mugicha madness

sunday night, W and I went to a korean restaurant in san bruno. it's tough to find korean food in the midpeninsula; i really don't like it enough to go to sans jose or francisco. the food was good but overpriced. the service was not so great but we were the only customers and i was wearing a kilt. what did i expect?

the waitress wouldn't let me order goat because i wasn't korean. okay. whatever.

as i said, the food was good, but the best part of the meal was the tea. it was delicious. i'd never had tea like it, but it reminded me of something.

we asked the waitress what type of tea it was, and apparently one doesn't have to be korean to get an answer: it was barley tea.

i didnt know people made tea from barley. what i did know was that 3 out of 3 times when i've made beer, i've wanted to take the pot off the stove and drink it as tea. it smells yummy.

the nice thing about barley tea, of course, is that it's barley, and barley has no caffeine. back in the days when i was Really Trying (as opposed to now, when i'm only Sorta Trying) to lose weight, i used to drink a lot of tea in the evenings, because it was warm and filled my stomach and fooled my brain into thinking i'd eaten a big meal. i'd drink only decaf so i could sleep.

so yesterday after work i stopped by draegar's to see if i could score some barley tea. no dice. i was stunned. draegar's had let me down! this i would not forget!

by this afternoon i had forgotten the letdown at draegar's and after work i stopped by a japanese supermarket. score! i found a bag of roasted barley in the tea section. i also found what looks like roasted brown rice, but the packaging is 100% japanese so I can't be sure. I bought them both.

the barley tea, it turns out, is bigtime in japan. it's called mugicha, and it's popular both as a hot and a cold tea. in fact, it seems more popular as a cold tea. i brewed up four cups of the stuff and am still finishing it off. delicious.

then a thought occurred to me (inspired by a website) : i have access to large quantities of affordable roasted barley, right? i'm a homebrewer, yes? i don't need to purchase imported, stale, old roasted barley for my tea. i can buy fresh, cheap, and varied roasted barley from my local homebrew supply shop!

score again!

so next time i'm in the area, i'll pick up a couple pounds of roasted barley for mugicha. while i'm at it, i see no particular reason not to make tea from malted barley (mugicha is unmalted), though once i try it, i may discover the reason.

until then, the packaged japanese stuff is still quite delicious.

yum!