12.31.04
Posted in Green Tea in General at 12:31 am by site admin
If you look around, you’ll find the price of gyokuro to be quite a bit more expensive that other types of green teas. What’s the deal with gyokuro? I thought it time to explain this a little more.
Gyokuro is considered by many to be the premier green tea. Surprisingly, it’s not too uncommon to come across a Japanese person who has never even tried it. It’s not something your average Joe drinks 3 times a day. The main reason gyokuro is more expensive than other green teas is because more labor is put into producing it. About 3 weeks before harvest, out come loads of bamboo poles and rice straw, and a crew to assemble them. The poles are set up in a canopy fashion that covers the entire field. Basically, what they do is make a “hut” over and around the green tea plants. The bamboo latice work is covered with rice straw to the point where the tea plants are under 90% shade. They’re grown in this fashion for three weeks, and then are harvested.
Why do they do this? When green tea grows in the sun, catechins from the root system are transported into the leaves, and theanine in the leaves return to the root system. When covered by shade, this process is interrupted. While both sun grown sencha and gyokuro have properties of each, gyokuro tends to have higher amino acid/theanine content, while sencha is higher in catechins. Those catechins are what give sencha that somewhat astringent taste, and because gyokuro has less of catechins, it gives what they call a “sweeter” taste. “Sweet” here is not in the sugary sense, but the less astringent sense. The keyword is “less”, as even gyokuro has some astringency to it.
Brewing gyokuro: Here’s where it gets tricky. Since it’s expensive and is considered the best of the green teas, people naturally want to try it. Often, a person who is used to brewing sencha green tea will brew gyokuro exactly the same way, and it won’t turn out good. Gyokuro must be brewed differently from sencha. It should be brewed at a lower temperature (around 130F), use more leaves (1-2 tablespoons), less water (about 5 ounces), and should be brewed for a longer time (2.5-3 minutes). Easier said than done. If you get your water down to 130F, add tea to the teapot, pour the hot water into the teapot - the water is no longer going to be 130F, it will most likely drop by 15 degrees. Pour that again into a cold teacup, and you’ve got a lukewarm cup of tea that won’t taste great. Therefore, it’s always best to pre-heat your tea ware first.
Probably the best way to do this is to start off with water that’s around 175F (water boils at 212F). Pour that into the cold teapot, and wait for about a minute. Pour that into a small teacup, wait for about a minute. Pour that water into another teacup, wait for about a minute. Add your leaves to the empty teapot. Pour hot water from teacup back into the teapot and brew for 2.5-3 minutes. Note that you will have a very high leaves to water ratio, this is correct. For second infusions, a wait time of just 30 seconds if satisfactory. Quite often, the second infusion will be greener than the first.
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12.18.04
Posted in Green Tea in General at 10:58 am by site admin
A customer asks…
“Dear Mr. Moore,
I was wondering if you are planning to sell kukicha or yabukita-cha in the future? I know they are not as popular as other ones, but I was just wondering, because I realized these are the ones that I do not see on your website. I lived in Japan for 5 years and I like to stock my kitchen with one of every kinds.
Also, a Connecticut tea company ***** has a type of Japanese tea called ‘Tencha’. Do you know anything about this mysterious/rare tea? If so, are they good? Thank you in advance”
Kukicha: is basically the stems that are left over after the rest of the leaves have been processed - Stem tea. It’s not considered to be high quality, but that said, it can be quite tasty. Another similar type is known as “kariganecha”. The difference between the two is that kukicha uses sencha stems and kariganecha uses gyokuro stems. We sell a blend of green tea , called “Otsuusan”, that consists of sencha and karigane stems (karigane sencha) that’s really delicious. Very green, with a tart taste.
Yabukita-cha: Yabukita is the most common cultivar of tea plant grown in Japan. So, many green teas from Japan would fall under the classification of “Yabukita-cha”. It really doesn’t refer to one specific green tea.
Tencha:. Well, there isn’t anything rare or mysterious about tencha. Tencha is simply the shade grown green tea leaves that are processed and used for matcha. They are basically the same leaves used for gyokuro, except that they are never taken to the rolling process. After steaming, the leaves for tencha are air dried in kind of big vertical wind tunnel. This dries the leaves and eventually helps remove the veins. It is kind of rare to see this on the market for brewing as it’s generally used for matcha production.
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12.14.04
Posted in Green Tea in General at 5:54 pm by site admin
Question of the day: “Hi, I love green tea and only buy it in “decaf” tea bag form. Do you offer decaf?”
We don’t offer caffeine free green tea. We do, however, offer a good solution for that. Before I get into what the solution is, I’d like to explain why we don’t carry decaf green tea.
Basically, green tea is picked and then process immediately to prevent oxidation of the leaves. The whole process of steaming, rolling, and drying takes about three hours start to finish. There really is no place in the process of processing where a decaffeination process would work and not ruin the tea. I know- you can buy decaf “green tea” in the grocery store, but I’ve never tried one that was good, or green. Decaf green tea is just about unheard of in Japan. We’ve not aware of any company here that even offers it.
The solution? Instead of purchasing supposed “decaf green tea”, your best bet is to find a really high quality green tea, brew it, dump it, and then re-brew. Nearly all of the caffeine in green tea is in the first infusion. As much of a shame as it seems to be to dump the first infusion (which has the most taste and best aroma), I have no doubt that the second infusion of a high quality green tea is better than the best “decaf green tea” in the grocery store.
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12.08.04
Posted in Green Tea in General, Brewing Green Tea at 2:36 am by site admin
A lot of these postings will come from questions I receive, so here’s one for you. The customer wanted to know what kind of water he should use to brew his green tea. Tap water, mineral water, etc. Basically, you want good water but that doesn’t necessarily mean absolutely pure, distilled water. In Japan, water was and sometimes still is heated in iron kettles known as “kama.” Some of the iron from the kettle makes it’s way into the water and it is said that it makes an excellent tasting green tea brew. If you look around, you will find quite a few tea connoisseurs out there who actually prefer to brew with mineral water (the uncarbonated kind, of course.) One can even use tap water, depending on where you live. In Phoenix, Arizona where I originate from, the water is so horrible one would never consider brewing green tea from the tap. Many people have a reverse osmosis unit as we did, and that is very good water for brewing green tea.
This leads me to something that most people never consider. Believe it or not, how you heat the water makes a difference in the taste of your green tea. If you boil your water in a microwave, it will release more oxygen from the water than if you boil in a kettle, and this tends to make the tea taste flat. I noticed when brewing with a kettle that the tea would get a real nice green aromatic foam on top, yet this never would occur with water heated in a microwave. Also, if you cool your water ( you know it can’t be too hot, right?!) using the traditional Japanese method of pouring the water back and forth between teacups, more oxygen is added to the water. So, although I resisted doing all of this for quite some time, there is logic to it. Something to consider.
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