How to brew hojicha

Everything you have read about green tea and gentle water does not apply here. Hojicha is bancha, the coarse late-season green leaf, roasted over heat until it turns brown and smells of toast. The roasting takes out most of the grassy notes and much of the caffeine, and what is left is best brought out by water as hot as it comes.

What you need

A teapot of ordinary size. 10 grams of hojicha, which because the roasted leaf is light and bulky is about four tablespoons. 240 millilitres of water, a large cupful. Hojicha leaf is often sold with stems in it; that is correct, and the stems are sweet.

The method

Bring the water to a full, vigorous boil; Ippodo is specific that it should be boiling hard, because the heat is what lifts the roasted aroma. Put the leaves in the pot, pour the boiling water over them so they are covered, and leave them 30 seconds without stirring. Pour out every last drop. Thirty seconds is short; the leaf is roasted and gives up its flavour at once, and a longer steep only darkens it.

What it should taste like

Toasty, nutty and a little sweet, with almost no astringency and a colour nearer coffee than green tea. If it is bitter, the steep ran long. If it is thin, the water was not boiling.

Second infusion

A second cup works with the same boiling water and about the same time. The roast flavour fades faster than the leaf's, so two infusions is the practical limit.

When to drink it

With food, after dinner, and in the evening: the roast has driven most of the caffeine out, and in Japan it is what children and the old drink and what restaurants pour free. It takes milk better than any other green tea, and Ippodo publishes a recipe for exactly that.