Fukamushi-Sencha Maki

Is there such a thing as Steepster withdrawal? If so, I think I’ve just experienced it. I was on travel for work for only a couple days, but I really missed Steepster! And I also missed black tea! I stayed with a coworker and she gave me green tea. Now, I am not yet a fan of green tea…I have hopes though, that someday I will appreciate it in all forms. ;) Anyway, not only did I have Steepster withdrawal, but I didn’t have black tea with breakfast! The shock! The horror! Lol! Black tea withdrawal!

So, I made up for it with 3 cups of black tea today;) AND I picked up some blueberry cream cheese danish black tea (via my smartphone) while I was staying over. Hey! It sells out quickly!

Anyway, this tea…it wasn’t bad. Not too grassy. More like squash, I think. I can handle squash. Interesting to try, and maybe if I ever get myself to venture into non-toasty, more grassy green tea land, I’ll get some.

I’ve had this for a few months so a review was long overdue. Tonight I felt like having a green tea, so why not this and review it at the same time?

I always thought most fukamushi’s look like green tea fannings used for tea bags. This one looks like a combination of lots of dust and broken pieces with some medium sized needles. This tea also has a dull dark green color with a faint green-grassy smell, not very aromatic though.

I brewed this tea in a Japanese kyusu following Den’s suggested brewing guidelines of 160F water/1 min steep time for the first infusion and 180F/15 sec for the second.

This gave me a cloudy dark yellow-green cup with a mellow grassy aroma. This is a very rich and full bodied tea, strong in umami, yet delicate in taste. It is slightly sweet, grassy, and with a slight astringent finish. My second cup was brewed with hotter water and a shorter brew time (180F/15 sec). This gave me a much darker, almost opaque, dark green cup with aroma mostly unchanged. It was stronger flavored with a more pronounced astringent finish.

The wet leaf was nothing special, other than the pale green color of the leaves compared to regular sencha.

Overall, I do enjoy the stronger full-bodied cup this tea offers compared to regular sencha, but I’m not always in the mood for it. The first infusion was definitely my favorite, as the second one was too strong for my own taste. I must say that it is a bit of a pain to clean my kyusu’s built in strainer, as this tea is made of very small pieces and they get easily stuck in between the small holes (it is a very fine strainer and this only happens with this type of tea). I sometimes feel I should just get a separate teapot for this specific tea.

Den’s is killing it with their sencha selection. This is yet another excellent tea from the sampler.

It’s a grassy-sweet-umami bomb in my mouth. And I mean that in the best possible way. Light-medium body with bright green color and fresh taste. It has pretty much everything I seek in deep steamed sencha except it doesn’t resteep well.

I spent a couple of months alternating this and the Sencha Select from the Cultured cup as my daily first of the morning brew. It was very nice, but I prefer the brighter taste of the less-steamed tea to the stronger umami of this one. So with my next order, I went back to Dens regular senchas, and have been happier with them.

Sweet with almost no astringency. Not a thin tasting tea at all. Very yummy.