Ramune (Japanese Soda)

Wow, it’s already the 10th of December, and the 10th day of Sara’s Old Tea!

This does taste a bit like candy and soda pop. The end of the sip faintly reminds me of Ramune. But the green tea flavor is also pretty strong, and I’m reminded of green tea candy. Which is also a good thing! There’s a bit of a grassy flavor too, mmm.

Home – 5:30 PM

The Great Cupboard Excavation
Untasted teas remaining: 17

This flavor was in Lupicia’s iced tea collection from this past summer. I love ramune sodas – they’re unabashedly sugary and so fun to drink with the marble closure. They come in several fruit flavors (my favorites being strawberry and melon) but the original flavor is sort of like a combination of bubblegum and lemon-lime soda. It sounds weird, but I actually quite like it, and I’m not normally a fan of bubblegum-flavored things.

The dry leaf smells extremely grassy. I noticed it was somewhat broken up, so I steeped it for 2 minutes instead of 3. This actually comes fairly close to original ramune flavor. It definitely has that bubblegum taste, but to me it falls short on the lemon aspect. The base tea is quite grassy, but also sweet. There’s also a bit of added sweetness (I think) from the sugar candies.

Really, to me this is mostly a bubblegum green tea. Maybe next time I’ll add a lemon slice to my teapot. ;)

Trick or Treat! So I’ve been sipping on this soda-inspired tea in my water bottle the last few days at work, which I picked up this last summer from Lupicia. It was their only summer seasonal I was really interested in, since I love Ramune soda (which is extremely hard to get in my area; living in podunk Idaho means “foreign” food items are extremely rare and hard to come by).

I wanted to drink this tea iced; I normally cold brew my green teas, but since this had some flavored crystals in it that I worried wouldn’t dissolve properly with a cold brew, I opted to steep my tea warm, then I set the tea in the fridge to chill overnight.

The tea has a mellow lemon-lime flavor, but it isn’t strong in either flavor. I can see where they were trying to emulate Ramune, though to me, Ramune has a slight bubblegum flavor to it and is so sweet, and since I don’t sweeten my teas typically, without sweetener I don’t really see much of a resemblence. I think next time I make this I may just have to add some liquid sugar just to see if I can bring more of that “soda” essense to it. There is a very mild natural sweetness to the tea, just nothing on par with actual Ramune, and that slight sweetness does make it a very nice iced tea which I’ve enjoyed sipping on during work. I have enjoyed having a milder lemon-lime flavor that isn’t so strongly citrus, especially since many citrus teas I’ve tried overdue it so strongly they come off tasting like cleaner to me, and this definitely does not have that sort of taste. I can also still taste a slight refreshing grassiness from the green tea which is also nice, and often gets lost in so many flavored green teas. It’s very refreshing and does remind me very much of a limon soda, only more mellow and less sweet, and it fits an iced tea quite nicely.

I have yet to try the tea warm yet; I think a Southern-style “sweet tea” iced brew will be next on the agenda, then a warm cup.