How Hojicha Is Quietly Redefining Tea Culture
The Matcha Rival Has Arrived, And It Smells Like Someone Toasted Kyoto
You can’t escape it. It’s everywhere, in pretentious cafés that insist on calling themselves laboratories, in pastries, in those frothy milk drinks people queue forty minutes for, and even in ice cream mixes. Hojicha is having a moment, and unlike matcha, which has spent the last decade colonising the Western world one green latte at a time, this toasted tea tells a completely different story. Understanding hojicha means stepping away from fashion trends and realising how a humble Japanese daily drink has accidentally become the world’s newest fetish.
The Toasted Tea from Kyoto
Hojicha literally means toasted tea, which is already a good start because anything toasted tends to taste better, bread, nuts, and yes, the occasional marshmallow after you inevitably set it on fire.
A century ago in Kyoto, people discovered that if you took the less fancy bits of green tea, the odd leaves, twigs, leftovers and whatnot, and roasted them in hot clay pots or iron drums fuelled by charcoal, you got something entirely different. The bitterness vanished, the caffeine practically disappeared, and the colour shifted to a lovely amber instead of that pondwater chic you get with some green teas. The flavour became warm and comforting, toasted cereal, hazelnut, bread, sometimes even cocoa.
It was the tea of everyday life, served during meals, after meals, and to children and old people because it wouldn’t make them bounce off the walls. Nothing ceremonial, nothing dramatic, no thousand year old rituals involving bamboo whisks and poetry. Just tea, good, honest, unpretentious tea. And oddly enough, that simplicity is exactly why it is booming now.
Why It Is Suddenly Everywhere
Today’s consumers, who claim to love matcha but secretly think it tastes like liquefied grass, find hojicha much easier to understand. It is toasted, warm, friendly, and it does not smack you in the face with bitterness. The near zero caffeine means you can drink it at night without lying awake pondering life’s failures. And because you can use it as a tea, a powder, or a flavour base for desserts, bakeries and cafés adore it. It is reliable. It is versatile. And crucially, it tastes like something you might genuinely enjoy instead of something you choke down because a YouTuber said it aligns your chakras.
The ancient toasted tea is catching on outside Japan because it fits modern life perfectly. It works in drinks, in pastries, in iced lattes, in whatever bizarre fusion dessert someone is inventing this week. It is no longer confined to the world of tea purists arguing about water temperatures on Reddit. Hojicha is tea for everyone, no ceremony, no fuss, no snobbery.
After spending decades ignored by exporters and completely overlooked in the story of Japanese tea, hojicha is making a comeback, but it hasn’t lost its roots. It is still the drink created to avoid waste, the tea poured at the end of a good meal, the simple comforting companion to everyday life.
And that, more than any fad or trend, explains why it has taken off globally.
It is humble. It is warm. And it does not require a single Instagram filter.
A tea to be enjoyed slowly, sensibly, and preferably without anyone lecturing you about antioxidants.
Comments