In the kitchen stand a teacup, a cup with a saucer and a mug. What is in each of them is brown. Yet hojicha is a kind of green tea, made differently from black tea.
What follows sets colour and the words "dark roast" aside, and traces the four through their material and the way each is made.
A brown tea with a green name
Poured into a white cup, hojicha looks a reddish brown. Even so, it belongs to green tea.
Hojicha is made by roasting sencha, bancha or similar teas. Green tea is heated early, which stops the enzymes in the leaf. Whether a tea counts as green does not depend on whether the drink looks green.
Setting green tea against hojicha is therefore comparing a broad category with one of its members. To compare how they are made, put sencha beside the hojicha roasted from it. The sources speak to how the categories relate, and no further. Next, black tea from the same plant.
The same leaf, and the line of oxidation
Black tea in a cup is also a deep brown. The oxidation that makes black tea and the roasting that makes hojicha lie on separate lines.
Green and black tea come from the same plant, but black tea is made by letting oxidation in the leaf proceed. In tea production, "fermentation" can mean this enzyme-driven oxidation. That is a different step from roasting tea into hojicha.
Two questions are kept apart here: how far oxidation was allowed to go, and how the finished tea was roasted. Some teas are post-fermented with the help of microbes, so "fermentation" does not name one mechanism everywhere. The sources settle how the words are used, and that is all. Next, roasted black tea.
Roasted black tea, and what came before
Packets of roasted black tea stand on the shelf too. Added heat does not undo the oxidation that came before it.
Check whether the tea was green or black before roasting, and two teas that share a roasting step can still be told apart. Whether roasting black tea hard turns it into hojicha untangles once the question returns to what was roasted.
A related article introduces tea gardens' roasted black teas and their notes on aroma before and after roasting. It is a concrete case of the two lines parting. That is as far as the evidence goes. Next, coffee, which differs from the material up.
Leaf, stem, and the seed of a fruit
From the mug comes a deep, almost scorched aroma. A coffee bean is called a bean, but it is the seed inside a fruit.
Just as a plum holds a hard stone, the coffee bean sits inside a fruit. The coffee industry's own association describes the bean as the seed inside the coffee fruit. The dried beans are roasted, ground and brewed.
Hojicha and coffee meet in the aromas that roasting brings out. Their starting points differ, though: leaves and stems in one, seeds in the other. Shared words such as "light roast" and "dark roast" do not let one roasting time or temperature serve both. Next, the four set out in short sentences.
Four drinks in four short lines
The four cups in the kitchen are lined up again, in the order they are made. Short lines about process tell them apart without leaning on colour.
Green tea is made by heating the leaves early. Hojicha is sencha, bancha or similar tea roasted further. Black tea is made by letting the leaves oxidise. Coffee is the seed inside a fruit, processed, roasted, ground and brewed.
On the back of a packet, the clues are the material, how it was made before roasting, and what heat came last. Behind the shared brown colour and toasty smell, the point where the drinks part becomes visible. The sources account for the process, and no more. Last, tasting them side by side.
Between four rising steams
Four plumes of steam mingle in the kitchen air. Likeness is the way into tasting, and difference is the way to learn more.
Note the aroma first, then read the descriptions of material and process against it. The resemblance in the cup and the difference in the making come into view together. There is no need to decide beforehand that a process must yield one taste.
How roasting progresses continues in "Hojicha and coffee: roasting times and the sound of beans". Roasting seen from the black-tea side is in "Roasting black tea: changes in sweetness and aroma". Each takes the same comparison one step further. Where the names come from is gathered just below.
The numbers in detail
- Coffee bean
- The National Coffee Association describes the bean as the seed inside the coffee fruit.
- Coffee page
- That description is on its page "What is Coffee?".
- Green tea's heating
- The Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries' "Types of tea with varied flavours and aromas" says green tea is heated early in processing.
- Black tea's oxidation
- The same guidance says black tea is made by letting oxidation in the leaf proceed.
- Japanese tea guide
- The ministry's "Ways to enjoy Japanese tea" is another source.
- How tea is made
- ITO EN's "How is tea made?" is a further source.
- The table above
- Built from the two ministry pages, ITO EN and the National Coffee Association.