Bancha, sometimes written ban-cha, is a Japanese green tea that is much more widely-known in Japan than in the United States and other western countries. Bancha is sometimes referred to as common tea, referring to the fact that it is the lowest grade of Japanese green tea, a regular or everyday tea. It is also sometimes called coarse tea because of the larger size and coarser texture of its leaves. These labels, however, can be misleading, as bancha can actually be remarkably high in quality, especially compared to many of the green teas from tea bags that most Americans are used to drinking. In the U.S., bancha is among the most under-appreciated and under-valued of teas. matcha tea private label
Bancha Production:
Like most Japanese green teas, and in contrast to Chinese green teas, bancha is a steamed tea, meaning that the tea leaves are heated by steaming in order to kill the enzymes that cause oxidation, leading the leaf to turn into black tea. Bancha is harvested later in the season than shincha or first-flush sencha. Bancha often contains a fair amount of stem and twig in addition to leaf, although less than kukicha, which is a Japanese green tea made primarily or exclusively from stems and twigs.
Flavor, Aroma, and Other Qualities of Bancha:
Bancha is often described as having a straw-like aroma, in contrast to the more seaweedy vegetal aroma of sencha. Because it consists of primarily larger, more mature leaves, together with some stem, it is lower in caffeine than sencha and other green teas which contain a greater proportion of tips, leaf buds, and younger leaves. Bancha can be rather astringent, but it tends to not be as bitter as most other Japanese green teas, especially if it is brewed properly, steeping the leaves with water that has cooled considerably from the boiling point.
Uses of Bancha:
Bancha is certainly good to drink on its own, but, because it is inexpensive, it is also frequently used as a base tea for blending or producing other teas. A favorite use of bancha is to roast it, to produce hojicha, a roasted green tea. Bancha is also frequently blended with toasted rice to produce genmaicha. Although both hojicha and genmaicha can be produced out of other, more expensive varieties of tea, bancha is the most commonly used base due to its price and availability. In many respects, the flavor and overall characteristics of bancha also make it ideal for its use as a base tea in this manner.
Bancha can be deceptively high in quality for its price:
Although it is technically considered a lower grade tea than sencha, it’s hard to generalize about quality: both bancha and sencha vary widely in quality, and freshness is also an important factor in the flavor and aroma of a given batch of tea. Much of the sencha available in the United States is of relatively low quality, and because bancha is less well-known, a typical bancha purchased in the US is often considerably better quality than a typical sencha. You will rarely go wrong purchasing loose-leaf bancha from a reputable Japanese tea company or other company that specializes in Japanese teas.