Choosing Japanese Tea 3

These are the few suggestions for choosing Japanese tea for beginners.

 Try sencha first
 What grade to choose
 Two major types of sencha
 Good leaves and bad leaves
 Reliable tea shops

I talked about fist three tips in the past two days. I recommended you to try some futsu-sencha and fukamushi-sencha of nice middle grade. The next tip is …

 Good leaves and bad leaves
Even if you are buying green tea from online shops, I believe you could have a chance to compare the leaves by photos in most cases. I will show you some tips on how to tell apart good leaves from bad ones based on the appearance.

** Good sencha leaves **
Shape: tightly rolled in spindle form, uniform in shape and size, It’s okay to have some tiny broken pieces for fukamushi-sencha, but not too many.
Hue: profound dark green with luster on the surface, yellowish-green for fukamushi-sencha

** Bad sencha leaves **
Shape: flat or crooked pieces, uneven in form and size, contains too many broken pieces or stems
Hue: dry or powdered skin, brownish, reddish, yellowish or any dull color

Click for large picture




When you shop around for sencha on the internet, do not determine the quality just by the price, look for good looking one with profound color and uniform thin spindle-shaped tea. I’ll write one more post regarding to choosing Japanese tea. Talk to you soon (^-^)