About the Japan Hojicha Association
To grow the number of people who can talk about hojicha starting from the roast, so that the everyday cup becomes something you choose.
Not scorching the leaf. Waking the aroma.
I like hojicha. I liked it enough to start an association.
It began one evening in the kitchen, roasting tea leaf in a pan. On the hōroku the green leaves turned the colour of a fox's coat, the whole room filled with a toasted smell, and in that moment I thought: this is the same world as coffee. Temperature and time in the roast turn aroma and taste into something else. Roast lightly and the tea's sweetness stays; roast deeply and the toastiness comes forward. From the same leaf, many different hojicha. Roasting tea the way you roast beans. I wanted to share how interesting that is with more people.
Hojicha has always been the supporting player of daily life: the tea that comes after a meal, the cup at an inn, the kettle at school. It never tries to take the lead, and that offhandedness is part of what is good about it. But behind the everyday cup lie countless choices — stems or leaves, which growing area, which season's tea, and what kind of fire to roast it with. Kaga bōcha, the roasted teas of Kyoto's tea merchants, the deep firing of Kyushu. Each place has its own face.
What we want to pass on is not difficult etiquette. It is the pleasure of smelling, drinking, and being able to say 'today's is a little deeper'. Because this is a tea that children and older people have drunk at the same table, anyone can stand at the entrance.
The Japan Hojicha Association wants to grow the number of people who can talk about hojicha starting from the roast, to find shops across the country where hojicha takes the lead, and to collect the words of the people who make it. Look something up in the encyclopedia, play with the quiz, take the map and go to a shop. If that cup tastes a little more toasted than usual, then we have done our job.
Representative, Japan Hojicha Association
How does roasting change the taste?
Even within hojicha, the wording changes with the degree of roast. Marukyu Koyamaen explains that its higher-grade hojicha are finished with a lighter roast, so that the clean, original flavour of the tea comes through, while its other grades are roasted more deeply so that a mellow toastiness stands out more. Maruhachi Seichajo, on the other hand, describes a product made by roasting good stems lightly and plumply through to the core as having a toasty aroma and a clear taste — that is, a light roast can be toasty too. These product descriptions give no general rule for how sweetness or bitterness moves between a light and a deep roast.
Sources: Marukyu Koyamaen, blog post on its hojicha; Maruhachi Seichajo, product page for Kenjo Kaga Bōcha (60 g bag).
Where does the toasty aroma come from?
There is research on the compounds roasting creates. A report in the Journal of the Agricultural Chemical Society of Japan found that, in hojicha and kamairi-cha, Maillard reaction products formed from sugars and amino acids made up the main part of the aroma and were the cause of the roasted note; the names given include pyrazines, pyrroles, furans and pyranones. A report in the Journal of the Japanese Society of Food Science and Technology likewise found that roasting produced pyrazines, furans and pyrroles. NARO, the National Agriculture and Food Research Organization, introduces the finding that roasting makes twenty components strongly influential in the aroma. All of these are reports under each study's own conditions, and no single substance explains the aroma on its own.
Sources: Journal of the Agricultural Chemical Society of Japan, on aroma formation in roasting and pan-firing; Journal of the Japanese Society of Food Science and Technology (J-STAGE abstract); NARO, on aroma-contributing components in roasted tea.
Does hojicha contain caffeine?
A table published by the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries gives hojicha (as an infusion) at 20 mg per 100 mL, with the infusion method stated as 15 g of leaf, 650 mL of water at 90°C, 0.5 minutes. The original source of the component value is the Standard Tables of Food Composition in Japan 2020 (eighth revised edition). The Food Composition Database of the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology also carries the same infusion conditions in the remarks for food number 16040, with 'caffeine: 0.02 g' (shown per 100 g of edible portion). The Food Safety Commission of Japan states that no acceptable daily intake (ADI) has been set, among other reasons because individual sensitivity varies so widely. For decisions about how much to drink, please consult official guidance.
Sources: Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries, page on caffeine; MEXT Food Composition Database, hojicha infusion (food number 16040); Food Safety Commission of Japan, e-magazine (December 2018).
How far back does hojicha go?
The published accounts differ from source to source. Yamamotoyama writes that, from the end of the Taisho era into the early Showa era, tea merchants in the Yamashiro area of Kyoto Prefecture, whose leaf was selling slowly, devised it in order to make use of unsold stock — and ends the sentence with 'it is said'. The Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries writes that in Meiji 35 a Kanazawa tea merchant, Hayashiya Shinbei, developed a way to make use of the stem portion produced in the course of drying tea leaves, and sold 'Kaga bōcha' made by roasting and firing the stems. The first is an account of an invention in Kyoto, the second is the regional history of Kaga bōcha; they are not answers to the same question. We have not been able to confirm any source for when the present form spread across the whole country.
Sources: Yamamotoyama, column on hojicha; Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries, 'Kaga bōcha' in its encyclopedia of traditional Japanese foods.