Importance of brewing conditions

I don’t think that there are many places where one can have gyokuro.  I had the chance of having gyokuro at Gyokuro-no-sato, a tourist spot.  You pass through a classic gate.  You can enjoy the beholding sceneries like the soothing-to-the-eyes pond and the eye-catching green maples, which will definitely amuse you as you walk on the steppingstones approaching the tea house.

We were lead to a large room, and tea wares were displayed there.  But, they didn’t prepare tea in that room.  Tea was prepared in another room, and a staff brought in confectionary and tea.

The staff told us to have the sweets after we enjoy the first serving of tea.  Did you know that you enjoy sweets first at the tea ceremony for matcha, but with gyokuro or sencha, you usually enjoy the tea first?  I think that it makes sense when you consider the thickness of the teas, and it is the best way to relish both tea and sweets.

The served gyokuro was absolutely my taste.  Its roundness was perfect and it smoothly wet my mouth.  Moreover, it had an exquisite balance in flavor.  In preparing gyokuro, brewing conditions have huge impact to the taste.  This tea was slightly lighter than the tea I usually prepare.  It reminds me that this way of brewing is also excellent.

More amount of water was definitely used when compared with the way I do it.  Fewer leaves might have been used, and the temperature must have been pretty low as mine.  I’m not sure for the brewing time.  I’ll have to try some combinations myself.  I’ll get into finding a good recipe at home for a while, haha.

It is good to have tea out.  It inspires me!

The second serving came in a small teapot

Gyokuro-no-sato (Japanese):  http://www.gyokuronosato.jp/

Memorial trip

I have had the same brand of car for twenty years.  This year, I’m thinking letting it go.  Before that, I wanted to go to a memorable trip with it.  We headed to Shizuoka prefecture where you can view Mt. Fuji!! 

  

One of the places where we stopped by is Gyokuoro-no-sato that has a small garden and a tea house.  Let me introduce some photos.

It is located in a country side surrounded with greens.

You can walk around the garden for free.

  

There is a tea house. 

 Only the people who pay for tea can get in.Of course, we had tea there.After having tea in a large room, you can look around the house.  This tea house also has a small tea room.  I got to see it. 

Preparation room

Small tea room (about 4 tatami mats)

hanging scroll and flower at tokonoma alcove

Elaborately designed ceiling

 

Nijiriguchi, crawl-in entrance

 

Position where the host prepares tea

  

I found a pretty unique thing there.Look at the sign.  Can you read Japanese?

It is gyokuro ice cream!!

I have seen matcha ice cream or green tea ice cream, but never gyokuoro’s.

 Its flavor … um … I didn’t find significant difference from regular green tea ice cream. But, it tastes really good, and it has actual tea on the top as sprinkles^^  

On the next entry, I’ll introduce the gyokoro we had in the tea house.

What is the advantage of hand-picking?

I think that one of the biggest advantages of hand-picking will be evenness of leaf form and it gives less damage to the leaves.  With a machine, some leaves might be cut in the middle, and big leaves might be included as well. 

I said “Really!?” when I leaned a new trivia which will be another advantage of hand picking.   Before I tell you about it, I would like to show you a picture.  Do you realize that there are different shapes of plants?

Some plants on the near side have an even surface, which you can usually find at common tea fields.  They are trimmed for the machine picking for the reason that I explained in the previous entry.  On the other hand, can you find some plants on the back which wildly grow their foliage?   The surface for hand-picking plants doesn’t have to be even.  So, they are grown wildly.

What is the advantage, then? 

What I learned is that the leaves from wildly grown plants have more amino-acid (umami) than ones from trimmed plants.  Isn’t it surprising?  Maybe because, wildly grown plants have less stress??  I didn’t have a chance to ask details.  But if it is the fact, it will be a very reasonable advantage for hand picking. 

I have to mention that all hand-picked tea is not always from wildly-grown plants.  You can hand-pick from trimmed plants.  But anyway, I was so delighted learning a trivia about hand picking.

wildly grown plants

Beautiful machine-picked tea

As it turned out, the machine-picked tea leaves are very beautiful!  Since you can collect the tea leaves such beautifully by a machine, I might not able to tell the difference in taste between the hand-picked and the machine-picked tea.  I wonder if there is much advantage on expensive hand picking.  What do you think?

By machine picking, you shear the surface of the plants in one stroke and collect the fresh buds and leaves.   I thought that it would contain some old stiff leaves and twigs, but I didn’t find any of them in the collected leaves as shown in the picture above.  I knew that you trim the surface in the fall and spring to make it even and to prevent mixing the old leaves and twigs when harvesting.  But I didn’t know that you can adjust the height of the shearing surface with such great accuracy.  That makes a good quality of harvest possible. 

Now, let’s go back to my question in the beginning.  What is the advantage of hand-picked tea?  I’ll talk about it on the next post.

Does sifted matcha really have more volume?

One of my readers asked me: “If the matcha you use is 1.2 grams when sifted or non-sifted, shouldn't the volume be the same?”  I learned from my experiences that the sifted matcha has more volume.  It always looks more when sifted, but I have never actually measured its weight and volume.  With his question, I got into thinking: “Does sifted matcha really have more volume?”  My understanding could be caused from optical sense error, or it might have been just a wrong assumption.

It got me to actually measure it and make sure that my assumption is right.  I measured the same volume of the both sifted and non-sifted matcha with 15cc spoon.

I scaled them.

Here are the results;

Sifted matcha: 3.7g

Non-sifted matcha:  5.0g

I concluded that sifted tea is lighter in weight, which means it has more volume compared with non-sifted one in the same weight.  I think that air gets between the tea parcels by sifting, and tea gets fluffy.  I’m glad that it was not just an assumption or optical illusion, hahaha^^

It is brighter than I imagined

Tea plants shoot out buds and new leaves in spring.  You pick them and make the first tea of the year.  Now is the season!  

Some of you might have experienced tea picking, but I believe that not many people have had a chance to observe actual tea producing processes.  I attended a practical workshop of producing sencha.  I observed an actual tea processing line at an agricultural experiment station.  I would like to write about it in some of my entries.

The station has some tea fields and some processing lines. 　Tea plants for common teas like sencha are grown under the sun like in the picture on the top.  On the other hand, can you find a black covered thing in the following picture?   To make gyokuro and matcha, you cover the tea plants a little after the buds shoot out.  Then about 20 days later, they are ready to be picked.  In the latter half of the covering period, they'd be blocking about 97% of the light from getting to the plant.  By blocking the light, the leaves try to catch more light.  They get bigger and undulated to create more surface area.  They also gain chlorophyll, and get darker in color.  How smart plants are!  This makes the tea leaves with a lot of umami!

I was so excited to get a chance to get in the covers.  This was my first time!  I was curious about the world with only 3% of light.

My first impression was … Bright!   It was much brighter than I imagined.  I expected it to be pretty dark, but it actually wasn’t.  See, I could even take a picture.  I got to realize that sunlight is very powerful.  Hahaha,

Volume of sifted and non-sifted matcha

Do you usually sift your matcha?  If you ask me, well .. I would say yes and no.  I have always sifted matcha for guests or in class, but when it comes to tea for myself I sometimes sift it and sometimes don’t, haha (^^;;  But anyway, I recommend sifting it before preparing, and it makes tea more flavorful.  It’s for sure.

On the previous entry, the matcha I showed you were all sifted.  Sifted and non-sifted matcha are actually different in volume.  So, in case of people who don’t sift their matcha, I took some photos of non-sifted matcha.

Both 1.2 grams,   L: non-sifted,  R: sifted

As you can see, sifted matcha has more volume.  On a tea scoop, they look like as follows;

(The following photos might be a little confusing, because non-sifted tea looks finer and sifted one looks rougher.  However, they are actually as they are captioned)

Non-sifted (1.2g)

Sifted (1.2g)

It might not be so obvious in these photos, but shifted tea has more volume.  If you use non-sifted tea, please scoop a little less.  Enjoy your tea!

Matcha sifter is available for sale on our shop

Correct amount of matcha

What a broad instruction is!  That's what I thought so for the first time.  I have been taught that you use one and a half scoops of matcha for one serving.   However, it is a little ambiguous (^^;;

Books don't usually specify the amount of tea to be used.  But, the book I have talked about the other day, introduces the following;

Thin tea: one-and-a-half scoops, or 1.9 grams

Thick tea: three heaping scoops, or 3.75 grams

(Refer a note at the bottom for thin and thick tea)

In either case, one scoop is regarded as around 1.25g.  But now, can you imagine how much volume 1g of matcha actually has? 

I can’t.  I guess many people couldn’t.

I see … now I understand that there won’t be much meaning in instructing with a particular amount of grams.  Since I  now aware of the specific grams, I want to know how much it looks like on a tea scoop.  You want to see it as well, don’t you?

It was pretty difficult to scoop exactly 1.2g.  (My scale can only measure up to one decimal point)

0.9g

1.1g

1.0g

1.9g

Finaly, 1.2g!

1.2g

So, one-and-a-half scoop will be something like this. (1.2+0.6)

1.2g

0.6g

However, this is not an absolute amount of tea.  It can only serve as a simple guide.  I have seen different number in terms of grams on different paper.  If I try scooping this much, my current master will tell me that it’s already excessive.  It depends on schools, and moreover it should be adjusted for each of your guests.  Is 1.2g enough for your tea?  Perhaps, less or more?

NOTE:

In The Way of Tea, there are two different ways of preparing matcha.  They are thin tea and thick tea.  The matcha I have been referring in my blog was thin tea.  Thick tea uses the double amount of matcha and it is regarded more formal in the ceremonies.

Tea in times of war

This is called the tabidans that is used as a portable utensil box.  Tabi means trip, and tansu (dansu) means drawers or a cabinet.  You can use it not only in the tea room, but also for nodate, outdoor tea ceremonies.

It has a lock on the hatch.

There are a few different ways of using this box.  This week, I practiced one of them, called “shibadate”.   The mid shelf is removable, and you can place it on the floor or ground using it as a tray for the tea container and tea whisk.

It is said that Rikyu invented this box when he accompanied Hideyoshi Toyotomi for the siege of Odawara (16^th century).  I guess that Hideyoshi wanted a brief escape or momentary peace at the field of battle.  If so, tea must be a very powerful tool for relaxation.

The utensils are not attached to the box.  I wonder how to carry it around when traveling, haha(^^;;  

Perfect place for casual matcha

Do you have any idea where you can have matcha casually in Japan, besides at home? 

What I can think of are some Japanese cafés and temples.  They usually serve matcha with a confectionary at around 500-900yen.   I like enjoying matcha while taking a look at the beautiful surroundings of the temples in Kyoto.  Finding those places are a little difficult than finding a coffee shop.  (It might not be true in Kyoto, though.)

This might sound like a much rarer occasion, but there is actually another place where I enjoy casual matcha. 

It’s a ceramic festival in my town!  Last weekend, I went to the festival, and found two booths that served matcha.  Of course, I tried both … as expected of me (^0^)  

What I enjoyed most were the tea wares.  They served tea with various ceramics made by the different artists of this area.

Tea bowls by up-and-coming potters used at the first place we stopped by

This place was operated by high school students.

Sweets were from my faovrite shop, Azumaken^^

This is the second place.

And the sweets

The tea bowl was superb. 

Moreover, they were reasonable.  They cost 400yen for the first place and 300yen for the second place.