Hoshino Seichaen Mokuren review
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Product Details
- Brand
- Hoshino Seichaen
- Origin
- Yame, Fukuoka
- Grade
- Culinary
- Cultivars
- Yame Blend
- Sizes
- 100g
- Description
A culinary-grade matcha from Hoshino Seichaen built for lattes, baking, ice cream, and cooking. Holds Yame's green color and clean character against milk and sugar without the sharp bitterness common to commodity culinary grades.
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meli55Such a good value for lattes...so hard to find!!!
I was lucky enough to try Hoshino's Mokuren at a friend's house who purchased it during their trip to Japan. She got a 100g bag for around $40!! Mokuren is marketed as a culinary matcha so I tried it as latte with oat milk. It was delicious. A nice nutty taste with slight bitterness that cut through the milk and prevented it from tasting flat. I did take a little sip of the plain tea with water as we were prepping it and the bitterness was a bit much for me, so I wouldn't recommend it as usacha. Overall I can't think of a "culinary" grade matcha for lattes I've had that tasted this good. It's too bad finding any Hoshino matcha in stock is like finding the holy grail! Oh well...I guess it's another excuse for me to finally plan a trip to Japan.
Culinary at Ceremonial Prices
Hoshino Seichaen calls this Mokuren and it cost me roughly 84 cents a gram (and lots of patience for a restock) from an authorized reseller. It's a culinary grade Yame blend, and it tastes exactly like that: moderate bitterness, some astringency, vegetal in the blunt sense, and little sweetness that quickly dissolves. The roasted umami that Yame is supposedly known for? Barely shows up. I made it as a latte with a few different milks, all of which mostly just diluted the bitterness, which is not a compliment. If you want to spend this much on a Yame matcha and actually taste the notes it's famous for, there are ceremonial options from this producer that presumably justify the price; this one does not.
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