Mugicha (barley tea) is the flavor of summer in Japan
When we were growing up, my mother frowned upon most sugary drinks for us kids. So things like sodas were generally not stocked in the house - an ice-filled cup of Coke was a great treat whenever we went out to eat. Things like Calpis, or when we lived in the U.S. Kool-Aid, were strictly rationed. The cool drink we always had in the refrigerator was mugicha, or barley tea. Even when we lived in White Plains, New York, there were always a couple of jugs of mugicha in the large American refrigerator.
Mugicha is traditionally made by briefly simmering roasted barley grains. It has a toasty taste, with slight bitter undertones, but much less so than tea made from tea leaves. To me, its much more refreshing to drink than plain water.
My anti-sugar mother always made sugarless mugicha, but my younger self craved the sweetened mugicha that most of my friends mothers seemed to make. I always begged my mother to make sweet mugicha, but she always refused. Some day, when I am the one making mugicha, Ill put all the sugar I want in it, I used to think. So, when I reached my teen years, and my mother was back working full time, I used to pour rivers of sugar into the mugicha. My little sisters loved it. Im not sure if it made them more hyper than usual, though I have vague memories of my younger sister sitting on my head when she got bored.
Now that I am nominally an adult, I much prefer unsweetened mugicha. Im growing more like my mother as I get older, a rather scary thought.
How to make mugicha
You can buy mugicha in three formats. The most traditional kind is just loose barley grains that have been roasted to a deep, dark brown. The second, and most popular are mugicha tea bags meant for cold brewing. Then there are hybrid type tea bags, which can be simmered or cold brewed.
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http://justhungry.com/mugicha-barley-tea-flavor-summer