Tokyo has only two barley tea makers, we visited one to see how mugicha is made

With barley tea going into glasses as the weather heats up, we find out what goes into making barley tea.

With summertime here, people in Japan are increasingly reaching for one of its favorite drinks to cool off with: barley tea. Barley tea is called mugicha in Japanese, written with the kanji 麦茶, which literally translate as “barley” and “tea,” so it seems like it should be a pretty self-explanatory drink. It’s a mixture of tea and barley…right?

But wait, do you just toss raw grains of barley in with tea leaves during the brewing process? Or is mugicha something else entirely? To learn more, we wanted to pay a visit to a barley tea factory, and Ogawa Sangyo was nice enough to show us around theirs. Located in Edogawa Ward, Ogawa Sangyo is one of only two mugicha makers with a production facility in Tokyo.

▼ The entrance to Ogawa Sangyo’s factory

▼ Company president Keisuke Ogawa, who served as our guide

First thing first: barley tea doesn’t actually contain any tea. Yes, it’s an infusion enjoyed as either a hot or cold beverage, but there are no tea leaves used to make it. Barley tea is, however, truly made from barley.

▼ Sacks of barley, waiting for their chance to become barley tea

Ogawa Sangyo sources its barley from domestic growers, primarily in Ibaraki, Tochigi, and Toyama prefectures. With the country’s number of barley growers declining, securing the quantities they need has become more costly than it used to be, but the company is still committed to using Japanese-grown ingredients, as well as using two different strains of barley, for a more complex and robust flavor.

Before the grains can become barley tea, they have to be roasted, and the roasting process is something else that Ogawa Sangyo is particular about. While many mass-producers use a convection-roasting method, where hot air is blown into the oven, Ogawa Sangyo still goes with a direct-fire technique.

This is a more laborious way to roast the grains, but it also allows for finer control over the intensity of the heat and air flow, and that in turn produces barley tea with a richer flavor and aroma, Ogawa Sangyo says.

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