Wakamidori Sencha

.. When this bag is finished, I think I'll spring for a really
> good top grade sencha and see how that goes.

I snipped,
Hello again square peg,
I have recently (in the last few years) have come to love sencha and I
agree it can be tricky to brew. SOme very kind and knowledgeable
people told me about schincha, which is the first picking of the tiny
shaded leaves of the season.. SO this spring I splurged and bought
some from 2 Japanese tea companies. I did tinker with it and found
it to be a most decent and hardly not astringent as the later picked
sencha. Now I plan to get some every year if I can afford to. I picked
up the fukamushi at hibikian cause I wasn't sure what to get so I
bought several varieties of their spring early greens..
I really really liked that one alot. All these early Japanese greens
are very much well almost like the sea, But very nicely, fragrant and
green and like a nice green meadow freshly cut.
I found like you, lower temps and faster brewings seem to bring out
the flavors I like best.
Jenn

On Sat, 11 Oct 2008 09:43:14 -0700 (PDT), Jenn
<jefferysmom@m> wrote:

>. When this bag is finished, I think I'll spring for a really
>> good top grade sencha and see how that goes.
>
>I snipped,
>Hello again square peg,
>I have recently (in the last few years) have come to love sencha and I
>agree it can be tricky to brew. SOme very kind and knowledgeable
>people told me about schincha, which is the first picking of the tiny
>shaded leaves of the season.. SO this spring I splurged and bought
>some from 2 Japanese tea companies. I did tinker with it and found
>it to be a most decent and hardly not astringent as the later picked
>sencha. Now I plan to get some every year if I can afford to. I picked
>up the fukamushi at hibikian cause I wasn't sure what to get so I
>bought several varieties of their spring early greens..
>I really really liked that one alot. All these early Japanese greens
>are very much well almost like the sea, But very nicely, fragrant and
>green and like a nice green meadow freshly cut.
>I found like you, lower temps and faster brewings seem to bring out
>the flavors I like best.
>Jenn

So many varieties, so little time. ;-)

On 14 Sep 2008 16:46:50 -0400, Lewis Perin <perin@panix.com> wrote:

>DogMa <DogMa_I@worldnet.att.net> writes:
>
>> Square Peg wrote:
>> > I steeped it at 2.5 g/cup (180 ml) at 170 degrees for 2:00 minutes.
>>
>> You might try it rather cooler - say 140F. Some people are astonished
>> at the difference. To me, 170F will turn most Japanese greens into
>> stewed spinach: not just loss of many of the delicate and appealing
>> flavor elements, but the addition of unpleasant new ones.
>>
>> Once water that hot has been added, re-steeping cooler won't
>> help. Conversely, one can always increase temperature as the delicate
>> components are extracted through multiple steeps.
>
>Ah, right; thanks for mentioning this. Brewing the tea cooler will
>make it sweeter and less astringent. If there's still a bit of summer
>left wherever you are, you might try brewing the tea at room
>temperature for maybe ten minutes. The tea will have so little
>astringency its texture will be creamy.

What do you mean by "room temperature"?

I just tried a pot using water from the cold water tap, which was
about 65F. Thinking this might be a bit cooler than "room
temperature", and remembering comments about making "sun tea", which
is allowed to sit in the sun for hours, I let this pot brew for 30
minutes.

The result was quite interesting. It definitely had something of a
"creamy" texture, as you predicted, and absolutely no astringency. I
think there were some flavors that I don't recall from the pots I
brewed at 140F and certainly not at 170F.

But it seemed a bit on the strong side, for me. Did I brew it too
long? I have tried this tea several different ways. The best so far
was 15-30 seconds at 140F. This brew was not bad, but definitely not
as good as those.

Maybe I'll try it at something like 100F for 30-60 seconds. I'd like
to see if I can get that "creamy" texture with the mild sweetness I
got at 140F.