Oh hi, I believe this is the first tisane review of the year! And probably the first time I’ve drunk mugicha in a long, long time so let’s dive into it.

First impressions

Because I’ve not had mugicha in a while, I’ve forgotten how… strong it can smell. As soon as I opened the packet, I smelled “coffee” (deeply toasted/burnt notes) and lychee. As a non-coffee person, this made me slightly apprehensive.

Tasting Notes

The Lychee Raspberry Mugicha was actually made to be cold-brewed. However, the packet did indicate that you can brew it with hot water (about 70 or 80 degrees so definitely not hot) and I decided to try it both ways.

After three hours of cold brewing in the fridge as recommended, the tisane had a golden colour and smelled mainly of lychee with some raspberry notes. In terms of taste, it was completely different from the smell – the tisane tasted mostly like mugicha (deep toasted notes) and the fruity notes of the lychee and raspberry were much milder. The aftertaste was fruity and the tisane was quite pleasant.

The hot version, on the other hand, was quite different. It smelled like a mix of coffee and lychee to me and it tasted like it too. I kept thinking that the aftertaste was like coffee but that’s probably because I’m not a coffee person – so while my mum agreed with me, another friend who also bought this tea thought it was the regular mugicha taste. And one note of caution: if the water is too hot, the tea gets bitter quite quickly.

Overall thoughts

Despite the delicious-sounding name, this isn’t the tisane for me. It’s quite strange because I didn’t have a problem with mugicha in Japan, but the burnt notes in this version was just too much for me! I’m still probably going to finish this, since I can cold brew it and that helps a lot, but I probably won’t buy it again.

To be honest, Karel Capek tends to be very on-point with their flavouring so me disliking this does make me think that I’m just… out of touch with mugicha. Perhaps I’ll like the tisane a lot better by the time I finish the packet!