Tag Archives: green tea

Is good. Not great, but definitely very good. maeda-en Green Tea ice cream has a smooth matcha green tea taste. The ingredient list has all sorts of quality ingredients like mono and diglycerides and carageenan. What, you don’t add that to your ice-cream maker at home? You don’t even know what that is? Well these ingredients aren’t that bad and, of course, no one eats ice-cream for the health benefits. At least not if they’re honest with themselves.

My only real gripe is that the green tea flavor is weak. This is surprising since maeda-en is a green tea specialty company. You would think that they would make the green tea taste bolder!

Luckily I have a (very rarely used) ice-cream maker. It might be time to dust off the ice paddle and make a batch using maeda-en matcha powder. Since it’s already September 28th I’d better hurry to catch the last dwindling days of heat (105F yesterday).

…this was the other item I got as a freebie at the Lake Merritt couple relay.

After pushing myself as hard as possible through a 5K race, any cold beverage was liquid Heaven in a bottle. So I drank the Mango Green Honest Tea up and then nabbed another one from the guy to take home and try with dinner.

I have to admit that I wondered if they chose the name of this tea after watching a Round Table Pizza commercial “Round Table, the last honest pizza” — now with Honest Tea.

My after-dinner appraisal: a mild, but noticeable green tea flavor with some kind of fruity essence (couldn’t really distinguish the mango flavor, although it definitely lists mango in the ingredients). A tiny bit sweet, but still clean and fresh — not syrupy at all.

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Make a healthy beautifully wish! So says the slogan on the GreenMax black beans with matcha tea packets… I really wonder why these mass market manufacturers don’t hire a proper translator for their products. Another typo reads: Infuse the bag in a cup of boiling wathet. Hmmm… This is a powder, so you would mix it in boiling water. Not sure how to infuse powder in wathet.

Never mind, I’m sure we’re guilty of the same errors for products we sell in Taiwan. Yes indeedy, Taiwan, not China, seems to be the home of creamy milk tea products, including the exported franchise Tapioca Express and other boba tea shops. As a pearl tea addict, I will most definitely review these drinks in the future.

Back to the GreenMax. This is actually supposed to be a meal substitute or snack rather than strictly a beverage. Sort of like a green tea porridge. The flavor has a very smooth green milk tea taste with a bit of thick, grainy texture due to the black beans. Aside from black beans and green tea powder, other ingredients include job’s tear, black rice, wheat germ, buckwheat, oat, tuckahoe, brown rice, black sesame, ginko nut, greenish lily bulb, lotus seeds, and glucose. It has 3.5g protein and 6.6g fiber which is really quite amazing.

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Here’s a shot of the tea infused with with boiling wathet. You can sort of see the grainy texture (black spots) in the spoon.

UCC Green Tea is unsweetened green tea sold in cans at sushi restaurants and supermarkets. I enjoy drinking this with the cucumber rolls in particular (I’m allergic to seafood).

The taste has a strong-ish green tea flavor to it and has medium bitterness. The fact that it’s cold instead of hot green tea is very refreshing, particularly on hot days or with hot food.

The tin can is cleanly decorated but surprisingly heavy which makes me worry about the environmental impact.

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