Gyokuro

I’m on my third pot of this. It is a good green tea. As others have noted, I believe a 165 to 170 brew temp is optimal for this tea. It seems to bring on a bit of bitterness at 180. The appearance is a bright green. The taste is very fresh. It’s more subtle, as most greens are, but there is still a lot of flavor.

Gotta love this tea. Very grassy, and quite smooth going down. I also love how the leaves feel.

Delicious! I drank the little bit I had left in celebration of me passing my board exams!

Vibrant transparent green in cup. Very much in the cooked greens/seaweed vein. Brothy, savory, buttery, smooth. Nice but not in my wheelhouse.

Pleasant, mild. A little too sweet for my preference, actually, but I still enjoyed it.

If in doubt, give this gyokuro a try. It seems to be lightly steamed (asamushi) and not deep steamed (fukamushi). At least not as deeply steamed as I would like it to be. This is of course a personal preference. Many do enjoy a lighter steamed gyokuro as it offers more of a “true tea taste”. Also, I disagree with the recommended brewing parameters given on the website. I’d much rather brew at 140F and not 165F so as to decrease the bitterness and up that umami charm.

Overall, I’ve had better. But if you’re starting out I’d give this sample a try to make yourself a baseline of sorts. What I enjoyed more than the tea was Adagio’s website and transparency via their ROOT program.

My video review can be found here and offers some more insight into this tea:

https://worldteapodcast.com/videos/2017/5/16/world-tea-podcast-review-adagios-gyokuro-genmaicha-pouchong

Also in the stack of samplers I had at work and forgot about, though this only had one teaspoon left.

I sort of ruined it because I didn’t completely wash out my mug, so there’s slight lingering scent of mocha nut mate, too. That’s what I get for being lazy.

But anyway, I’ve always liked sencha, which I guess gyokuro is part of, or at least similar to. Part of the process of logging all these is to learn the differences myself, heh. I’ll need to get some other sencha to try, as well as more gyokuro.

As for this specific cup, it’s lightly grassy and “green”. There’s a hint of metallic taste to me, too. I’ve had a lot of Japanese greens, but since at the time I really didn’t know any more than “this is tea” I have a hard time comparing it other than— it certainly tastes like a Japanese green in a general sense. Which is nice, reminds me of being there.

I’m honestly not sure what to think of this one. It’s not exceptional to me, just fine. It’d probably be good with food.

It’s definitely green, and it tastes very vegetal. It’s not all that bitter and not all that sweet: more mellow and in-between. The aftertaste doesn’t quite make it to sweet. Other than that it’s not impressive. The reviews on Adagio’s site claim that other companies have better gyokuros, so I might want to try those.

When I first tried it I was unsure of it. It was definitely different from anything I had tasted before and from what I was expecting. But after perfecting the steeping process itis now my new favorite tea. I am somewhat partial to Japanese greens anyway, but this one wins so far. I love the sweetness and what I am assuming is the umani, although my taste buds aren’t refined enough to know for sure. They work perfectly together. I also love the color of this tea. This tea pleases all senses.

It has a noticeably strong green tea flavor, not my favorite green tea but pretty good.