Kinshachi Matcha Draft - Land Beer

snogglethorpe

Japan

2.08/5  rDev 0%
look: 4 | smell: 3 | taste: 1.5 | feel: 3 | overall: 1.5

"Matcha" is high-quality powdered Japanese green tea (it's what they use in the Japanese tea ceremony), so this is basically "green tea beer."

It seemed kinda cool in the store (pretty bottle and label, interesting concept), and it is a very attractive green color in the glass. Unfortunately the taste is quite vile -- it's like cheap vending-machine green tea mixed with cheap beer, but the mixture is worse than either.

The first impression is a weird sort of vegetable taste, along with a mild astringency that reminds me of cheap green tea. After that it settles into a thoroughly unpleasant bitterness, with neither any obvious hop character nor any resemblance to the pleasing bitterness of matcha -- while both beer and matcha are "bitter in a good way", this stuff is "bitter in a bad way", with a flat, one-note character. I could only choke down half the bottle before I gave up and poured the rest down the drain.

A gimmick gone wrong. Avoid.

Serving type: bottle

08-20-2010 04:28:06 | More by snogglethorpe