Demonstration video how to prepare gyokuro

Here's a new demonstration video on how to prepare Gyokuro, Seiho.



Seiho is available on our shop >> click here

I tried brewing gyokuro in different mixtures

Turning-point temperature that encourage extracting bitterness
The water temperature was the first aspect that I focused on for brewing our gyokuro, Seiho.   I tried brewing it in three different temperatures, 40,45 and 50℃　(104,113 and 122℉) water.
 40℃: No bitterness at all, pleasing sweetness only
 45℃: Similar to the 40℃ tea rather than 50
 50℃: The same sweet umami as the 40℃ tea but it also has a certain astringency.
If you brew cheap gyokuro in low temperature around 40℃, it will probably have an unpleasant soil-like taste and it tastes yucky. Seiho didn’t have such off-flavor. You can tell the high quality of Seiho from this test. I found some bitter taste in the 50℃ tea while there is none in the 40 and 45 tea. The 40 one is very nice but it could be too mild. You might realize that the 45 tea has a slight grassy note than the 40 one. It makes the flavor more profound and attractive. I love the flavor of 45. I learned that there is a turning point between 45 and 50℃ to encourage extraction of bitterness with Seiho.

Do you use 3g or 4g of leaves to brew gyokuro?
The next point that I considered was the amount of ingredients. I kind of narrowed it down to three combinations: 3g-tea/20ml-water, 4g/20ml and 3g/15ml (20ml=0.68oz, 15ml=0.51oz). If you prefer your tea light, 3g/20ml would be good. If you want to enjoy a richer flavor, I would say 4g/20ml or 3g/15ml. Actually, 4g/20ml and 3g/15ml are exactly the same proportions so it’s just a matter of amount. I came to the conclusion that I don’t need 20ml to relish this powerful extracts, which is almost like Soseki’s tea that I mentioned in the previous post. 

This is the recipe for Seiho
Through my dozens of brewing tests, the following is what I consider as the best recipe so far‏.
 Seiho: 3g
 Water: 15ml/0.51oz, 45℃/113℉
 Brewing time: 120sec
 - Second brewing: 15ml, 50℃, 30sec
 - Third brewing: 15ml, 60℃, 60sec (140℉)
You can fully appreciate Seiho this way. If you prefer mellow gyokuro, 40℃ can be a good alternative. 　You might not usually use a thermometer to prepare tea, but try it once to see which temperature is the best for you. 

Seiho is available on our shop >>> click here

See real value of my gyokuro

What makes it difficult to find good gyokuro?
The price range of Gyokuro in Japan is probably around 1,500yen up to 10,000yen for 100g. It is quite expensive kind of tea. I tried many average gyokuro around 4000yen, but it is difficult to find one that I really like. I don’t like the unpleasant woody flavor that I find in some gyokuro. It disturbs the nice sweet flavor of it and makes the entire taste rough. The wood like flavor was the reason why I keep looking for a better tasting tea‏.

Gyokuro for my shop
I have been looking for gyokuro that I can sell at my shop. What I care about was that the tea does not have the disturbing taste. Coincidently, when I visited a tea farmer for matcha, I tried their gyokuro as well. This is it! I loved their gyokuro that has rich umami but doesn’t have such woody taste. I decided to deal their gyokuro in our shop. I named it Seiho.

Evaluating my gyokuro 
I’m not saying my gyokuro, Seiho, is the best gyokuro ever but at the same time, I think that not every average gyokuro has this level of quality. By the way, how many times do you brew the same gyokuro leaves? I know the flavor of some gyokuro lasts even until the fifth brewing. Unfortunately, Seiho releases its extracts on its early few brewing. You can only enjoy its umami at its best up to three brewing process. Nevertheless, that’s where you will learn and appreciate the great reward of Seiho. The allure of Seiho is its smoothness. It rarely have off-flavors so you can enjoy the true flavor of gyokuro. You will find its umami pleasingly sweet like chestnuts. You will probably close your eyes to feel its aroma permeating your head. 

Seiho is available on our shop  >> click here
In the next entry, I'll share about how I find the best tasting recipe for Seiho.

Demonstration video how to prepare matcha

Here's a new demonstration video on how to prepare matcha shosen.



Shosen is available on our shop >> click here

Matcha is not delicious?!

A computer lab becomes a wonderful tea room.
The place where I went the other day was a local elementary school. I wore kimono and headed to their computer room. Why? The school has a tea ceremony every year. Their computer room becomes a nice tea room on that day. My tea teacher is the one who organizes the ceremony. A few students from our tea school helps the gathering. This year, I got a chance to be a part of it. We had several rounds of ceremony and I’m happy that I had chances to perform making tea in three sessions. In the ceremony, kids were looking at each other silently with their wistful eyes. One tried to sit properly when a bowl of tea was brought in front of one. It is the nicest computer room that I have ever been to. 

 Yucky matcha
After the ceremony, a boy was asked how he liked the tea. He said “It is yucky!”. Hahaha! I like that kids are so honest. It’s probably true that the taste of matcha was not for him. I have heard that “Kids don’t like bitter and sour taste. Humans instinctively feel bitter and sour flavors unpleasant, because those taste are often naturally found in toxic food. It’s an innate reaction for self-preservation. As you get older and the sense of taste gets matured, you can savor the bitter and sour taste.”  So, you need a little more time and experience to enjoy matcha, boy!

Locked tea bowls
Some potters donated their tea bowls to the elementary school. Our town is well known for ceramic production and we have many great potters. Some of the potteries are worth as much as a car. The donated items are stored in the locked shelf in the principal’s office always. It’s wasted. That is why they stared having a tea ceremony once a year and give an opportunity for kids to appreciate the treasures of the town. I think it is a wonderful approach and I hope some other schools try it, too. Even though, the kid didn’t like the taste of matcha, he seemed very excited and enjoyed the special event. Drinking yucky tea from a super expensive bowl will definitely be an unforgettable experience for him.

 

The matcha surpasses my usual one from a local shop.

Source for matcha
Where is a good place to buy matcha online? I often receive this question from my customers and blog readers. I’ve regretted to tell them that I don’t know any shop that I can recommend. I usually buy matcha at local shops so no need to buy it online. And also, some shops don’t have an international shipping service unfortunately, even though they have good tea. Today, I finally solved this dilemma. I’m pleased to inform that I started dealing matcha and gyokuro in my shop!! Yeeaah! Forgive me for advertising it here, haha. I have only two types of tea, but I’m really proud of them. Now, I can recommend my teas. 

You never know where you are going to meet your tea.
Once I was astonished by the flavor of matcha that I had in a tea ceremony. Intuitively I realized that I loved this matcha more than the one I usually get from a local shop. This tea has as much umami as my usual one, but its flavor is more natural. I could simply enjoy the sweet-umami note in the pleasing grassy flavor. I visited the tea farmer finally and got the deal to sell their matcha. 

Taste of matcha
I get a chance to try different matcha every time I attend tea ceremonies.‏ Their flavors differ. The flavor of some matcha are clear and refreshing with a green hint. Some have a mellow milky flavor created with luscious umami. Basically, two major flavors that matcha consists are spinach-like bitter taste and mellow sweet flavor of umami. Cheap matcha has a strong bitter taste and good one has abundant umami. The umami is a distinctive flavor of Japanese tea. It is appreciated in Japan but it doesn’t seem true for everybody. I’ve heard that some Westerners doesn’t like umami in green tea much and rather prefer a hint of fresh green.

Our matcha, Shosen
With my experience, shosen is one of the matcha with richest umami. I don’t recommend it to people who are not very keen on umami, but if you are the one who wants to try a significance of Japanese tea, you’ve got to try Shosen. It is matcha for umami.

Shosen is available on our shop >> click here

How to purify CHASEN tea whisk (Video)

In the tea ceremony, you purify the tea whisk with water before and after making the tea.  This video introduces the way of purifying the CHASEN tea whisk.  The manner varies depending on school traditions. 
This video includes English subtitle. If you don’t see it, check your setting on YouTube.

Gyokuro is not something to drink!?

Full cup of gyokuro
I often see pictures of full cup of gyokuro when browsing the internet. There is no “right” or “wrong” when it comes to preparing tea. It’s a personal preference and you can enjoy it whichever way you want. However, gyokuro is a premium green tea which has abundant umami, and there is a unique way of preparing it to bring out its maximum advantage.  

It’s not something to drink
Soseki Natsume (1867-1916), a novelist described about the tea exquisitely well. I can’t translate it well with my English, but he is saying something like as follows. “People recognize tea as a thing to drink but it is wrong. You put a few drips on your tongue. Pure thing dissipates all directions and there is hardly much liquid to go down to your throat. Just nice aroma pervades through your esophagus into the stomach.” This is exactly how I think of gyokuro. You only need a little amount of tea to relish its flavor.

I tried preparing gyokuro like sencha.
When I was looking for a good way of brewing gyokuro, I tried preparing it like how I prepare sencha (Tea: 2g, Water: 80ml/80℃, Time: 1min). The taste of gyokuro brewed with a lot of hot water is far different from the one prepared ideally. It is even different from sencha. The full cup of gyokuro has a gentle sweetness. It’s not bad but it doesn’t have a kick with bitter flavor that green tea is supposed to have. The flavor is not tangy enough and it’s just a weak liquid with potato like note. It is too mild for me. I’ll probably need to try different mixtures for the full-cup gyokuro.




Left: Gyokuro prepared properly, Right: Gyokuro prepared like sencha

 

Give it a try - the Soseki way of gyokuro
If you have never tried brewing gyokuro with a little amount of water, I want you to try it at least once. It’s not difficult. Use a small teapot and a cup and follow these:
- Tea: 3g
- Water: 20ml/50℃ (0.7oz/122℉）
- Brewing time: 2min
Experience what Soseki enjoyed. It’s not something to drink and it’s something to savor.

Past entry:  How to brew gyokuro

 

Special Matcha for My Dad

Japanese New Year
We believe that everything restarts from a New Year. I love that concept. We clean our house in the end of the year. We start a new year with clean house and refreshed mind. Somehow we appreciate new things and also first things of the year. We love to witness the first sunrise of the year, the first sale and even the first dream. We believe that the dream you have on the night of January 2nd will tell what the New Year is going to be for you. If you dream about Mt. Fuji, your new year will be great one.

Spending time with family
In Japan, family usually gets together at New Year, like the westerners celebrate Christmas. I visit my parents’ house and every year, we have matcha and sweets on the New Year day. This year, I nicely wore my kimono and served tea ceremonially.

Sensitive stomach of my father
My dad can’t drink strong tea or coffee. His stomach is easily upset. Sometimes, he adds water to even sencha to dilute it. When everybody enjoy matcha or coffee, he has sencha or black tea.

New way of enjoying matcha
My laziness found out a new usage of matcha. Once I wanted to drink sencha but I didn’t want to prepare it in the proper way. I grudged the time and the trouble washing the teapot. So, I put one scoop of matcha and plenty of hot water in a mug and stirred with a spoon. It was as easy as making instant coffee. I didn’t even use a tea whisk. The matcha didn’t mix well but the taste was not bad at all. It tastes light like sencha. I’m clever to be lazy, hehe.

What you think best is not always necessary
At the new years’ tea ceremony at home, I served the senchatic matcha for my father. He drank up a whole bowl of tea that I served. I’m really glad that whole family spent time in a same room and enjoyed the same tea. His tea was very weak and different from how matcha supposed to taste, but he seemed quite enjoying it. I learned that it is not important what you think the best or what the common practice is. What’s important is the best for your guest.

The movie of Japanese aesthetic

This is my first time to go to theater on the premiere day of a film. I saw “Ask This of Rikyu” which I was looking forward to. I can’t judge if this was a good movie because I have read the original book and I have a favorable perspective of chanoyu (The Way of Tea). I generally think that it’s unreasonable to put the whole story from a book in just a few hours of film, the story often becomes shallow. I kind of find this file the same. However, what I was looking forward to seeing in this movie was Rikyu’s carriage in the ceremony and how they visually express the beauty on actual images. It’s worth watching for tea enthusiasts and Japanese culture lovers.

https://www.facebook.com/rikyu.movie

 

Nowadays, the manners in the tea ceremony are slightly different among tea schools even though the primary concept and procedure are the same. One of my biggest interests on this movie is to see how Rikyu’s ceremony and performance were like. I was satisfied with how the producers came up to show Rikyu’s behavior. It was very acceptable and natural. It gets me to imagine as if Rikyu performed so. The manners are a mixture of traditions of the three Sen-family tea schools that now exist, Omotesenke, Urasenke and Mushakojisenke. It was interesting to guess which manner is from which school tradition.  

When an actor tries to act some kind of profession, he might not look realistic enough to the people who are actually doing it. Even though ordinary people don’t notice them, the practitioner can find some awkwardness in his act. Don’t you think it happens sometimes? However, I as a tea trainee didn’t find such turnoff with Mr. Ebizo Ichikawa as Rikyu or rather his movements were even beautiful. I actually loved how he opened the lid of his tea container. I have already tried his way in the tea lesson last night, hahaha… There are some other movements that I want to copy. 

https://www.facebook.com/rikyu.movie

Rikyu’s behavior was surely beautiful. However, the beauty you can find in this film is not only that. I was fascinated with the artistic images. They are not spectacular or gorgeous. They are simple which you need to feel in your mind. When you discover it, you will hear “wow” from the innermost part of your heart. Those beauties were nothing special. You can find them in your surrounding nature. You might overlook them usually. They just cut them out and presented nicely. It maybe the essential of chanoyu, The Way of Tea, to enjoy discovering beauty in natural things. I hope this movie is shown overseas to introduce Japanese sense of beauty.

Rikyu was not an easy person!?

I feel that Rikyu is now something of a fad. I found a magazine featuring Rikyu at a bookstore the other day but actually there were three of them. Of course, I bought all three, hahaha. We don’t know the true personality of Rikyu, but it’s interesting to read different opinions. I think that the occasion of the boom stems from the film coming out on Dec. 7, “Ask This of Rikyu”. I welcome this boom and hope that Chanoyu (The Way of Tea) gets more popular! 

 

Rikyu is often introduced as an innovator. He contributed to the evolution of Chanoyu from luxurious to Wabi-Sabi style. For instance, he used a fish basket as a vase as if he is asking you “Isn’t this cool?” How modern he is! A tea master, Soshin Kimura illustrates Rikyu’s novelty like “At a wedding ceremony when everybody is wearing the morning dress, one came wearing a sophisticated washed-out linen shirt and jeans. He captured everybody at a blow.” I have no objection that Rikyu brought a new concept and created new values.

Rikyu is also known as a person with a keen aesthetic sense. Mr. Kenichi Yamamoto, the author of Ask This of Rikyu uniquely infers that Rikyu would not be an easy person to get along with. Rikyu might have sought beauty in every moment even in everyday living. I agree that Rikyu would be very particular about his aesthetics, but I’m not sure if he was stubborn; nobody knows. But then again, it’s very interesting to imagine that he was so.

When I read that Rikyu had an obsession with beauty even in daily life, a story of a grate figure came up in my mind. It’s Steve Jobs at a hospital refusing to wear an oxygen mask because he didn’t like its design. He asked them to bring five different options for the mask and he would pick a design he liked. I imagine that Rikyu would be a person like Mr. Jobs. Not only the obsession with design, they were both into Zen and also they were innovative. I think they are similar. What do you think? Rikyu and Mr. Jobs might have been stubborn but I regard them as people who had an insight into the nature of things and produced new values to the world.

How accurate is a teaspoon to measure matcha?

I encountered another surprise regarding preparing tea. My interest varies as well as my favorite tea. Lately, I drink matcha almost every day. Every time I prepare matcha, I scale the weight of tea that I scoop, because I want to be good at measuring matcha accurately with the bamboo tea scoop. After trying this habit for a while, I was kind of getting a good sense to tell the weight of the matcha visually by looking at the heap on my tea scoop. 

However all of a sudden, I could not scoop a desired amount. After a while, I earned the right sense back. It happened a few times. This kind of trouble arouses my curiosity with surprise. I realized that the reason of the miss-measuring is not me losing accuracy, but the volume and weight of tea are actually changing. The miss-measuring often happened after loading new matcha into my tea caddy.

The causes of different density of tea are as follows;
These are my mere guesses.

1. Movement
Once I’ve measured freshly sifted tea directly from the sifter can. Another time, I measured the tea after transferring into the tea container from the sifter. The tea was shaken and compacted when transferred. Also, the tea stored in the container for a while must have gotten moved during the storage. The vibration caused by those movements might have made them more compact.  

2. Stored old tea
Even though you sift matcha, the fluffiness of old tea is not the same as brand new one. Once I sifted old tea with lumps, and it became fine tea but I realized that the particles were not still as fine as brand new tea.

3. Moisture
Once I sifted matcha on a rainy day and I have also done it on a fine day. Maybe tea gets heavier when it has absorbed moisture.

Even with sifted matcha, the volume will vary from time to time. Nobody may not be able to measure the tea accurately with the bamboo scoop. There might not be a necessity to be so accurate, but I still want to try, hahaha.

Now, I got curious about the topic that I wrote on the previous post. I have to know what range does the weight of matcha has if measured with the 5 ml spoon. I actually measured it again.

The range is between 1.0g and 1.4g.

You might not find a big difference in taste between 1.2 tea and 1.0 tea, or between 1.2tea and 1.4tea. However, there will be a certain difference between 1.0 and 1.4. I just want you to be aware that there is a range, but I still think that the 5ml spoon is a useful item to measure matcha for beginners.