It’s over 90 degrees in here, and even with a cooling towel and the fan on high, it’s…. a lot.
I’ve heard it said that drinking tea is supposed to have a cooling effect, and the science seems to check out on that to some extent, though the studies seem to usually be conducted at a ‘normal’ room temperature. It makes sense that drinking a hot drink might prompt your body to do whatever it does to release that heat, via sweat or otherwise, resulting in feeling cooler, but I’m not entirely sure how well that stacks when it is already hot and your body is presumably already doing whatever it can to release heat.
Truthfully, I feel like the hydration aspect is probably the most important here, regardless of the drink temperature. I’m not a scientist, though. I do have a new batch of roasted barley ready to be made into iced mugicha as soon as I feel up to doing that.
But I haven’t gotten around to doing that. The heat slows you down and either clouds or clears your mind, depending on how you look at it. You reassess your priorities. You don’t do things you don’t have to do.
Anyway, right, so, this tea.
“Best by April 2022,” so again, not the peak time to be drinking this, yet I’m still finding it delightful. The leaves are long and mostly unbroken with a fair bit of stem. The first steeping genuinely shocked me with how syrupy-sweet it was, with a beautifully aromatic grain flavor, particularly in the aftertaste. It’s not a flavor I remember getting from Japanese greens, but it has been a few years since I’ve been well-acquainted with them.
The sweetness really sticks around in the later steepings, it’s almost a cooling sort of sweetness, and this is fascinating to me, it’s so different from what I’m used to. It stays light and sweet all the way through with very little grassiness and practically no astringency. There’s an almost fruity-floral flavor under it that I can barely identify, maybe vaguely apricot-y, but not quite.
At least once I think I’ll try this at a higher temperature, just to see what else it brings out, but it’s hard to want to do that when it’s so nice this way.
Flavors: Grain, Sweet
