Bancha

It’s like… a tea, that can’t decide if it wants to be Sencha, or Houjicha!

I like it. It’s very good. However, I would choose both Sencha or Houjicha over the Bancha. Just a personal preference I suppose! Sencha for savoury, Houjicha for roasty. Yum yum yum.

I wanted a bulk Japanese green tea that wouldn’t hurt my wallet, sorry Sencha, you’re just a bit too expensive at times.

Luckily, Bancha is sold cheap by the pound, and you get what you pay for. I appreciated how I saw a good range of leaves and stems in the rather low grass-woodlike scent it gave off. I brewed it at the green zone from 180º-200º at two minutes. I hate playing by seconds, so I leave my listed temperature at 185º. I doubled the time, and upped the temperature, on the second steep.

It tastes like green tea. Not much to delve into. But agreed, it cannot take a lot of steeps. I say stop at two brews, or treat it like a black and just brew it once! If you’re a cheepstake, you can go ahead and brew this more than three times, but you should reconsider and just go ahead and pour yourself some flat hot water to drink instead.

On my count, this is a decent, very affordable Japanese green tea. I often make this for the thermos in the morning, so I can skip a trip to Peet’s during lunch. Perhaps it is a good pair for a Japanese meal if you want the grass tone, but I can imagine it would go cold quickly once you hit your second toro nigiri. For that reason, I would take a Houjicha over this in a meal. Strictly sushi however, I would take Mecha.

My scoring is based upon it’s price, quantity, and production, (it’s organic! and if you haven’t noticed I love organic tea.)

The dry leaves are beautiful, they look like flattened yellow-green raffia. They have the scent of hay, sea salt, and rice.
The liquor is a beautiful lemon-green color with scent of lemon-cooked potatoes and a bit of toasted oat.
The flavor is a nice, mild, toasty green tea with essences of crackers and green beans.
This is a nice tea with food because it enhances the food rather than overpowering it.
As the tea cools, I catch a touch of pretzel stick.
This is a nice, toasted, everyday green tea.

Drinking this with lunch today and I am getting way different notes than I did last time. I love this green tea. It has a hint of raw unsweetened cocoa along with nuts, peas, potato. I love these roasty, nutty green teas to eat with meals. Very delicious to always keep on hand for an everyday green tea.
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8/4/14
Threw some of this into my gaiwan after my long jing gave all it could and I still had some hot water to use. This is really good Bancha though it definitely tastes minerally if you have just drunk long jing right before lol.

I thought it was a nice cup of tea, common yes, but that’s why it would be an everyday tea with your meals like Keemun said. Tea like this aids in digestion and is soothing on the stomach. Tasty and soothing. Thanks Rishi for bringing this one in.

I got a sampler envelope of this with my Rishi order. I like it, it’s a great everyday green tea. Grassy, vegetal, fairly mild in flavor. I would buy this on a future order.

This is a fairly mild, vegetal green—I get light spinach notes from it, mainly. It’s not outstanding, but it’s very drinkable.

I like sencha but I love bancha. I didn’t think much of this one until a particularly hot summer day inspired me to cold-brew it. With no expectations, I took my first sip.

Wow. At low temperatures (8°C / 45°F), this tea is a totally different experience.

No astringency, no bitterness— just the aromas of toasted rice, dried grass and sugarcane, followed by a delayed but pronounced mouth-smacking sweetness that lingers on my gums and tongue for several minutes. Someday I’ll include formal tasting notes but at the moment I’m sipping on a tall glass of this tea and enjoying it too much to bother.

This is a delicious classic green tea. Enjoyed every cup.

Bancha…without doubt a lower quality of tea which is drunk in Japan during meals. Therfore the aromas are kept quite simple as the tea should not overpower one’s sushi or sashimi.

It is loosing it’s flavor very quickly and never lasts more then 3 brews.

Lacking of personality but a must in a Japanese household.