ice-cold boricha, ahhh...

It’s really hot here in Montreal today.
No big deal, it is summer, right?
I mean really hot. The sort of hot where everything looks hazy. And where I (who normally walk fairly quickly) am forced to walk as slowly as possible (especially while carrying groceries… I hate carrying things) just to keep from sweating through my clothes…ewww.
The reason this is extraordinary is because it was starting to seem like summer had skipped a year. Montreal is usually pretty hot in the summertime, but this year it just hadn’t come. May was warm– things were shaping up nicely. Then June came, and it rained and rained and rained. I had planned to buy a pretty summer dress, but opted for jeans and sweaters instead. It didn’t warm up. We went to Nova Scotia in July, hoping to swim. The weather was nice, don’t get me wrong… but it just wasn’t swimming weather. Hiking, maybe. Biking, certainly. Swimming, definitely not.

But now it’s here. Really, I am an autumn girl. So if autumn turned out to be really spectacular and drawn-out, I was prepared not to mention the lack of summer.

But now that it’s here, it’s nice to sweat a little. I think.

Which brings us to boricha (보리차), the most popular summer drink at my house. In Korea it is brewed to be drunk cold in the summer (and boy is it refreshing) and is served warm in cooler weather. In Japan, it is called mugicha, and is only served cold in summer, as far as I know. I was first acquainted with it in Korea, so I call it boricha. Pants (who has a Japanese mom) calls it mugicha, of course.

But what is it?
It is an infusion of roasted barley. I’ve never roasted my own, but I might someday. I bought the big teabags, but it is also readily available in a big bag of loose grains, if you prefer that. I found them at a Korean/Japanese grocery store here in Montreal. You can steep it in hot water (or simmer it briefly on the stove), then remove the teabag and chill it in the fridge. Or, you can fill the pitcher (or mason jar) with water and one boricha bag, and leave it in the fridge overnight to steep. By the time you’ve gotten hot and bothered (?) the following afternoon, you’ll have icy-cool barley tea (not a true tea, contains no camellia sinensis or caffeine) to rejuvenate you.

I recommend it, highly.

all packed up and ready to picnic

It went very nicely with our take-out banh mi today at lunch.

A Korean friend once told me that he had grown up drinking so much boricha that he didn’t realize it had a flavour until he was in high school. In his elementary school they always had pitchers of boricha in the classroom, and were given a little cup of it when they were thirsty. Same thing at home. He guessed that since Seoul’s water isn’t so tasty, the boiled water used to make boricha made it more palatable. He said it didn’t have a taste to him, the way water usually isn’t thought to have a taste.

I also have fond memories of being served boricha (in a plastic kid’s cup) while teaching noon-time English lessons at the sweetest little daycare in Seoul. The daycare was a little messy and crowded, but the kids were really great, as was the staff. And the boricha was great, too, and it had a distinctive taste to me–roasted, earthy, and completely cooling and thirst-quenching.

Anyway, do try this tea. Oksusu-cha is another Korean roasted grain drink, made of corn, but I have less experience with this one. Boricha and oksusu-cha can be combined, too. The combination seems to be served at a lot of the Korean restaurants I’ve been to, both here in Canada and in Korea.

Happy summer!

Love, Meggie ^^

Tags: Japanese, Korean, musings, Seasons, summer, Tea

This entry was posted on Friday, August 14th, 2009 at 6:36 pm and is filed under Seasons, Tea, musings. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.