Kimberley's Kyusu

Hey there Teacups! I’m back today with another Let’s Talk Tea post and this time around I’m going to be reviewing Street Tea’s – Genmaicha Chai. Street Tea very kindly sent me a package of their blends to try and while they all sound absolute fantastic, I couldn’t help but try this one first. Even though I’ve been tasting teas and tisanes now for such a long time I’ve never tried a Genmaicha based Chai and I was so intrigued to see what this blend had to offer. Personally I never would have thought to pair Genmaicha and Chai spices together and it seemed really unusual to me, so I simply couldn’t have waited any longer to try this and see if street tea had managed to blend the two together perfectly.

Here’s what Street Tea UK have to say about this blend over on their website: “This is an unusual but excellent combination of traditional Japanese greet tea and Indian spices. The Genmaicha, with its toasty rice notes, together with the warming spices of a traditional chai blend gives a taste experience that has depth and complex flavours.”

Ingredients: (Japaneses) Green Tea, Roasted & Popped Rice, Ginger, Cinnamon, Cardamom, Black & White Pepper, Cloves and Nutmeg

Tea Tasting Notes 

For this tasting session I tried this blend 2 ways, on it’s own (hot) and sweetened with honey (hot). Normally as you all know I tried my best to try blends in as many ways as possible but I knew going into this tasting session that the green tea in this would have been completely overpowered if I were to add milk, and I don’t like spiced green tea based blends iced so I chose to only try it two ways and not waste any of this blend. Before trying this I was worried that the Chai spices were going to completely overpower the green tea and the toasted rice but that wasn’t the case at all, the Genmaicha is definitely the star of this blend and its fresh, light vegetal and so smooth with such lovely strong toasted rice note. The spices were present and strong enough that you could differentiate them all, but not so strong they they overpowered the green tea.

I was a little bit worried there would be some sediment in my cup from the spices as they didn’t seem whole in the loose leaf but there was no sediment at all and it was such dream to drink. Since doing this tasting session I’ve been having at least one cup of this a day because I just can’t stop drinking it.

While I could definitely drink this without absolutely anything added into it I just had to add in a little honey to see how it would change the overall flavour profile of this blend. I added half a teaspoon which is as far as I would go with sweetening this blend, any more than that and the sweetness will wipe out all the best aspects of this blend. Half a teaspoon was enough to add a subtle sweet undertone and seemed to make the spices come out a little more which was such a great bonus, it really helped to tie everything together and put all of this blends separate ingredients on the same level.

I’m glad I experimented with the honey because I think its much more balanced one you add it in and that’s definitely how I will drink this from on. This will be one I go back to purchase once I’ve lifted my tea buying ban as I’ve really enjoyed reaching for it towards the end of the day as I’m starting to wind down.

Overall Teacup Rating: 5/5 

If you want to find out more about Street Tea and purchase some of this delicious blend to try yourself, you can do both here. As always if you have any questions at all either stick them in the comments or send them to me on Twitter/Instagram @teaisawishblog and I’ll do my best to answer them all as soon as I can.

Speak to you all again soon. Happy Steeping – Kimberley

*The tea featured in this post was gifted to me for the purpose of this review. All opinions are my own and have not been paid for*