Turn a tea packet over and you will often see a small printed table: name, ingredients, net weight and best-before date. Words such as light roast and dark roast usually appear outside that table, in the product name or description.
There is a reason for the different placement. The standards governing what is written on the packet and the explanations a shop gives in its own words operate on different levels. Let’s compare four tea merchants’ descriptions, alongside public information and coffee’s roast categories.
The labelling standard does not define roast-level names
The Japan Tea Central Association’s green-tea labelling standard specifies in Table 1 the names to be used on containers and packaging, stating that names must follow that table. The table lists 17 types, including sencha, gyokuro, bancha or kawayanagi, kukicha or bōcha, and genmaicha. Hojicha is one of them, defined as tea made by roasting sencha, bancha or similar teas over strong heat.
The standard does not establish light, medium and dark roast as separate names. A common name or a description of form may be added in parentheses after the name; the example given is “Name: steamed tamaryokucha (guricha)”.
A product’s roast level can be read together with the individual shop’s explanation. The following descriptions show how those explanations differ.
Even “light roast” can refer to different things at different shops
Ryuhoen in Ujitawara, Kyoto, says that selecting the raw material is crucial for light roasting. It explains that creating a roasted aroma at as low a temperature as possible brings out the umami distinctive to a light roast. For its dark roast, it selects tea leaves low in caffeine, free amino acids and tannic acid, then roasts them thoroughly at high heat.
Morinoen, a specialist in house-roasted hojicha founded in Taisho 3 (1914), describes light roast as tea roasted slowly over low heat while retaining green tea’s umami, bitterness and astringency. It describes dark roasting as the usual method for hojicha: thorough roasting at high temperature removes astringency and bitterness, making the tea clean-tasting and easy to drink.
Maiko no Chahonpo in Kyoto writes its light-roast label as “浅炒り” (asairi). Compared with its darker “Kaori Fumi”, which is roasted thoroughly, the light-roast hojicha is roasted slowly and lightly over low heat. The company says this lighter treatment also lets you enjoy the aroma of karigane, or stem tea.
The descriptions of lighter roasting share references to low heat, low temperature and retaining the aroma of the raw material. None, however, specifies a reference temperature. Even when the same word is used, the comparison is with another product from that particular shop.