The Making of a #MatchaMoment
Mizuba News, Notes, & Recipes
What is Hojicha?
If you’re looking to broaden your organic green tea horizons this fall, hōjicha may be just the tea for you. Also commonly spelled as houjicha or hojicha, Hōjicha has a nutty, slightly sweet flavor, a toasty aroma, and a warm, reddish-gold colored liquor. It’s a smooth, mellow alternative to Matcha and other strong teas, with an array of appealing health benefits. Enjoyed throughout the seasons, Hōjicha is the perfect tea for a crisp fall day and also makes for *excellent* mizudashi (cold brew) for a hot summer.
What is Hachiju Hachiya? Celebrating Japan's 88th Night
Today is a special day! 88th Night (Hachiju-Hachiya) is a Japanese holiday that celebrates the start of the year’s first tea picking and harvest. This first flush of tea is known as shincha, which directly translates to "new tea."
An update about pricing
I wanted to personally write and let you know that beginning Friday, April 22nd, the price of our Daily Matcha will increase by one dollar, from $20 to $21. This is the first time we have been required to raise the price of tea in our 8.5 year history, and as a thank you for your continued support I wanted to give you a heads up.
Favorite Japanese Tea Words and Phrases
Tea is so intrinsically woven into Japan's culture that there are special words and phrases dedicated to how we experience tea in day-to-day living. Check out some of our favorite phrases here!
Mizuba Tea’s Matcha Mastery - Santa Barbara Independent
Our favorite hometown press, The Santa Barbara Independent, recently caught up with Mizuba's founder, Lauren, to chat about Mizuba Tea's ethos in working with our farm partners in Japan.
All About The Tenugui - Eco Friendly Japanese Tea and Hand Towel
What is a tenugui, and why is it the best Japanese household item ever? Learn all about this essential Japanese item, its history, and its uses! Hint: it is perfect for your matcha moments.
Catching up with world-renowned chef Naomi Pomeroy
We recently caught up with Naomi Pomeroy — the James Beard award-winning owner of Ripe Cooperative, here in Portland, OR — to chat about food, life, and her amazing new ice cream made with Mizuba matcha.
All About Organic Sencha Yabukita: A Cultivar Study
Fundamental to an understanding of Japanese green tea is knowing and appreciating the taste of the tea cultivar Yabukita. Yabukita is considered the cornerstone flavor of Japanese tea as its taste delivers a well-balanced flavor, elegant aroma, sweetness along with umami, and pleasant astringency. One of the oldest registered cultivars in Japan and most popularly grown (accounting for over 70% of Japan's tea production), Yabukita is often used as a benchmark to evaluate sencha made from other Japanese tea cultivars. While Yabukita may be common, our spring-harvested Mizuba Sencha Yabukita is the top of its class and a prime example of what to love about Japan’s most iconic flavor.
The Ultimate Guide To Gyokuro:
History and Brewing
Any avid Japanese Tea fan will at some point seek the revered, rich cup of what many consider "pure umami" - gyokuro. Here is a thorough overview and guide to a prize in any Japanese tea collector's cabinet. Best brew up a cup, and let's dive into gyokuro!
Cafe Feature: Boon Boona
We thought we'd take a moment today to highlight one of our partners: Boon Boona Coffee, in Renton, WA. Much like matcha is the star of Japan's iconic tea ceremony, did you know coffee has a similar history with its very own ceremony? The founder of Boon Boona, Efrem, is sharing that special piece of coffee's culture with his community and we are excited to experience it. We hope their story is just as meaningful to you as it is to us, and we look forward to highlighting more of our friends in the future.
Field Notes: Seasonali"tea"
Japanese tea, or any tea for that matter, is closely intertwined with the tides of nature. That shouldn't come as a surprise because tea is a plant, and plants grow according to the seasons. The tea plants hibernate during winter, bloom in spring, thrive in summer and prepare for winter in autumn. This is the natural cycle, and thus our experience of the product also changes with the seasons.
Our Interview with Ground Up
We are so happy to collaborate with the wonderful ladies at Ground Up for our brand-new Matcha Latte Nut Butter! Their mission (beyond making delicious nut butter) is to employ and give opportunities to women overcoming diversity. We took a moment to ask them three quick questions.
Mizuba's Commitment to Diversity
Tea is meant for sharing and we truly hope you’ve always found Mizuba as an inclusive, joyful place to enjoy a #matchamoment.
Artist Series No. 2: Matcha-grams! Our interview with artist Abbie Tjaden
Happy Earth Day!
Just as we make decisions to mindfully lessen our impact on the Earth in our personal lives, as a family-run small business, we take the same approach with how we manage our decisions at Mizuba. Here at Mizuba, we are committed to sustainability. Not just one day a year, and not just because it's trendy. (Although, fun fact: our founder, Lauren, is from the same town where Earth Day originated — 50 years ago! Just saying.)
We love the planet we live on, we are thankful for everything it give us, and we want to take care of it to the best of our ability.
We love the planet we live on, we are thankful for everything it give us, and we want to take care of it to the best of our ability.
All About Our Organic Genmaicha Tea
Genmaicha is a blend of loose leaf tea, usually bancha, with "genmai." Genmai is commonly brown rice, but our genmaicha is made by roasting white mochi rice, which is crunchier and sweeter than regular rice. The rice provides a satisfyingly sweet, nutty taste, which is balanced by the light green tea. Many say the aroma is reminiscent of popcorn! We say that sounds delicious.
New: Dark Wood Chasen
Our beautiful dark wood chasen is made from wild purple bamboo. Artisans look for a hard, thin stalk — usually about 2 to 2.5 centimeters thick, and 9 to 12 cm long. The bamboo must be dried for over a year, and only then do artisans transform the natural material into the fine tines — each by hand.
Uji Hikari Matcha
We are humbled at the opportunity to work with renowned matcha producer Mr. Kiyoharu Tsuji. Having won countless awards in Japan for his teas, 5th-generation master farmer Tsuji san is responsible for one of the greatest matcha experiences you can savor. His tea plants are unpruned, hand-harvested, and enjoy the most traditional form of shade-growing (the Honzu technique) in the region's nutritious red clay soil. When the first flush arrives in shincha season (the first crop of the year), the tencha tea leaves are stone-milled to perfection. In fact, Tsuji san's matcha has the highest concentrations of L-theanine and amino acids ever recorded of any matcha in the world.
Our team picks their favorite matchas of the moment
Every matcha we offer has its own special place in the Mizuba collection, but we recently sat down with our team to learn about their favorite matcha of the moment. Read on to find out what we're loving.
Ever Heard of a Matcha Latte Throwdown?
Check out an inside look at one of specialty coffee's most fun events!
Happy New Year's Eve!
What's next for Mizuba in 2020? Our little company started six years ago with a single relationship with one matcha producer... who we work with to this day! In the years since we've met even more amazing Japanese artisan tea producers, and this year for the first time we launched a collection of loose leaf teas. In 2020 we're committed to bringing you more of what we do best: sharing incredible Japanese teas that are ethically and sustainably crafted (⬅️ more on this soon) from producers whom we personally know and love.
Four Loose Leaf Tea Questions with Lauren
In the same way sharing traditional Uji matcha with you helps preserve the heritage of such an iconic cultural art, I’m hoping our little loose leaf collection helps preserve Japan’s tea history, educates tea lovers on Japan’s truly delicious and uncommon teas, and furthers people’s intrigue and delight with tea! I certainly grew tired of keeping these teas to myself. They’re just so good, and I can’t wait to share them with you!
Announcing Mizuba's Heritage Japanese Loose Leaf Teas
Welcome to the Mizuba Tea Co. loose leaf collection! True — we've been solely focused on being one of America's premier matcha companies for years. But, as you can imagine... exceptional quality matcha wasn't the only kind of tea we were drinking in Japan on our travels...! As life-long tea nerds, beautifully crafted teas of all kinds just get us EXCITED.
As your trusted source of Japan's finest traditional teas, we are dedicated to direct-trade sourcing that is grounded in friendships with our tea suppliers. Together, we pursue purity of leaf, high-quality flavor, and the beauty in each cup of tea that you enjoy with us.
Quality Meets Adventure: Compostable Single-Serve Matcha Packs!
Here they are! The world's first compostable, eco-friendly single-serve matcha packets to take on-the-go! Read all about our collaboration with Voila Coffee and how we plan to take our #matchamoment everywhere.
I Had an Unhealthy Relationship with Coffee—Here's How I Healed It - Mizuba on Well + Good
Hear a personal story about how Well + Good author Mercey Livingston cracked the caffeine addiction code and how matcha helped along the way.
Study Suggests Matcha Encourages Cancer Cell Apoptosis - World Tea News
"The Salford findings are simple to summarize: the matcha tea suppresses mitochondrial metabolism [mitochondria are the energy currency for cells, generated from the oxidation of food] in breast cancer stem cells and by thus preventing them from “refueling” makes them inactive and they die off."
Exciting matcha health news provided by industry outlet World Tea News
Mizuba Tea Co. Video Guides
Watch how to make matcha with our 3 easy to follow Mizuba video guides!!
1) Traditional Matcha guide
2) To-go matcha guide
3) Matcha latte guide!