Black tea & Roasted tea Soda

In this blog post I decided to make sodas with Wakoucha or Japanese Black Tea and Kyobancha. You can learn more about Wakoucha here in the Introduction to Wakoucha : Japanese Black tea blog.

I noticed while looking at the different projects that past interns have made and was captivated by one called  Iced Shiso Wakoucha. I thought that the recipe sounded delicious and wanted to try it out, when I finished making it; I thought this would be great as a soda. I decided to use this previous interns recipe and I am happy they made it. This is the recipe to make it into a soda.  For this recipe I cut the Shiso solution in half but it is not a requirement. 

Shiso Wakoucha  soda recipe:

Ingredients:

• Wakoucha
• Honey   
• Red Shiso leaf 
• Lemon
• Ginger bug 

Items:

• Flip top bottle
• Measuring cups
• Scale
• Tea pot
• Bowls 

Recipe: 

1. Measure out 18 grams of Wakoucha and put into a teapot,  add 200 mL of hot water and brew for 2 minutes. Do this two times and set aside to cool.
2. Measure 100 grams of shiso leaf and 500 grams of water. Bring water to a boil and add shiso leaf and boil for 10-15 minutes. It should be a deep purple once done. 
3. Add sugar or in my case 80 grams of honey to the pot mix and set aside to cool. 
4. Once cooled add 100 grams of shiso solution and 300 grams of Wakoucha to bottle
5. Pour 2 tablespoons of ginger bug into the bottle leaving about 1 inch of headspace at the top
6. Close the bottle and mix gently and let sit at room temperature for 24 hrs.
7. Put into the fridge after 24 hrs until cold.
   1. Note: putting it in the fridge will calm the fizzyness a bit so that when you open it it will not rush out. 
8. Open over sink and Enjoy 🌿😊

Thoughts: 

The shiso in this tea really comes out in the tea. I really liked how the shiso flavor also brings out the slight fruitiness that is present in Wakoucha. It has a nice level of sweetness that is not too overpowering that we can’t taste the tea and shiso. It was also very refreshing and I think it would be nice with a sweet treat on a hot day. 

Mango Kyobancha

In this recipe I will be using Kyobancha which is a type of green tea that uses the larger leaves when harvested and then steamed, dried and roasted. You can learn more about this tea and how we harvest it here The Kyobancha Harvest. I decided to use a hot brew for this recipe but I think a cold brew first then continuing with the recipe as it is would also be nice and may bring out a different flavor in the tea. Kyobancha is one of favorite teas I learned about while being here at Obubu.

Ingredients:

• Kyobancha
• Mango Honey   
• Ginger bug 
• Candied Mango

Items:

• Flip top bottle 
• Measuring cups 
• Scale
• Tea pot
• Bowls 

1. For this recipe we will make a cold brew for our kyobancha. 
2. Measure out 18 grams of Kyobancha and put into a teapot,  add 200 ml of hot water and brew for 2 minutes. Do this two times and set aside to cool.
3.  Add 55 grams of Mango honey into the flip top bottle
4. Cut up some candied mango into small pieces and add to the bottle
5. Pour 2 tablespoons of ginger bug into the bottle leaving about 1 inch of headspace at the top 
6. Close the bottle and mix gently and let sit at room temperature for 24 hrs. 
7. Put into the fridge after 24 hrs until cold.
   1. Note: putting it in the fridge will calm the fizzyness a bit so that when you open it it will not rush out. 
8. Open over sink and Enjoy 🥭🍵😋

Thoughts:

This tea was very well balanced. It had a good amount of sweetness and roasted taste from the tea. While drinking it you get the tropical sweetness from the mango and roasted flavor from the Kyobancha. It also had a good balance in fizzyness too and I think the drink would pair well with something savory to create a good balance between savory and sweet.