Maeda-en

SENCHA FAIL.

Well, that was supremely unfun. I woke up pretty excited today, ready to hit up some sencha, serious-style.

I was all prepared to do 1 tsp/8 oz., but then I went onto Steepster’s description of this tea, and read 1 tbsp/9-12 oz. And that’s where everything fell apart.

Let’s start with the leaves first. Can I just wax poetic on how absolutely gorgeous these leaves are? Crumbly and a beautiful, beautiful deep green. Gorgeous! They feel so wonderfully silky and shiny. They’re truly a thing of beauty. The smell is somewhat similar to cut grass with a slight butter note. I was really excited to try this.

So I measured out 1 tbsp, dumped in 9 1/2 oz. of water, and waited a minute for this to steep. The water immediately became this murky, swampy concoction, not unlike Ryokucha from Samovar. And the pour took forever, because the leaves were so thick and mush-like.

My first warning sign was the color of the tea. I’ve read that sencha is a pretty yellow-lime-green color. Mine was deep, dark olive. Darker than Ryokucha. I seriously couldn’t even see the bottom. The smell coming off of it was promising, though! Leafy and buttery with notes of grass and brine. So I hesitantly took my first sip…

…and nearly spat it out in the sink. Oh my. That had to be the most bitter thing I’ve ever tasted in my LIFE. And ridiculously strong, too. It tasted like wheatgrass x1000. Like I just swallowed a mouthful of the most bitter, ridiculous grass I’d ever tasted. Seriously, that bad.

Panicking a bit, I began to dump leftover warm kettle water into my cup, hoping it’d dilute.

It helped, but barely. The flavors were so strong and dominant and disgusting that I needed to dump it all in the sink.

In a bit of a panic, I contacted takgoti (who sent me this probably wonderful tea, had I brewed it correctly!), who gave me some reassurance and suggested that I modify stuff a bit.

So I dumped out most of the leaf, until I was left with something closer to a teaspoon, used 8 oz. of water, and steeped it again. This cup smelled around the same as the first, and the taste…

Well, it’s still a bit bitter than what it’s supposed to taste like (the ratio is probably not perfect), but I’m getting a LOT more flavor that I’m supposed to. Now there’s more of a grassy-green taste, chased by a bit of brine, and followed by some assertive bitterness. Following that bitterness is a wonderful sweetness that envelops my mouth. It’s not a nectar sweet. It is a sweet that I can only say would probably be the way that grass would taste if it was edible.

I know that I royally messed this one up. And it makes me really sad, because I know that sencha is very popular, and I trust that takgoti has given me a most excellent sample.

I don’t really know if sencha will ever be one of my favorites. Right now, I can’t really get the memory of the intense bitterness out of my memory, and it’s sort of coloring the much better cup I’m having right now.

Not giving this one a rating for now! Hopefully when I steep it correctly I’ll have a much better time!

I’m a fan.

I think I’m just a fan of kukicha in general, actually. I mean, first of all, there’s the word. Kukicha. Kuki. Cha. It’s fun to say. Although I could very well be saying it wrong. Auggy or someone else Japanese-familiar, where do you put the emphasis? Anyway, it makes me think of cute Japanese things, like Hamtaro. Kukicha could totally be a Hamtaro character.

I’m sorry, halfway through that sentence I shook my head and had to ask, “Am I really talking about Hamtaro?” because I drank some of this before class tonight because I had a test and I was really tired from staying up later than I should have to finish a program for another class so I downed some black tea before class at 6 and I was sipping on this well into 9 PM and that is the most hellacious run-on sentence I’ve ever created. Well, not most. [If you’ll believe that.] Anyway, moral of story is that it’s nearly 2 AM and I’m a wee bit WHEE right now because this also contains matcha.

The tea. There’s something that I find really sating about its overall taste. This one reads to me as very sweet, high, and grassy. I’ll enjoy it until I finish the bag for sure, but so far I like the extra buttery aspects I get from Samovar’s a bit more. There’s time, to experiment, however, so we’ll see what comes out of my little hamster tea friend!

I really wanted some of this last night but had to delay. But now, I am only limited by what I have in my pantry! Which, sadly, is just the last cup of leaves. I have really enjoyed having this one around. Sweet, grassy, thick with zero astringency no matter how pungent I make it. Really a delicious cup.
4.6g/8oz

Pungent and grassy. Probably could have gone lighter on the leaf or shorter on the steep time and it still would have been good (and maybe more universally appealing), but this is remarkably thick feeling and tasting without being bitter or even hinting at astringency so I’m pretty much in love.
4.4g/8oz

Bad day. Need good tea. Sweet, fresh and flavorful, this certainly qualifies. The extra leaf gives it a bit of pungency without adding any astringency. Mmm. Slight bump to rating because really? This is just delicious. I think this cup means that Maeda-en will be getting an order from me soon.

ETA: Second steep @ 15s. I’m getting a bit of roasty depth to it now. Really nice.

5.1g/8oz

Today has managed to get even worse. Sigh. I need happy tea. Hopefully this will qualify (I do love me some fukamushi). From the ever lovely (if school-work buried) takgoti. This plus hockey should hopefully turn my day around (I’ve joked about needing to follow an Eastern team so I’m not up til midnight watching Ducks’ games… well, they traded my favoritest player ever to Toronto so guess who I’m watching – Go Leafs!).

I was feeling really grumpy so I didn’t feel up to having this clog my kyusu. I took the lazy man’s route and used a mesh ball. Yes, I am having that kind of day. I did preheat my cup though, so that’s gotta count for something, right? I poured the water over the little mesh ball and let it sit for about 50 seconds.

The resulting cup is happy tea. Freshly crisp, a little rich almost creamy (hints of the crazy milky creamy from Samovar’s Ryokucha that I’m addicted to), sweet with no astringency, gentle and thick. A delightful weight to it, this gives me a nice refreshing but also comforting feeling. I will say that, as much as I love fukamushi senchas, I can’t tell a big difference between them. So I can’t say this is the best sencha I’ve ever had but I can say that I would have no problems having a big ole bag of this in my pantry. I might need to make it happen.

Yes, this tea and hockey are making my day better.

3g/6oz

This is my daily sencha. I quite enjoy it, as it’s nice and sweet when brewed properly. I’m always suprised by how much the leaves expand in the pot.

I have sadly avoided matcha since my 1st experience with it was not so good but the desire to try it again has always been in the back of my mind. So, I picked this up during my last visit to the wonderful International Food Market (where the 1st no name matcha came from) and finally got around to preparing a bowl.

I am to lazy to go find what the real names of all the matcha pieces are, but I have the scoop spoon, the whisk and a bowl so of course I used them. The water was 180 degrees,1.5 scoops of the matcha powder was added and then I whisked till I could stand the suspense no longer.

This stuff was SO much better than the crap I had the 1st time. My bowl was sweet and slightly grassy, not too strong but obviously green tasting. I liked it and hope to start trying different types of matcha. Of course that means spending more money. Can the invisible tea gods please give us all an unlimited supply of tea funds?

I steeped the tea and sniffed it only to recoil with an “Oh no! It’s kasha tea!” Kasha is a strong-smelling Eastern-European grain dish that my family makes. My father loves eating kasha mixed with eggs and fried onions and served with a side of pickled herring. (The kasha smells stronger than the onions or the herring.) My husband loves eating plain kasha. (I consider kasha to be a man-dish. One of those strong tasting things that only a man could like.) A few times a year I make kasha for my beloved and then pray for the smell to leave the kitchen soon. Once I made a cinnamon bread at the same time in the hopes that the cinnamon would defeat the kasha. No dice. Nothing defeats kasha. Nothing.

So, here I am sipping the kasha tea, I mean soba-cha. I’m surprised. It tastes good. The tea is roasty and sweet like cereal grains and it makes me feel good to drink it. But it still smells like kasha. I don’t know if I can get over that part. I’m going to share the rest of this tea with my kasha-loving beloved when I get home. Won’t he be surprised and pleased!

Much thanks to takgoti for sharing the experience!

Update: I’ve given my beloved a cup of Soba-Cha and he sniffed it and said, “It smells like kasha” then happily began sipping. He says it is wonderful and a very soothing tea. So I’m upping the rating to acknowledge his liking of the tea.

I forgot to add this to my cupboard, but I just finished off the sample, so…mission accomplished?

This review is going to be totally lame, because it’s going to sound very similar to my soba-cha and mugi-cha tea logs. So, you know what? I’m just gonna cut out the middle-man:

soba-cha
- most of the sweetness
+ dark taste from mugi-cha
+ kinda…spicy? [peppery, maybe]
+ maybe a little nuttier
= dokudami.

I like it, but not as much as soba-cha or mugi-cha. So I guess it’s a good thing that my sample’s gone and I didn’t order it. Anyhow, it was interesting. And I’m writing this as I’m trying to listen to a podcast, which isn’t going over too well because I keep typing what they’re saying so I’m just gonna stop right now because if I keep going this isn’t going to make more sense.

Now I want soba-cha. Damn it.

I drank this whilst on Steepster hiatus, and my notes on it are very brief, so I’m not going to have too much to say here. [Pause for shock and awe. Done now?]

It reminded me of sobacha in that it had that kind of puffed wheat taste to it [no surprise here, as it’s barley tea], but it was darker. Darker, almost hoppy [again, no surprise here, as it’s barley tea] and sweeter. A brown sugar kind of sweet.

I know that they serve barley tea at the Korean BBQ place my friends and I like to frequent, but the one they have there is almost more reminiscent of sobacha to me than this. This is a little…earthier. Maybe smokier is a better word? Anyway, I’d be willing to bet that what they have there has seen a fair amount of steepage before it gets to us, so that might account for the discrepancy in flavor. This has more depth to it, which I like.

I’ll probably be adding this to the list of things I want to reorder from maeda-en. The samples for this and sobacha weren’t teeny, but they’re also getting worked through rather quickly. They both make for such awesome post-eating-a-small-plantation-full-of-food ordeals that I want to make sure I have some on hand. Not to mention, I find them pretty awesome otherwise.

Nicely toasted, more robust than their usual green tea. Only thing is, if I’m drinking houji-cha, I find myself really wanting genmai-cha. That’s probably just me, though.

A nice warm cup of matcha milk <3~ http://instagr.am/p/BgGIb/

Matcha with genmaicha to help me through the afternoon studying. http://instagr.am/p/BMZQM/

My morning thermos is packed today of mostly matcha and a bit of genmaicha to give it a nutty kick. (I usually do my matcha/genmaicha combo in reserve with much more genmaicha than matcha).

Last night, I was going to clean the tin that I was keeping this in and I discovered that I had some left. I’d been craving it all week and I thought it was gone. I wasn’t too peeved, because I ordered some more and it should be in soon, but I was ecstatic when I discovered that I had enough left for a cup.

I think I only have one of maeda-en’s herbal teas left to try from the sampler I got through Steepster Select, but so far this one is definitely my favorite. If teas had emotions, this one would be happy. It’s light and bubbly [as in friendly – the tea itself is not bubbly], but at the same time has an undertone of warmth to it. It’s like biting into a bright little amber gem. Not that that makes any sense.

To me, the flavor shouldn’t be tasty as it is – I think puffed wheat breakfast cereal with a sugar glaze and I think boring [but I like to do breakfast up big, so that may just be me]. There’s something about this that makes it crave-worthy, though. Even after I steeped this three times last night, I could still go for a cup. Or five.

I find it clear, sunny, refreshing, and comforting. In fact, I’m giving it a ratings bump. I really like it. Say hi, Soba-cha! [I really need to stop personifying my tea or I’m gonna start weirding myself out.]
flickr picture | http://bit.ly/82kHtE

After Auggy tried this one I decided I’d stop being lame and try it.

I don’t know why I was so intimidated with it. I think that it was because it looked so different from what I’ve gotten used to. I’ve had mugi-cha before in Korean BBQ restaurants and I’ve really enjoyed that, so it shouldn’t have seemed so foreign to me, but even I’m a little afraid to delve into how my brain works so I’m not going to dig any further.

Anyhow, there’s a nice picture of it that you can already see, but here’s a triptych of my little experience last night.

http://twitpic.com/r4s7f | http://twitpic.com/r4sfk | http://twitpic.com/r4sia

I’m going to second everything that Auggy said, which yeah, is lazy, but also saves me from being redundant.
http://steepster.com/teas/maeda-en/5594-soba-cha-buckwheat-tea

In a sentence: light, sweet-glazed puffed wheat cereal.

In a word: NOM.

I can easily see this being a flavor that I crave on certain days and would go down extremely well after large, heavy meals. Especially ones that involve marinated meat. Maybe that’s why they serve barley tea at Korean BBQ – because after consuming what must have been a pound of bul gogi it emerges as one of the only things I can drink without wanting to die.

I got sleepy before I think the tea did – I stopped at cup three and went to bed. I’ll have to start this earlier with what I’ve got left and see how many cups I can get through before it goes weak on me.

I’ll be ordering more of this one once I make my way through the rest of the maeda-en sampler I got. S’good.

This not-tea makes me want to sing. Something folksy. Like ‘Jimmy Cracks Corn’ or something. But not that because this taste like puffed wheat, not cracked corn. But I don’t know any songs about puffed wheat. Did the Sugar Crisp bear have a song? Because that minus the sugar is this tea so that’d work.