HomeRoasted green teas have become quite popular in Japan. These teas are made by taking green tea leaves and roasting them over a high heat. During this process, the leaves change from green to brown and the flavor begins to take on warmer notes of coffee, caramel, and chocolate. To learn more about these teas, let’s take a short trip over to Takaiho, a small town in japan’s Miyazaki Prefecture. Here in the mountains of Taacciho Mr. Issn is hard at work crafting beautiful roasted teas to share with people all around the world. Mr. Issn lives on the small farm with his family in their 200 -y yeararol house. Right next to their house he turns tea leaves into incredible Hojicha tea. He also makes Kama Yeachcha a partially roasted tea in between Hojiccha and Sancha to find out how much work goes into making these impressive teas. Let’s take a quick tour of his factory. Hello everybody, we are here at the IUCN Kamaidica production. So what we will do now is just walk you through the whole production. So follow me. When the leaves arrive they are put first through the containers there which you can see there over there and then they just put up here over this part in the machine here on the right and then coming slowly but surely into the oven falling down here and then coming in this part here where actually the oven is heated up to 300 and 50 degrees Celsius and you got a tube inside where the leaf they just turned with this tube and the matter really gets to 300 and 50 degrees up. Then in a second step they get through this tube to the upper part. The upper part here is then again 200 degrees hot and they have kind of a second slightly slight roasting of the LE always turned still containing a lot of moisture but getting really slightly roasted in this part and then coming into the next steps. The next steps they are mainly made through. Through turning of the leaves different kinds of turning once it’s rolling once is this brush turning as well, and with each set the noise gets more and more out of of the leaves and which each step if the leaves get drier and der. So here we are maybe around 20 percent of moist still in the leaves, so show you how it looks inside. So here really the leaves are pushed against the wood, so they loose with each turn more and more of its moisture. And finally we have these two machines doing verysimilar. So here we have a brush inside, maybe I can show you this too. Wa and you got their two brushes and really pushing out again with air. So air is coming in here air around 35 degrees so a little bit above room temperatures and bringing out just the monster more and more until we come in the second part of heating here the oven is only around 100 and 50 degrees hot. And again you can see there are stones with a flame so these are small ovens giving again this slightly roasted flavor of the Kamaiccha. And then in the final production step it gets here in this one, here that’s the last oven, and then finally the Rapture is done. So the Bronte T, which is then brought into the last step of the whole production. And this is really the last part where you also have the separation of Po Chi Cha or Ho Chicha is really roasted the tea or the Kami Cha which is slightly roasted tea, so I’m whenna just open this here up. So this is actually a pen which is heated up to around 100 degrees when it is open, 100 and 12 degrees when it it is closed and here the the leaf stain just for one hour and this gives it the final the final touch of this slightly roasted taste. And when you want to do Ho Chicha, you just go up to 100 and 40 degrees and then you’re gona get this dark roasted and nearly chocolate flavor then out of the Hochiccha and tea then give the two different teas. After seeing how the tea is made, it’s time to learn about how it tastes. On one of our business trips to Shizuoka, japan’s largest tea-g growinging region, we met the owners of Maraffuku to taste a few of their teas. They source their tea from all over Japan and then process it in this facility. Here, after a careful roasting process, they produce this incredibly fine horia for our visit of the facility. They decided to cold brew some of this tea for us to try. Cold brewing extracts more of the sweet components from the leaves and less of the bitterness. This works great for Hojiccha, particularly when it gets a bit warmer out. That’s a very, very, very good. It’s very, very creamy and caramel. So it’s sugary, incredible. And there’s no bitterness. What’s the culture of this One is? From this is excellent. This is we an excellent. After learning about all the work that goes into making the perfect cup of Hojija, we gained a new level of appreciation for this magnificent roasted green tea. If you are interested in trying some of these roasted green teas for yourself, we would really appreciate it if you headed to neotese.com and checked out some of our roasted teas. If you’re looking for a nice sweet Hojicha with more chocolate and caramel notes, we recommend the Noi Kehojija for a slightly darker roasted tea. With notes of black coffee. We recommend the Kie Haji Cho, a roasted stem tea from Mr. Ibsen. This tea is also made from the stems of the tea plant, so it’s lower in caffeine. We also of course, have the famous panroasted comet yet from Mr. Itn with notes of hazelnut and sweet cashew. No matter what to you try, it will help support our mission of bringing high quality, sustainable green tea to the world. It also helps us support talented farmers like Mr. Ibsen as they continue to improve the way Japanese green tea is produced. Thank you all so much for reading. We’ll see you next blog.
