How to brew genmaicha

Open a packet of genmaicha and half of what falls out is not tea. It is brown rice, soaked, steamed and roasted until some of the grains have popped white like small popcorn, mixed with green tea, usually bancha and sometimes sencha. The story is that it began as a way to stretch tea in hard times; what it became is a tea that tastes of toast and grass together.

What you need

A teapot. 10 grams of genmaicha, about three tablespoons, because the rice is heavier than the leaf. 240 millilitres of water. Nothing else; the rice is already in the packet.

The method

Bring the water to the boil. Put the genmaicha in the pot, pour the boiling water over it and leave it 30 seconds, undisturbed. Pour out every last drop. As with hojicha, the roasted element is what wants the heat and what gives up its flavour fast; the green leaf in the blend is a coarse one and does not go bitter in half a minute the way sencha would. Ippodo's higher grade, made with better leaf, takes about a minute.

What it should taste like

Nutty and warm from the rice, light and green from the leaf, pale yellow-green in the cup. The rice makes it one of the most forgiving teas there is: hard to over-brew, hard to under-brew, and good with food.

Second infusion

The same boiling water and the same half-minute. The rice flavour fades by the third cup; the leaf outlasts it.

When to drink it

With a meal, which is what it was made for, or in the afternoon when a plain sencha feels too austere. It is low in caffeine for a green tea, because the leaf is bancha and half the weight is rice.