Genmaicha (making my own blend)

Genmaicha (making my own blend)

The famous Japanese blend of rice and tea. I’ve made my own versions several times but its always been fast and loose – an unmeasured, tossed together simple tea to fit a simple situation. It was usually with an old sencha, whatever rice I had on hand, and maybe matcha if I was feeling fancy. Genmaicha is my wife’s favorite tea. It might be because it’s cheap, it might be the flavor, it might be both.

I felt its about time I give it my best shot and do some real contemplation and hard work to make the best one I can.

First of all, the rice:

I went to T&T and of course there was lots of options for the rice. I wanted to keep it somewhat standard so I did get a Japanese shortgrain rice (from USA though..) but I went for a GABA genmai brown rice. It was sprouted and dried, so I assume that leaves me some glucose to work with while I toast. That should add some sweetness, maybe add some caramel notes. For better or worse I am not currently sure.

The Initial Test: Drinking rice ‘tea’ – basically unwashed rice soaked in boiled water. That doesn’t sound appealing.
Here goes….: Frankly, it wasn’t good — Ricey? Thick, heavy, water. Something there – nothing really tangible to speak about. Once it cooled down the structure of the flavor was more apparent. There’s very little up front, all of the texture and whatever you can perceive is on the back end of the sip.
[ Question: is the rice used for genmaicha washed before roasting? Asian people in general seem so anal about washing rice that it seems unfathomable to put ‘dirty rice’ in tea. However if you read up on any origin stories… Washing it is very unlikely ]

 The Method: Heavy cast iron skillet, dry roast, starting from medium heat (5/10) and preheated the pan 5 minutes. Starting from 3 minutes in I started to pull rice out of the pan bit by bit and section it off to try infusing with water later on.   

A minute in: I feel like this temp is too low, rice is giving off the aroma of a brown paper bag, cardboardy, dried dogfood, hanahato aged kijoshu.

6 minutes the rice smells like hot rice, as in you’re going to do a risotto. The rice is audibly sizzling.

10 minutes in, sweet aroma. Is the rice becoming slightly sticky? Is it the sugar caramelizing?

XX minutes in, (probably close to 17) Toasted grains, sweet, wholegrain bread –> sourdough, rice is starting to smoke a little

Now to drink the roasted rice water… woo

3m: aroma is doughy, pizza dough? The flavor seems a little more potent than unroasted rice, placebo? The dried dogfood aspect is in the finish of the tea.

9m: Dried dogfood is distinct, very apparent. Distinctive flavor: Brown, sherry? Pet-store. Wood shavings for Hamsters.

14m: Very dog foody, that aroma seems on the cusp of changing into birchbark or something like that. Very beige, suede aroma. The water still has no color to it. Flavor-wise it’s like a loaf of sourdough bread, the flavor seems potent enough to stand on its own.

19m: Combo of sourdough and toasted oats. Normal roasted rice? Dogfood aroma is there. Dogfood xforms into sourdough xforms into rice, that’s the unevenness of the roasting? The flavor is out of beige, into light brown. Hot sandy brown. There’s a subtle sweetness. Toasted almonds? Cakes… white sponge cakes. Between Lo Han Guo and Newton cookie flavor. It has similarities to LHK initially but they finish different, LHK finishes oatmealy while this rice finishes ricey.

After that, 24m? Into a bowl which it kept its heat, it sat there until it cooled. That’s what I used to do my blending. It’s weird somehow I didn’t make a note of how it tasted by itself. Humph.

OK, so I’ve got my rice done. Maybe. I think it might actually need to be roasted darker than this, because while it does taste good by itself the tea is potentially going to overpower it. I Guess we’ll see.

I don’t have a sencha that I’m willing to ‘downgrade’ to genmaicha. My mine no kaori is too good for that. There’s a chance I’ll at least try it if all else fails. It turns out that I don’t have most of my tea at home right now, it’s all sitting in Carino. That makes things difficult. What I do have are some older vintages of Long Jing, TieGuanYin (both from 2007) and my ming qian Xinyang mao jian here. The mao jian is very close to sencha from an aromatic sense, just more reserved in terms of power. I suspect it’ll be the best of the 3. Though I am optimistic for the long jing, I’ll try that first.

4.4g 2007 Long Jing, 4.8g Genmai : 330mL for 2 minutes
Aroma: kind of smells like piss. Light pissy vegetal. Pissy onion.
Flavor: Tastes good, I don’t really taste the rice. It’s melony and mellow, its on the cusp of being able to be called ‘fresh’. The rice removes it from that zone and makes it smell pissy. That’s an X on this tea. I hope thats not going to be a recurring problem.

4.4g 2007 Tie Guan Yin, 4.4g Genmai : 330mL for 2 minutes. The scale im using gets janky sometimes, I think its on its last legs. I noticed it was acting weird when I was measuring the rice for this. So this ratio could be far off.
Aroma: winner!
Flavor: delicious. Sweet. Novel.

Can it be better?

4.4g TGY, 6g rice, a bit of matcha (<1g) : 330mL : 2 minutes
Comments: Tea flavor is too strong, it ‘s good but very floral. It doesn’t come off related to genmai at all.

3.3g TGY, 9g rice : 330mL for 2 minutes
Yes, but more rice… 10g
[ Issue 1: How am I going to consistently recreate this experience unless I blend on the spot or pre-portion the tea? ][ Issue 2: My wife doesn’t like it. Genmaicha is her staple tea, therefore this isn’t genmaicha. That’s bad news. ]

I really like this though. I like the novel notes that using tie guan yin gives to the roasted rice flavor. I like the story I can weave into the name. ‘Osugi Genmaicha’ or ‘Kannon no Genmaicha’ and how it relates to Musashi, Kiyomizudera, etc. The issue is that its not Japanese tea. Will I get some pushback? Hum…

3.5 Ming Qian Xinyang Mao Jian, 5g genmai : 330mL for 2 minutes
Smells like fried chicken or lentils, that’s the aroma of theanine getting killed by boiling water I guess.
Flavor sucks, it’s too bitter. Kind of cabbagey and unappealing.

But somehow my wife likes it, the best one she has tried tonight. I might be on to something here, but instead im just going to get some Japanese tea and give that a shot before going further.

Wish me luck!