Mesh fineness of tea strainers and the taste of sencha 1

The other day, I did a test to check the relation between the taste and the material of tea strainer. >>> Do ceramic tea strainers brew better tea than stainless ones?

Speaking of strainers, I’m also wondering how the fineness of the mesh affects the taste. I sometimes see mucky-green tea and sometimes very clear tea. I do not think it is just about futsu (regular steamed) or fukamushi (deep steamed) sencha. I believe the fineness of mesh has an impact to the color and taste of tea and wanted to check it out myself.



Here are three teapots with different strainers.
Teapot A, Mounted stainless strainer (Finer than ceramic strainers)
Teapot B, Fine-mesh ceramic strainer
Teapot C, Regular-mesh ceramic strainer




*** Conditions ***
Tea: sencha (regular steamed), 2grams
Water: 70ml, 75degC
Brewing time: 1 minute

Today I’m using futsu-sencha. Do you think the brewed teas will be very different by using these strainers? What do you think? I’ll tell you the result tomorrow.

Matcha cake

It was raining in the morning, but now it’s getting sunny. I’ve just had a Japanese confectionery and bowl of matcha. I feel that it’s gonna be a good day(*^。^*)



The other day, I got some cakes from a neighborhood pastry shop. There was a matcha flavored cake in them. I loved it. It was layered with some matcha sponge cake, mousse, cream and chocolate. It was very smooth and had rich flavor like high quality chocolate. Nowadays matcha flavored sweets are very popular. It is not only for Japanese confectioneries. I even see a lot of combinations of western sweets and the matcha flavor in Japan. I guess most of the chocolate flavored sweets can be substituted by matcha flavor for the bitterness. That’s why matcha flavor goes really well with western sweets as well. Are green tea flavored sweets popular in your country?

Rare teas at a buffet restaurant

This weekend I went downtown Nagoya to see a play. Before the play, I had lunch at a buffet restaurant called Sweets Paradise, which was specialized for sweets. They have some food menu but they also had a big selection of sweets. I had little salad and pasta, and then I had tons of sweets. I’m partial to sweets, and I was so happy ヽ(^。^)ノ They also had a big selection of tea. They were teabags. I didn’t try any of them. There were some rare teas which I have never seen, such as honey hojicha, plum green tea, white peach oolong, and corn medlar tea. I should have tried some, but I was so busy having cakes and cappuccinos. Ha ha ha….

Sweets Paradice webpage (Japanese) >>> http://www.sweets-paradise.jp/

After the play, we had dinner at Gambo and Oyster Bar. I had many different oyster dishes and wine. At the downtown, the Christmas illuminations were glittering beautifully.

Do ceramic tea strainers brew better tea than stainless ones?

Some people prefer teapots with a ceramic strainer rather than stainless one. They say that the irony taste gets mixed in the tea and they don't like that. I’ve heard about it and thought it might be true, but I wasn’t so concerned about it myself. I use both teapots with ceramic and stainless strainers at home. I thought it is time to check the fact of the matter myself (^-^)

Here are 6 teapots. Three of them (A, B and C) have the stainless strainer, and the other three (D, E and F) have ceramic or plastic.

A: Mounted stainless strainer



B: Removable stainless strainer



C: Mounted stainless strainer



D: Regular-mesh ceramic strainer



E: Fine-mesh ceramic strainer



F: Removal plastic strainer



I thought it may be easier to notice the irony taste in plain water rather than in tea. So before brewing the tea, I poured just hot water into each teapot and left them for a while and tasted it later with blindfold. Do you think I could tell the difference in taste between the water in each teapot?


Well… I smelled the water but I could not tell the difference. I took a sip and tasted the irony taste! The hot water in Teapot F had the worst flavor and thought it was the water with stainless one. The F is the teapot that I’ve used for the longest and brewed not only green tea but also English teas. I think it has some stains from the plastic strainer, and they affected the taste. I could not tell perfectly, but I think people can tell the irony taste in the water.



On the next step, I brewed sencha with these six teapots. I smelled the brewed teas first. You know what? I could not tell the difference with the water, but I could slightly notice the irony smell in the brewed teas. I don’t know why, but it is very interesting. For the taste, Tea pot F made it tricky to tell the difference, again. I could not tell them perfectly, but I could still tell most of them. Here I didn’t like the taste with the teapot “A” the most. “A” is a brand new teapot, so maybe that’s why. It was more difficult to tell the irony taste in tea than in water.



In conclusion, you can say that ceramic strainers can brew better tea than stainless ones. Maybe, I’ll use ceramic-strainer teapots when I brew expensive tea, but I’ll keep using my teapots with metal strainer for daily tea. I think it is not a big deal.
There are some advantages of stainless strainers. They are usually reasonable and the mesh is finer than ceramic ones. Stainless-strainer teapots are actually sold many in Japan, and a lot of people are using them. I don’t want you to be paranoid too much about it. Brewing tea should be fun and easy (^-^) Right?

Flowers of the day, Sep 27 –Dec 8

Here in Japan, you see some Christmas illuminations around the town now. And also you will find some The New Year items sold at supermarkets. Happy holidays to you all!
Today I’ll upload some photos for the flowers displayed at our tea lessons.


Sep 27













Oct 6

Oct 13












Oct 18













Oct 20












Nov 3












Nov 10












Nov 17












Nov 29












Dec 1













Dec 8

Kisoji, my favorite restaurant in my town

The other day we went to Kisoji for lunch, my favorite restaurant in my town. It is a restaurant chain, but it offers good quality of foods and services. The waitresses are serving in kimono. Their lunch menus are nice Japanese dish sets. Each dish set we ordered cost 1,500yen. I think they are reasonable for these many dish sets.

This is what I ordered, sashimi set
Some sashimi, tempura, some other dishes, rice and soup













Hiro and my father had sukiyaki set
Have you tried sukiyaki? Beef and some vegetables are cooked with soy sauce based sweet sauce. You eat them by dipping raw egg. Yum(^-^)











My mother had Kisoji set.














Hojicha was served with meal

Sencha was served with dessert
Dessert was ice-cream. They had few choices for the flavor. I had matcha ice cream
(^-^)

Some flowers are display at the hallways


I like their service. They have omotenashi-spirit, hospitality. For example, when you get in the room, they arrange the shoes you take off. They also provided a napkin to cover my wife’s bag for preventing spatters of meal. I think the flowers in the hallways are part of their omotenashi. Those services are not that huge, but small cares to customers. I like that

EMS (Express Mail Service) to the US is back in service

This is a notification from my online-shop, Everyone's Tea

To all our customers based in the US,

EMS (Express Mail Service) to the US is back in service now. We are going to use EMS for deliveries to the US again. According to Japan Post, the customs clearance in the U.S.A is still strict with security. The clearance may take longer than usual. We are sorry for the inconvenience.

Everyone's Tea
http://www.everyonestea.com/

Choosing Japanese Tea 4

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 the fist four tips in the past three days. I recommended you to try some futsu-sencha and fukamushi-sencha of nice middle grade, which should have profound color and uniform thin spindle-shaped tea leaves. The last tip is …

 Reliable tea shops
I strongly recommend you to buy green tea from reliable tea shops. I think it is pretty important. If you don’t, you might end up buying poor quality tea. I sometimes hear some supermarkets or tea shops overseas don’t know how to handle green tea.
In Japan, some tea shops have some sample leaves to show customers. Some of them even offer free tastings. You want to buy from those who are knowledgeable and can give you some advice. You might not have a good Japanese tea shop in your town and have to buy on the internet but still dealing with good shops is important. I’m not an expert on buying tea online, so I can’t tell you any particular online shops. I have done a quick research for Japanese online shops before. Check out my past blog; Japanese green-tea online shops >>> http://everyonestea.blogspot.com/2010/02/japanese-green-tea-online-shops.html



In conclusion for choosing Japanese tea, I recommend you to try some futsu-sencha and fukamushi-sencha of nice middle grade for first tea. Good sencha leaves should have profound color and uniform thin spindle-shaped leaves and buy them at reliable tea shops. Then you will know what Japanese green tea is like and the basics of Japanese tea. You could try some other types of Japanese tea for the next step. You could try anything you like, could be much high-grade sencha, tamaryokucha, gyokuro or kukicha. You will notice the profoundness of Japanese tea as you explore. Enjoy!

On the previous post about “Choosing Japanese tea”, I mentioned about the prices of sencha. They were Japanese domestic price so the prices in your country or importing to your country may be a little expensive than what I have mentioned.

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 (^-^)

Choosing Japanese Tea 2

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 two tips yesterday. I recommended you to try some nice middle grade sencha. The next tip is …

 Two major types of sencha
Sencha can be categorized into two major types. One is called sencha or futsu-sencha, which is regular-steamed sencha. The other one is fukamushi-sencha, which is deep-steamed sencha. Green tea is usually steamed when produced. The steam processing makes slight difference in their flavor.

** Regular-steamed sencha (sencha or futsu-sencha) **
Leaves: Thin needle shape; well-formed shape
Brewing time: 1 minute
Brewed tea: Clear yellow, flavor with good harmony of bitterness and sweetness.

** Deep-steamed sencha (fukamushi-sencha) **
Leaves: finer pieces than futsu-sencha
Brewing time: 30 seconds
Brewed tea: murkier and greener than futsu-sencha, richer in the flavor



When you try several different senchas, I recommend trying both futsu-snecha and fukamushi-sencha. If you are looking for clear flavor green tea, you will probably like futsu-sencha. If you prefer rich flavor, you will like fukamushi-sencha. I hope you would try them yourself and find the difference and your favorite.
If you want to know more about futsu-sencha and fukamushi-sencha, please refer to my previous three blogs.
1. http://everyonestea.blogspot.com/2009/12/regular-sencha-vs-long-steamed-sencha-1.html
2. http://everyonestea.blogspot.com/2009/12/regular-sencha-vs-long-deep-steamed.html
3. http://everyonestea.blogspot.com/2009/12/regular-sencha-vs-long-deep-steamed_10.html

On the next post, I’ll tell you how to distinguish between good leaves and bad leaves.

Choosing Japanese tea

One of our customers, a newbie in Japanese tea, asked me if there are any types of Japanese tea that I can recommend. So today I would like to write about choosing Japanese tea for beginners.

I do not have any particular brand of green tea that I want to recommend you. But, here are a few suggestions …

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


 Try sencha first
In Japan we have some types of tea such as sencha, hojicha, gyokuro, kukicha, tamaryokucha, genmaicha, matcha and so on. If you want to know about Japanese tea, try sencha first. It is the most common and popular green tea in Japan. Sencha is what Japanese regard as green tea. Please do not determine if you like it by trying only one sencha. You can find great variety of sencha in Japanese tea shops. I would like you to try several different senchas. The flavor is slightly different by region, maker, process and grade. Exploring your favorite sencha will be fun. I will tell you a guide to find your sencha (^-^)

 What grade to choose
Sencha has a wide range of grades. There are reasonable ones from 300yen/100g, average ones are at around 700yen/100g, and expensive ones are up to 2000-4000yen/100g. I will recommend starting from a little nice middle-grade sencha around 1000-1500yen. At the price range, you can choose from wide selection. In Japan, green tea is our daily beverage so we do not always have high grade tea. But I noticed that people overseas tend to enjoy expensive Japanese tea. I guess green tea is enjoyed more as a hobby or pleasure. So for those who are overseas looking for a type of green tea to start with, the nice middle-grade of sencha is the best. Do not buy one big package. Buy small packages if possible, and try many different kinds.

I will write about other remaining tips regarding choosing Japanese tea on the next post.

Autumn leaves viewing in Japan

We, Japanese love to appreciate the beauty of seasonal nature. We enjoy cherry-blossom viewing in the spring, and now in the fall we go to forests for viewing autumn trees scenery. One of our customers asked me how the culture or customs for autumn scenery viewing is like in Japan. Maybe in some other countries, people do not put effort to go and view them. But somehow we do.

The fall is one of the best seasons in Japan. The climate is nice and it is good season for many activities. It is said that fall is the season for sports, trips, appetite, studying and reading.

The most parts of Japan belong to the temperate zone and has a lot of mountains and forests with wide variety of vegetation. The good mixture of deciduous and evergreen trees makes the beautiful multi-colored scenery in the fall. The deciduous trees are maple which turns red and orange, gingko which turns yellow, beech which turns brown, and more. We are lucky to have this kind of environment. I think the environment makes us appreciate beauty.



How do we enjoy them? Some people go for a drive to mountainous area and enjoy the view and also some local food or sometimes bathing in hot springs, perhaps. Some people enjoy the autumn foliage in nice temples at Kyoto or Kamakura. I went to a night viewing in a park near my town. It was very cold that night. There were many food stands there and we enjoyed hot soup, noodle, rice dumpling and more before viewing. The park has hundreds of maple trees. They were illuminated and ablaze with vibrant autumn colors. There is a public bath at the park. We had a bath after viewing and warm up our cold body.




At the high season, the popular spots are very crowded with people and you will even experience traffic jams around the area. The traffic jams at popular mountainous areas are often on the news on TV. We also find beauty in fallen leaves. The leaves fluttering down on the ground, and the carpet of fallen leaves are other scenery we enjoy.

This is the search result for images of “紅葉” or Autumn leaves on Google. >>> Click here