A few months ago, Carol from Honzen Tea reached out to me and offered to send me a sample of her ceremonial grade matcha. I am always on the hunt for good matcha, so I couldn’t say no!
The brand describes themselves as:”…we believe “living natural from outside to inside, from body to mind through Matcha.” With all the good things you may already heard about matcha, in your spared two minutes of your busy day, whisk a bowl of matcha, let the energy of nature flow in you.”
I have heard from other people that they the ritual of making matcha very comforting and soothing. One thing I do like about using loose leaf tea is actually the process of making it. While some can call it laborious, I find the repetitive action very comforting. While I am not the best at whisking matcha still, I find it enjoyable to make as well!
For Honzen’s matcha, the first thing I noticed was how vibrantly green the powder was. It had a very grassy aroma, straight from the bag. The powder was very fine, and when I was shifting, I didn’t find that it had any hard lumps.
The power quickly dissolved into the water and after whisking, there were a fair amount of bubbles on the surface. Like always, I followed the recommendations on the label and I noticed that the liquor had some grit to it when I was drinking. The matcha had a very strong grassy and umami flavour. The tail note was a bit bitter and the flavours lingered.
The label mentioned that if the matcha was too bitter to try to dilute it with a bit of water. This helped reduce some of the bitterness, but there was still a fair bit of astringency. I think this would be a great tea for someone who likes a strong matcha with lots of grassy notes (3/5 rating).
- Type: Green tea
- Origin: Japan
- Caffeine: Unknown
- Ingredients: Green tea
- Other: Organic
- Company: Honzen Tea