Do you want to try the sencha that I have tasted?

Hi, how are you doing everyone? I was on the summer holidays.

I’m buying some teas that I have introduced on the last post. I’m thinking to buy three extra sets to provide to who read this blog and are interested in these tea. Do you want to try the sencha that I have tasted? I wanted you to try many different sencha so each package is very small. 2-3g of tea leaves is used for one serving.

The set includes …
1. Honyama sencha 30g 378yen
2. Morimachi deep-steamed sencha 30g 315yen
3. Shizuoka blend deep-steamed sencha 30g 189yen
4. Ariake sencha 30g 378yen
5. Kawane sehcna 50g 1050yen
Plus domestic shipping (from the shop to me) 120yen
The total for the set: 2430yen (Not Intended for Individual Resale)

International shipping (EMS from Japan Post)
1100yen: Asia
1500yen: Oceania, North America, Middle East
1800yen: Europe, Russia
2100yen: South America, Africa

Customers are responsible for any taxes and customs charges. When you receive the package, you will need to pay taxes and customs charge upon request by your country's regulation.

If you are interested in buying the set of tea, please email me (info@everyonestea.com) with your shipping address and phone number. I’ll tell you more information regarding the deal. It is sold on a first-come-first-served basis. Thank you (^-^)

Looking for good sencha

One of our customers asked me if I can sell sencha for him. We (Everyone’s Tea) do not sell tea and never exported tea, but I decided to help him personally. He is exploring sencha, and wants to try some different sencha from what he’s tried. He wants to try what I recommend, and is looking for some good sencha in the price range of 1000-1500yen/100g or more.
There are some shops that offer free tea tasting for a couple kind of tea. But it is difficult find tea shops that offer tea tasting for many kind of tea. I know a lady who is a Japanese tea instructor, and works at a tea shop. I visited the shop that she works which offers the tea tasting. She recommended me five kind of sencha and I tested the five teas. I liked all of them. I’ll introduce the sencha I have tried. I’m sorry that the color of pictures is not good, kind of yellowish.




1. Honyama sencha
Good balance of umami and bitterness. This is very sencha. Good looking tealeaves. The tealeaves were preserved by the classical method and naturally matured.
Price: 126yen/10g (sold by weight)
Production region: Suruga Honyama in Shizuoka prefecture
1260yen/100g




2. Morimachi deep-steamed sencha
Nice aroma. The tea was brewed little strong, and it has pronounced flavor but still mild.
Price: 105yen/10g (sold by weight)
Production region: Enshu Morimachi in Shizuoka prefecture
1050yen/100g




3. Shizuoka blend deep-steamed sencha
Good *fire aroma (hika). Soft umami and good bitterness. If you want to know what hika is, this will be good one.
Price: 63yen/10g (sold by weight)
Production region: Shizuoka prefecture
630yen/100g

*Fire aroma: Sorry, I could not find good translation for hika. Tea leaves are dried in high temperature in the making process. In the drying process, the distinctive aroma is given to the leaves, and it is called hika. And I translated it into fire aroma here.



Sorry I forgot to take a picture of the leaves.
4. Ariake sencha
It was very distinctive. Profound umami and flavor. The tea I tested was brewed with cold water, so I can not simply compare with the other teas brewed with hot water. But, I was impressed with the very rich umami like kabusecha. I believe it was deep-steamed sencha.
Price: 126yen/10g (sold by weight)
Production region: Ariake Kagoshima prefecture
1260en/100g




5. Kawane sehcna
The flavor was rounded and accomplished. Nice umami and smooth bitterness. I liked this tea the best. This is made from 100 years old tea plants. It is very old for tea plants.
Price: 1050yen for 50g package
Production region: Kawane in shizuoka prefecture
2100en/100g


The teas I tasted were all very good. I can recommend either of them to the customer. If I prioritize these teas with my preference, it will be the same order with the price. I don’t think the price of tea always decides the quality of tea, but this time it did.
I will definitely recommend the “# 5. Kawane sencha”.
If he wants to try …
Rich umami, “# 4.” will be good.
The standard sencha, “# 1.” will be good.
Nice deep-steamed sencha, “# 2.” will be good.
Fire aroma, “# 3.” will be good.

If you are looking for good Japanese tea, I’ll recommend finding a good tea shop that offers tea tasting for many kind of tea.

Price for sencha in Japan

You can buy sencha at tea shops, super market, department stores, online shops, or gift shops in Japan. There are various prices, from reasonable daily teas to expensive fine teas. You will find reasonable one at super market, which may be about 500 yen for 200g package. I think the average price is about 700yen/100g. If you want some good sencha, they will be about 1000-1500yen/100g. Some expensive ones cost you even 2000-4000yen/100g. I often buy about 1000yen/100g tea, but I sometimes buy reasonable ones and sometimes expensive ones.
(100g ＝ 3.527 ounce)

Sencha cup for the summer

Do you drink hot tea in the summer? I have cold tea most of the time in the summer, but still I want to have hot sencha once in a while. In Japan, wide opening cups are appreciated for sencha in the summer. It’s something like in the picture. I think it is because the large surface will make the tea get cooler easily. It’s good for the summer, don’t you think?

The tea cup is for sale >>> http://www.everyonestea.com/product/130/

Japanese sweets café, Kaya in Nakatsugawa Gifu prefecture

We visited a Japanese confectionary shop, Suya in Nakatsugawa on the way back from the previous trip from Nagiso. On the trip we bought some sweets there, but didn’t stop by the café next door. So, this time I wanted to visit the café. The café is called Kaya, and had the nice atmosphere with trees around. In front of the entrance, some sweets were cooled with water in a basin, which created the air of coolness. I thought you could have matcha and some sweets from the confectionary shop next door, actually you could not. Kaya offers traditional Japanese sweets, such as anmitsu, zenzai, oshiruko and so on. I loved their sweets. They were really good. I want to come visit here again!












Anmitsu, this is what I ordered.
The translucent stuff is agar,
and it has sweet been past and white rice stuff on it.
It comes with syrup. I loved it






Iced shiratama, Hiro had this.
It’s sweet bean drink with white rice stuff.
Hot one is poplar, but this is served in cold.







Sobagaki
It is soba past. Soba is the ingredient of Soba noodle.








Matcha azuki (seasonal menu)
Matcha mousse and sweet been past








Kaya webpage (Japanese) >>> http://www.suya-honke.co.jp/kaya.html

Thin matcha, welcome drink at Hotel Kisoji,

This weekend, we went to Hotel Kisoji in Nagano prefecture, again. They have blueberry fields, and now it’s in the season. We enjoyed the blueberry picking. I love blueberries.









At Hotel Kisoji, they served welcome drink at their cafe. We could choose from coffee, English tea, orange juice, grapefruit juice and matcha. Matcha?? I don’t think they had matcha when we had visited the last time. It’s a new choice! Of course, I tried the matcha. It came with sweets. It was a very pleasing time enjoying matcha at the café. The only disappointment was that the matcha was too thin. It was not delicious, to say the least.

Tea field for hand picking

I could see some tea fields around as we were traveling through Uji. Usually tea is picked by machines, and the figures of tea plans are uniformed. But this picture is the tea field for hand picking; the tea plants grow naturally, and the shapes of each plan are not as constant as the machine picked plants. You may want to see the picture of the machine picked field to compare, but this the only picture I have now. Sorry.

Gyokuro brewing workshop 2

I’ll continue to talk about the gyokuro brewing workshop from where I left off yesterday.

For the second brewing, use the hot water in the water cooler, which is about 45 degrees C. Pour it into the teapot. The amount of water should be about as same as the first brewing.









After waiting 2 minutes, serve the tea into the teacup.

The taste was little different from first brewing, but it was still very good, and had rich gyokuro flavor with profound umami. It was very gyokuro.








We enjoyed the sweets after second brewing. For gyokuro or sencha, it is better not to have sweet in the beginning. Enjoy the tea first, and then sweets.








I tried the third brewing with 60 degree C water for 2 minutes. The brewed tea had still good umami, and the taste was like kabusecha.
This picture is the tea leaves after third brewing. The leaves were not totally open yet. It looked that you can enjoy more brewing with the leaves.





I tried the fourth and fifth brewing with higher temperature of water. The umami got milder, but they were still good. They were very nice and mellow tea. This picture is for the fifth brewing.








After enjoying some cups of tea, you can eat brewed tea leaves by adding a little soy sauce with citrus juice. My tea leaves remained strong tea flavor and bitterness. They were little too strong for me. I could have enjoyed more brewing and infused more tea component. Then the taste of the leaves would have been milder.






The Gyokuro that I tried at Sagano-yu on a past trip, didn’t last to the fifth brewing like the gyokuro here. The flavor has almost gone at the third brewing on the Sagano-yu gyokuro. I believe it is because that fewer leaves and more water were used.
The tea plants for gyokuro are usually covered for 20 days to avoid direct sunshine. The master at Takumi-no-yakata said that their gyokuro was covered for 40 days. Maybe, it is one of the reasons for that their gyokuro is good. But I don’t think it’s so simple. Longer covering makes better gyokuro? If so, people are already doing so. The tea is very profound, I think.

Gyokuro brewing workshop 1

On the tea study tour in Uji, we visited Takumi-no-yakata. We took a gyokuro-brewing workshop. Each participant got an individual tea set, and tried gyokuro brewing. I’ll introduce the Takuni-no-yakata-style gyokuro brewing that I learned.

Tea set: Hohin (teapot), small cup, water cooler, tea caddy (red), small bowl (blue).









Ghyokuro tea leaves in the tea caddy: 5g









Pour hot water into the teapot, about 1/3 of the teapot













Pour the hot water in to the small tea cup, about the 8/10 of the cup
Throw away the water left in the teapot.









Put the 5g tea leaves into the teapot









The water temperature should be about 40 degrees C. When you touch the tea cup, it should be lukewarm, slightly warmer than human body. If so, pour all the hot water from the cup to the teapot. The amount of water should be just enough to soak the tea leaves.








While you wait for infusing the tea, pour hot water into water cooler for second brewing. Have the water get cool.













The color of the tea leaves in the teapot will change to bright yellowish green by absorbing the hot water. When 2/3 of the leaves change the color, it is the time. (or it is for about 2-3 minutes) Serve the tea into the teacup.







The tea will be very small amount. Do not quickly drain your cup. First enjoy the color and aroma, and then take a sip and move it all around your mouth. The taste is totally different from sencha. You will find condensed umami in the drops.






I think gyokuro is the tea to enjoy the super rich umami in the condensed drops. I loved their gyokuro. It was very strong, but mellow. I had very happy time with the tea and experience. I’ll talk about the second brewing tomorrow.

Fukujuen, Tea shop in Uji, Kyoto

We had the lunch at Fukujuen in Uji on the tea study trip. Fukujuen is a famous tea shop, which has a long history. A bottled sencha, Iyemon is a nationally popular bland, and produced by a collaboration of Fukujuen and Suntory.

Fukujuen Uji studio has a restaurant, tea rooms, tea-making experiencing studios, pottery studio, and gift shops. We had tea flavor noodle and rice at the restaurant. I was busy talking with other people during the meal and don’t remember the taste of the noodle, much (・_・;) But, I remember the rice was pretty nice. I loved it.








A small cup of cold kabusecha was served before the meal. It was so nice. I assumed it was brewed with cold water; the taste was very clear and had a generous umami of kabusecha.








And hojicha was served with the meal. This was the third cup of tea we had on this trip v(^o^)v












You can experience tea making for sencha, matcha and hojicha, or pottery making, or take a tea ceremony workshop at Fukujuen Uji studio. (I think it’s better to check the schedules of the workshops and make a reservation before you visit.) We didn’t have much time to stay at Fukujuen, and left there after the lunch. I thought it was a good place to experience Japanese tea!

Fukujuen Uji studio webpage (Japanese) >>> http://www.ujikoubou.com/index.cgi

From the left; Tea making studio, tea room, and pottery studio

Tencha tea factory

Another place we visited on the tea study trip in Uji was a tea factory for tencha. Tencha is the ingredient of matcha, the tea leaves before milled. It was a very precious opportunity visiting a tencha factory, and more precious about was the factory was in the operation. It was the time for second harvest of the year.

When we arrived at the factory, the tea leaves just harvested was brought in there.












Tencha is made by steaming, cooling down, and drying. The biggest difference from sencha or gyokuro making is that there is no kneading process. So tencha is not rolled; I mean tencha is not a big needle shape. It is a just dried leaf. This picture is for the raw leaves before processed.










Steaming about 20 seconds
It was pretty hot in the factory.
The steamer was much smaller than I expected.







Cooling down the steamed leaves
The leaves are browed up by fans in the tall mesh tubes.












Drying in oven
The leaves are dried as they are moved by conveyor in the oven.








Stems are separated













This is the tencha. I had a bite of the leaf, but it was not good as I expected. It didn’t have much umami. It was maybe because it was the second harvested leaves. I think they will not used for matcha in the tea ceremonies, they will be used for the of matcha flavor sweets or food as an ingredient.










I was so excited observing the factory, and learned a lot. I think I was smiling all through the trip. I had really good time(^-^)