Organic Gyokuro Green Tea

I was very excited to try this after my new found appreciation for Japanese green tea…

When I opened my sample package to smell the leaves are so fresh it is like smelling a bunch of spinach. I brewed this up in my glass mug for about 2 minutes using cooled boiling water.

I have to say I am in heaven! This is a beautiful greenish gold color with slight “bubbles” in the brew. It has such a creamy mouthfeel, it is VERY buttery, slightly grassy and creamy. Truly delicious. Another tea I would rate at 500 if I could because it sort of blows the other teas straight out of the water. I only got a sample of this stuff, and YES it is expensive but I am getting more. It would be very expensive for an every day tea but nice to drink on the weekends or when you needed a pick me up. It is very energizing and refreshing. A++++

note: I got four steeps out of it before I gave up and put the leaves in a smoothie. they are so mild you can eat them with no problem.

Thanks to Teavivre I have a lot of new samples and a lovely little gaiwan to try out. I figured I would try it on something that I know first.

Wow! Bitter! Either I used way too much leaf or this was not a good first tea to try with this method. Or a little of both. I tried five steeps of this, each with a shorter and shorter steep time getting down to pouring out the steeps as soon as I got the little bowl covered. Still bitter, bitter, bitter.

Not the teas fault, just my inexperience.

On the other hand, the gaiwan was really easy to use. It is the perfect size for my hands and it wasn’t awkward at all to use. And it is amazingly fast to clean up. I didn’t even spill any water anywhere. As soon as I figure out the right tea to use and the right steeping times, this little thing might be my new best friend.

I’m going to try an oolong next as soon as I research a little bit about leaf amounts and steeping times. The bigger leaves should be easier to handle in the gaiwan than the small leaves in this green. (I thought the leaves were bigger, but no! They are small.)

Delicious, calming. Sweet and vegetal, best gyokuro I’ve ever tasted.

I tried brewing this that past couple of times according to ‘traditional’ methods (using more leaf per oz, 160-150deg water, 90sec) and it seemes to produce a more bitter cup than when I originally brewed it at 175 for 2 min with less leaf. It’s been a while since that first cup, so I am going to have to try again to see if it makes the difference. It’s still really good, even with the bitterness. I like it better than sencha for sure.

EDIT: I just re-steeped the leaves after a few hours. I used 150deg water like the first time (I meant to use hotter, but I let it cool too long). I let the leaves steep for 60 seconds (an arbitrary choice) and the final product was a lot less bitter than the first cup. This is probably the first time that a second steeping has turned out better than the first for me.

I think gyokuro is going to take a lot of experimentation to get it just right all the time. But I look forward to the task :)

This is a very nice gyokuro! It has a light-ish vegetal taste, not as bitter as spinach, but with less roundness than you might expect for the type of taste it is. It’s not thin, though, and has a reasonable amount of complexity.

The web page for this tea doesn’t contain information on the individual farm on which it was grown – just that it is in Kagoshima prefecture – so I don’t know if it was grown under straw or plastic for shade. Some people claim there’s a noticeable difference in taste depending on how gyokuro is shaded, but my experience is too limited to confirm or deny that. If I develop such a distinguishing ability, I might revisit this tea to see if I can guess how it was grown.

This tea appears to be a very high quality Gyokuro. Color is deep green, leaves are mostly full, flattened needles, there is some breakage, but that is no doubt due to the extremely fragile almost crystalline nature of the gyokuro needles, and not an actual knock on the quality of the tea itself. The color of the brew is spot on classic gyokuro, just a beautiful light green, almost highlighter green, its quite amazing.

Flavors on this are as follows:

Uni (sea urchin)
Rocky seaweed
Edamame/Snow peas
Sweet
Grain

Thick mouth feel with lingering subtle sweetness.

I found this tea to be quite enjoyable. It does tend to have a shellfish (or as many other describe, seaweed) flavor profile that is very prevalent in the first brew, but mellows out later. Personally I like it quite a bit and tend to handle these types of flavors like a boss, but I could see how it might not suite some folks. The likening to the taste of uni is quite remarkable, owing no doubt to the high theanine content – a mark of a high quality and properly grown gyokuro. There is almost no astringency at all, especially brewed at low temperatures.

Brew this one low low temperature, close to body temperature for 90-120 seconds and you will be amazed at how well it turns out. Good for about 3 steeps before it starts to lose the the magic.