The Good: Caffeinated, Good ingredients, Tastes good, Antioxidant properties
The Bad: Could use even more flavor . . .
The Basics: Arguably my favorite Green Tea, Celestial Seasonings' Gen Mai Cha is flavorful and healthy!
I think there is something appropriate about me getting to my review of Celestial Seasonings' Gen Mai Cha tea today, of all days. Every year for the past five years, I have made an annual cross-country trip to Las Vegas for the Star Trek convention there and on the way home, I stop at the Celestial Seasonings plant in Boulder, Colorado. At the plant, I find all the newest flavors of tea that won't hit the East Coast for months and I buy them and review them. This year, however, finances being what they are, I could not make the trip which means no new Celestial Seasonings teas. But I had one last box from last year and that was Gen Mai Cha. Tonight, I am brewing my final pot of the tea.
Fortunately, I am ending last year's tea run on a high note. Gen Mai Cha is a flavorful, healthy tea that is surprisingly delightful.
Basics
Gen Mai Cha is a tea from Celestial Seasonings. It is a 100% natural green tea that is caffeinated and made of green tea with toasted rice and matcha. As a green tea, the leaves are plucked at the peak of growth, not dried excessively like a black tea. Gen Mai Cha comes in Celestial Seasoning's standard stringless tea bags, which are paired together with easy to separate perforations that allow one to separate the tea bags. When I make pots of tea, I tend to use two bags and leave them connected. A box of Gen Mai Cha comes with ten pairs (20 individual) of tea bags.
Gen Mai Cha is marketed as a rare flavored green tea, as it is supplemented with toasted rice and matcha and it is more than sufficient in that regard. This is easily one of the most flavorful green teas on the market today.
Ease Of Preparation
Gen Mai Cha is a green tea, which means preparation is as easy as almost boiling a pot of water! Green teas, as the directions clearly state, require water that is not quite boiling. Boiling water cooks the tea leaves and ruins the flavor, so water used for green teas like this one must be kept below a full boil. A single tea bag will make the standard 8 oz. coffee mug worth of tea, though reusing the tea bags yields little more than hot water. These tea bags cannot be reused and even credibly call the result "tea." Indeed, the second pots I've tried were incredibly weak, tasting only like the remnants of green tea. These bags are one-use only. I tend to make my tea using a 32 oz. steeping tea pot and that works well, though it is impossible to get a decent second pot out of the bags.
To prepare Gen Mai Cha, simply heat up some water, and pour it over the tea bags in a cup, mug or steeping pot. This tea is recommended to take two minutes to steep and after a couple cups and pots, I've found that with almost boiling water, the tea is ready at the two minute mark and letting it steep longer does not truly change the results.
Taste
Gen Mai Cha has a rich, rice scented aroma, though it smells like green tea as well. This is the differentiation between the Gen Mai Cha and Chamomile teas, as Chamomile tends to smell just like ricewater and green teas tend to just smell like watered down tea. This has a very earthy and rice-scented bouquet that prepares the consumer for a flavorful tea.
And it is flavorful. Gen Mai Cha tastes like concentrated green tea, as if one took a standard (Decaf, Authentic or Organic) green tea from Celestial seasonings and boiled off about half the water while keeping the tea flavor constant. So, while not as heady as a black tea, this tea holds its own and washes over the tongue with the flavors of green tea and rice that is very distinctive. In other words, describing Gen Mai Cha without simply saying it tastes like its ingredients is somewhat pointless; like an Earl Grey, this tea with a flavor that defines itself.
Green teas are notorious for a dry aftertaste. Gen Mai Cha is no exception in this regard; the tea leaves the mouth feeling and tasting dry. It is not distinct or carrying any other flavor, it is simply the essence and taste of dry. In other words, this tea is not an exceptional thirst quenching beverage.
With sugar, Gen Mai Cha becomes sweet and the flavor of rice is accented. Milk, strangely, overwhelms this tea, which is odd for a tea that is so innate ly flavorful. As Gen Mai Cha cools, it becomes more potent and leans toward the generic tea-flavor.
Nutrition
It is utterly unsurprising that the green tea flavor dominates Gen Mai Cha, though it has more than just green tea in it. In addition to green tea, there is toasted rice and matcha (which is a powdered tea). Gen Mai Cha tea is all natural, gluten free, Kosher, and does contain caffeine. The brand new packaging does not include a caffeine meter to define clearly how much caffeine is in this, but it does not seem like it is sufficient to keep one awake, especially when driving at night. Indeed, I would suggest that the negligible amount of caffeine in this beverage is not going to keep anyone awake.
Gen Mai Cha contains no calories, fat, sodium, carbohydrates or protein.
Storage/Clean-up
Gen Mai Cha is a green tea, so it comes out much lighter than other teas. As a result, cleanup is rather simple. The mugs and steeping pot easily rinse out. One supposes this tea will stain if it is left on fabrics, so simply do not let the tea cups or mugs linger on light colored materials that might stain!
Gen Mai Cha is easy to clean up after - the tea bags may be disposed in the garbage, or composted if you have a good garden and/or compost pile. One of the nice things about this tea - like most - is that so long as it is kept cool and dry, it can last for a long time and it is easy to clean up.
Overall
More than any other green tea I have had, Gen Mai Cha from Celestial Seasonings is one I can enthusiastically recommend because it tastes good. In addition to being ridiculously healthy, this one has flavor and ought to be the baseline for green tea drinkers!
For other Celestial Seasonings tea reviews, please visit my reviews of:
Green Tea Sampler
Organic Green tea
Sugar Cookie Sleigh Ride
7.5/10
For other drink reviews, be sure to click here to visit my index page with a complete listing of those reviews!
© 2011 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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