My sister texted me one day to ask why the green tea we have at home didn’t taste like the Japanese green tea she could buy in a bottle. A little intrigued and also a little worried about her suggestion to buy more bottled tea (we have at least three packets of sencha at home, possibly more), I decided to take a look.

Bottled Green Tea vs Green Tea Brewed from Leaves

As it turned out, my sister was on to something. The sencha that we brew gives a light yellow-green tea liquor with grassy, umami, and sweet notes. On the other hand, green tea from a bottle tends to be much darker in colour, almost like hojicha, with less umami but fairly strong grassy notes.

I tried to see if anyone had written about this, but I couldn’t find a definitive answer on the Internet. I did, however, find something in this article [1] that compares different types of bottled green tea. There is quite a lot of interesting information [2] but what I found out was that to prevent oxidation and mold/spoilt tea, the tea may be roasted a bit more than usual.

My attempt to recreate bottled green tea

When I found out that the green tea leaves used for bottled tea were probably roasted a bit more than usual, I was faced with two options:

1. Try roasting my own green tea to achieve a slightly more roasted tea without turning it into hojicha or burnt tea
2. Blend my own tea

Given that I can burn caramel, I decided to go with option two. I blended some green tea and houjicha in a roughly 1:2 to 1:3 ratio and let it steep overnight. This was the result:

As you can see, my blended green tea is darker than usual, although it isn’t as dark as the bottled green tea. The first time I made this, I gave my sister a cup to try, intending to go and get a fresh bottle of Ayataka [3] for a comparison. By the time I was ready to go out, the jug of tea was finished.

But I made a fresh jug of green tea and managed to compare it. By itself, the green tea I blended does taste somewhat like bottled green tea. But side by side, there are still noticeable differences: the bottled green tea has stronger flavours and, curiously enough, quite obviously has been made some time ago. It’s something that I’ve never noticed before while drinking bottled tea on its own – in fact, I threw out the first bottle I used for comparison, thinking that I got an expired bottle. It was only when I got the same reason with a different bottle that I realised it’s a feature of the tea.

Overall, this was a pretty interesting experiment. I will definitely increase the ratio of hojicha to green tea leaves and the steeping time for my next batch of not-bottled green tea, to try and get the flavour a bit closer. I’m also now less motivated to get bottled green tea – not only do I have perfectly good green tea leaves at home, the tea just doesn’t taste as good as before (although it will do in a pinch).

Have you tried anything like this? Let me know what your results were!

Notes

[1] ペットボトルの緑茶の味はどう違う？　日本茶アドバイザーが飲み比べてみた

[2] For example, both Ayataka and Iemon have gotten teahouses (I’ve heard of both) to help them oversee the blends while Itoen gets its tea direct from trusted farms.

[3] I used Ayataka because the Singapore version of green tea tends to include sugar and also because Ayataka claims to mimic the taste of tea made in a kyusu