the wrapper: "Shake 5 times and remove." Swirling the bag turns the tea semi-opaque and more tan-yellow in color.
The in-cup aroma and flavor also are well-balanced, magnifying the same three elements from the dry aroma and adding a hint of dried fruit like dates or raisins. Surprisingly, it seems both rich (slightly savory) and naturally sweet, and doesn't seem to need as much of my usual sweetener blend as other green teas. The aftertaste is quite fruity, more like mango or papaya, and slightly grassy or vegetal. Inhaling through the wet bag reproduces the dry-bag aroma, but slightly stronger and, of course, moist.
I gort this tea (20-ct box) from a Thai grocery store for the equivalent of about $3.25, but it's a good deal more over here in the good ol' U.S. of A, with World Market selling it for six bucks as of this writing (about 50¢/bag). Still, I'll give it a good value score, due to the quality.
85 Aroma: 10/10 Flavor: 4/5 Value: 4/5Difflugia (170 reviews) on Oct. 11th, 2017
The standard tea bags are packaged in plastic. When opened, the tea is quite pungent, smelling fresh, sweet and of seaweed.
I used 175° water for three minutes. This tea is really aromatic while brewing. The tea smells like seaweed, but not fishy.
The flavor is definitely of high-quality Japanese green tea, but also reminds me of Chinese silver needles. It tastes quite fruity, with strong notes of pear and strawberry. It's less grassy than I normally associate with sencha or bancha. It tastes quite mild and is much more like matcha, though not as rich. It's barely bitter, even with a three-minute brewing. The sweetness in the tea more than balances out the bitterness and slight acidity. In fact, I prefer a bit more bitterness to my green tea. If nothing else, this tea is quite refreshing. Since this tea tastes very similar to the bottled version of the same name, I'm sure it would also taste great iced.
The tea was just shy of $5 for 20 tea bags, so it's a little more expensive than most grocery store tea. Only one Asian grocery near me stocks this tea. The box is labelled for US import, though, so it's not gray market and there are a number of online sources. If you currently drink grocery store green tea, I think it would be worth your while to seek this one out and give it a try.
Page 1 of 1 page with 2 reviews
