Matcha may be the face on the billboard, but houjicha is the soul in the back alley café — the kind you only find if you wander off the main street and follow the smell of something quietly roasting.
Born in Kyoto sometime in the late 1920s, houjicha wasn’t born from ceremony; it was born from thrift. Houjicha was the brainchild of tea merchants who decided to roast leftover green tea leaves instead of wasting them. Because waste not, want not. Resourceful? Absolutely. Delicious? Shockingly so. That single act of thrift gave birth to Japan’s most calming cup of tea. Japan’s most accidental masterpiece.
This is not your influencer’s green tea. Matcha comes in screaming green, all antioxidants and ambition. Houjicha smells like warmth and autumn.
The roasting changes everything because it burns off most of the bitterness, strips down the caffeine, and adds a toasty, almost coffee-like aroma. You don’t drink houjicha to do things. You drink it to stop doing things. It’s the kind of tea that makes you feel like you’ve hustled enough for one lifetime.
And the trivia? Oh, there’s plenty:
It’s Japan’s post-dinner ritual. Most families drink it after meals because it’s gentle on digestion and doesn’t mess with sleep.
It’s kid-friendly. In Japan, this is often the first “adult” tea kids are allowed to sip. Houjicha is basically a caffeine-free coming-of-age story.
It’s a chameleon. These days it is also turning up in soft-serve, tiramisu, cocktails, lattes — even doughnuts.
The flavour? Somewhere between toasted hazelnut, brown sugar, and the memory of something once green.
And the best part? It’s never been a show-off. Houjicha doesn’t beg to be posted. It doesn’t care if you spell it right. It’s what you drink when you’ve stopped trying to optimise your morning routine and started trying to enjoy your night. So next time someone offers you matcha, smile politely and whisper, “I’m more of a houjicha person.”
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