Matcha Outlet

I was feeling really frugal and smart earlier because I had to run out to do a little last minute shopping when the hubby got home, and usually I take the opportunity to grab myself an overpriced and calorically exorbitant fancy coffee at Starbucks or Second Cup….but I decided before leaving the house to make a matchaccino instead! So I microwaved some milk, and put it in my Contigo travel mug with a huge spoonful of this good stuff, gave it a tremendous shake and totally enjoyed myself.

Who needs Starbucks anyway?!

Still yum.

I’m not even sure if I can adequately describe how much I love this stuff.
It’s delicious in so many ways. First of all, the caramel flavour is like ‘BAM!’ The perfect balance between that and the matcha. Not too sweet, just right.

Every morning when I make some at work, there’s always someone near by who goes “OH MY GOD what is that smell?? What are you making? It smells so good!”

Cue my advertising spiel – “It’s caramel matchaccino, you can get it online from Redleadtea.com” (but usually preceded by a layman’s explanation of what matcha is, period)

I love making it as a hot latte with my little battery operated ebay purchased milk frother and a combo of warm milk and not quite hot water, but I’ve tried mixing it with cold milk in my Magic Bullet blender and it creates this creamy, frothy, thick and delicious smoothie that is probably the best way to start any day. Honestly. Man.

I had tried this during the testing stages and fell in love. So when it was finally released and on sale I bought some right away, the largest size because I just knew I’d want to have it around for as long as possible.

Apparently you can even make this by putting it in a bottle with milk and giving it a good shake, how easy is that? And inexpensive… wayyyy cheaper than going to Starbucks. I’d rather support the ‘Little Guy’ anyday, anyway!

For this, Red Leaf, I salute you.

Get on that!!
http://www.redleaftea.com/matchaccino/caramel-matchaccino.html

Full reivew on http://sororiteasisters.com/ later today but here are my snippets:

MATCHAccino from Red Leaf Tea is anything and everything a person on the go could want! For that matter it is anything a person who wants to lavish in a sweet inexpensive matcha latte at home could want! Its everything anyone could want! It provides a healthy way to indulge in sweet caramel goodness that provides a nice energy boost without feeling cruddy like you would after a typical energy drink. The flavor is perfection. Sweet caramel candy like yumminess with a sweet green matcha flavor to boot. I do add whipped cream to mine often and love it. Just like the description says, it tastes as good as, if not better than a milkshake!

I can’t express how easy this is to make, and I admit, I’m rather lazy. If something takes too much prep time I lose interest in it fairly quickly. this literally takes me no longer than two minutes to prepare. Using their measuring scoop I put the powder into my lidded glass drinking vessel, after adding my almond milk so that the powder does not get weighted down and stuck to the bottom, put the lid on, shake about ten times, and I’m sipping on what I could have paid five bucks for at a coffee (now trying to be a tea shop) shop. Big difference though is that this is only a little over a dollar, under a dollar when you buy a larger size pouch!

Buy it here http://www.redleaftea.com/matchaccino/caramel-matchaccino.html

This is robust flavoring and I still don’t quite know what “this” is. I think I picked it out for the funny name. It’s jammy and sweet, but not in a fruity way, and it’s slightly buttery. I can see where the “sweet potato” reference comes in. Despite my best whisking efforts this matcha tends to come out clumpy or grainy… I’ve whisked like a champ tonight and I’ve lost count on how many matcha lattes I’ve made myself. Maybe over ten. Not excessive at all. At least it makes the kitchen smell sweet and it helps to make Archer more watchable studying for my last final more enjoyable.

This may not be a keeper but it was, and still is, a neat experience!

So I’m not quite sure why I bought this white matcha, unflavoured anyway. White tea and I do not have the best of relationships going and this is like super concentrated white tea.

The smell is quite like old grass and hay, like the hay bales we used to have in my backyard when I lived in Massachusetts and my Dad had our yard flattened so we could build a plastic and wood skating rink in the backyard. The hay bales held down the plastic around the edges. Mice also lived in them. Hay is not my favourite thing. Those skating rinks were awesome, pretty big too, like 90′ × 30′ in size. Fun in the winter.

This matcha I made up as a latte with a bit more sugar than normal because I’m kind of afraid to drink it. The smell is very bleh. The taste…isn’t as bad as I thought. Still very much ‘white tea’ and a tad astringent, but I put enough sugar in to compensate I think. It cooled down a lot while I was waffling about drinking it and futzing around on Kickstarter. I don’t know that I like this enough to drink this on its own so I’ll have to have a thought about what I can mix it with to still drink it. Or give it away, I guess. Thoughts?

You can find this matcha here if you so desire and like white tea better than I do: http://www.redleaftea.com/matcha-tea/white-matcha.html

Well, I’ve had this before as a matcha latte with a black base, but this is my first time trying it with the classic green base. We also went down a flavour level…pretty arbitrarily actually. I think I might have liked it better with the robust flavouring rather than the distinctive which I have.

The matcha flavour is very much stronger in this one, tasting ‘greener’ than the other, obviously, but a little greener than my other green matchas as well. I don’t know if the chocolate just doesn’t stand up as well to the matcha or what. It’s a little disappointing actually. Although I do want to try it again with a little raspberry matcha blended in too. I would go make it right now except for the blissfully purring old kitty on my lap who’s squinched his eyes closed and is shedding white fur all over my clothes, as always. Something about white kitties, they always seem to have really dense sheddy fur.

Anyway, while disappointing, this isn’t totally bad tasting. I still taste some chocolate, just not as strong as I like, and the matcha taste isn’t bad per se, just I prefer it more to be in the background. I think I’m still not up to drinking straight matcha, though some just arrived at my door today from Tealux. Off to the giant box of untried teas, goes that order. Except for the matcha which will, of course, go in the freezer.

You can find this tea here: http://www.redleaftea.com/matcha-tea/belgium-chocolate-matcha.html

Having a cup of this right now, it is very YUMMY!!

I think this one is getting really old. I know I haven’t kept it like I should so I should probably be happy that it’s kept as much flavour as it has. This has lived at my desk for the last….year. Yup. Long overdue for being drunk up.

So I’m trying to get back into matcha. Harder to do at work now. The cafeteria and break room are a lot farther away for milk and I don’t have a whole lot of access to ice. I’m trying though. I put some tea (not matcha) into an iced tea maker to cold steep in a work fridge so I’ll see that for tomorrow.

As for the boysenberry matcha…meh.

Backlog from yesterday. This was super good to end the day yesterday. I’d spent the day drinking experimental teas from the TTBB and I wanted something I love so I came up with that one and it was soo good. I kind of gulped it down because I was running late to leave work but it was still very nice.

Just made this. Looked through my old tasting notes and noticed a comment to make an italian soda with this one. I have soda water at home, but I can bring some in, or bring this home, and make a boysenberry soda. That sounds like it would be tastier than just plain because I like berries in general but this one just doesn’t wow me.

I think this might be growing on me.

This one is growing on me, I think.

Fairly certain I like the boysenberry better than the generic berry but probably less than the raspberry. Will have to continue experiment tonight.

Very berry. I don’t know if this is better to me than the generic berry one or not. I’ll have to try them both tomorrow and compare.

I haven’t had a lot of boysenberries or boysenberry flavoured things (I think I might have had some jam blend at some point) so I can’t tell you if this is true to taste, but it is certainly tast_y_ and definitely of the berry family.

This review is for the classic matcha base and robust level of flavouring. After my last mega-batch of matchas were done at distinctive and I had been disappointed in some of them, I decided to up to power level on this next batch (and the one after it, which is already being shipped to me, heh).

This is a good flavoured matcha, but it doesn’t really knock my socks off. I’m rather picky about my berries and if this is what a true boysenberry tastes like, I’m pretty sure it’s one I wouldn’t seek out very often. I remember liking the jam though. Hard not to like jam.

According to wiki, a boysenberry is a cross between a European raspberry (not sure how that differs from a North American one), a common blackberry (yum, almost a weed up here in the Pacific Northwest), and a Loganberry (which I’m also not that familiar with). A loganberry is apparently a hybrid of a different type of blackberry and the same type of raspberry (European). So now we know. I think I like both raspberries and blackberries better separately.

You can find this matcha here: http://www.redleaftea.com/matcha-tea/boysenberry-matcha.html

Well, this is old but still delicious. It’s been sealed in a tin all this while, but hasn’t been in the freezer so I was a bit worried. Made this as a cold latte for the first time. 16 oz milk, bunch of ice cubes, 1 tsp of raspberry matcha and blend! I think I may have overblended it because it’s so very smooth and I’m fond of the smoothie feeling but I think that would take more ice and less frenetic blending. I have a Vitamix so it’s easy to turn everything into a very smooth liquid or paste.

This is still delicious. I might try adding some frozen raspberries to it next time since I believe I have some in my freezer. I’ve added them to other matcha lattes (cold) but I never managed to add the right amount of sugar for me and this time I did. 2.5 spoonfuls of my flat sugar spoon. Don’t ask me the measure of that in real life, it’s a cute little (old) sugar container about the size of my fist and the cute little sugar spoon.

Anyway, I need to start making more of these in the future, but not today because I just used up all of my milk. Unless I want to start experimenting with vanilla soy milk, I suppose. There’s an idea.

Well, I think I was thirsty since I drank this so fast it was like it was water. Tasty though. Waiting for some of my matcha to warm back up to room temperature so I can try some new ones. Like lime!

Trying this matcha for the first time as a hot latte, with my usual preparations. Couple ounces of hot water, bit of sugar, 2/3 tsp matcha, 10 oz hot milk, frothed all up.

This tastes really very raspberry, about halfway between a raspberry candy and an actual raspberry I think. The raspberry is very berry and quite strong, even though I got my matcha only at distinctive flavouring. I think it would be quite good at robust as well. My first batch of the green matchas was done as a buy 10, get 5 free and I got them all at distinctive flavouring. If I were to do so today, I’d get them all at robust, but live and learn. So far there have only been 4 of the ones I’ve purchased that I haven’t liked, the rest have been pretty great. This one included.

I think this one might make a good mixer as well. Mint, vanilla, chocolate, creme brulee and bavarian cream come to mind as good mixers for this. Might do well with cola for those of you who like the cola matcha. I might also try it with champagne too, for a raspberry champagne flavour.

Anyway, you can find this matcha here: http://www.redleaftea.com/matcha-tea/raspberry-matcha.html

This is old and it shows. Slight hint of sweetness but any flavour is gone. Still kind of soothing to drink with the matcha taste even if it is very mild.

I really need to drink this down because it’s so very old but I have a thing against throwing out tea so here we go. I think I put in a bit more matcha this time than usual. Hard to say since I never wrote down how much in previous notes. I know that I did forget to sweeten it before the first steep because it was not at all sweet when I took my first sip. Luckily and surprisingly, it was not bitter and face-making but instead just bland. I should have then put a bit of granulated sugar in my cup instead of rock sugar because getting sugar to dissolve in matcha lattes is really difficult, I’ve found. Alas, I did not and so I wait and stir.

And now it tastes much better, though the distinct cookies and cream flavour is all but gone by now, which is about what I expected. I need to drink down all of my opened matcha, actually. The only one that still tastes like it should is the matchaccino.

For future self reference, used almost 1 tsp of matcha to a few ounces of water and most of a half-pint of milk.

More of this! Getting one step closer to a sipdown. Hot latte, as always at work. Just over a half teaspoon was all I dared to put in and it’s a tinge chemically tasting but it’s not awful. Still creamy smooth though I’m mostly getting cream and not so much cookie this time. Ah well. This will hopefully keep me awake on my drive home in 15 minutes (if only because I’ll have to pee).

Haven’t had this one for a while and I’m wondering, even before drinking, if I put too much matcha in it. I had forgotten that I’m sensitive to this one. Possibly age has helped? I’ll see in a minute when the milk cools down a bit.

This tastes nice, apparently I found the balance. The flavouring isn’t very strong though, not after all of this time. I will get through these because matcha is good for me and I hate throwing out non-rotten food and drink and I can’t give it away in this state. Oh well. At least it isn’t horrible. I put about 2/3-3/4 of a tsp of matcha and just under a tsp of sugar and an entire half pint of milk and a couple ounces of water, bringing my RPI mug right to the top.

Enjoyable way to end the work day and work week. Looking forward to the weekend.

A little bitter today, had to let it sit for a while before a meeting so kind of cold too.