Itoen Oi Cha vs Matcha.com Throwdown
Matcha.com offers the best green tea sticks on Amazon. May seem a bit pricy at around $1 per stick but actually a steal considering the quality plus the fact that coffee shops charge about $7 - $10 with tip for a similar cup. I lived in Japan for over 10 years, have attended numerous tea ceremonies, hiked extensively in the volcanic hills of Shizuoka where the most renowned tea is grown and have shopped in the best tea shops in Japan. Matcha.com offers a quality product, similar to a cup of tea that would be served at a tea ceremony. In America, mothers little helper is Prozac. In Japan, they have green tea which is superior. Green tea has the unique ability to pick up your mood and sharpen your thinking while calming you. Think of it as coffee without the jitters. Green tea has the additional benefit of being packed with polyphenols so drinking a cup is adding a serving of greens to your diet. Matcha.com sticks are packed with these benefits. Itoen Oi Ocha was my go to stick on Amazon before I found Matcha.com. While it is much better than most Green tea found on Amazon; It is a much weaker brew than Matcha.com sticks as it is a blend of regular green tea and matcha, not pure Matcha. If you are super budget conscious Itoen is a bargain but, for my money, Matcha.com is the way to go. Edit: Lattes are my thing. There is a special coffee shop that I haunt that makes the best matcha lattes. Was able to recreate it with a matcha.com stick and manual milk frother. Just heat up 1/4 cup of milk in the microwave in your tea cup before making the tea, pour the milk into the frother, churn 30 or 40 times, then make the tea in the cup and pour the milk on top. Yay, a gourmet drink in a couple minutes at a fraction of the cost and time. The manual frothers are only $20 and are well made with stainless steel so they should last a lifetime. Best of all, no batteries or cords needed just 30 seconds of easy/relaxing churning. Coffee and tea making should be bit ceremonial, a way to ground oneself in the present. The frother did this for me. Try goat milk. It is an acquired taste but so much creamier than regular milk and easier on the stomach, less lactose. It takes a week or so for your taste buds to adjust to it so give it time. Soybean or oatmilk worry me with recent news that the emulsifiers used in them are possibly linked to rises in colon cancer. Read more
