Apple Sencha

Refreshing, subtle, and tasty! A lovely sweet apple taste, but I think I’ll try this at a lower temperature than suggested next time to see if I can get the sencha to come out to play a little more. It is very warming and calming. More fitting for fall/winter, but it doesn’t quite live up to the pineapple sencha. I want to live in my bag of pineapple sencha.

The tea smells like a particularly sweet (but not cloying) apple cider. The taste is also more apple cider than apple. I actually find the taste to be very cloying (unlike the smell).

When preparing the tea I found it very easy to make it over-steeped. It got bitter very fast. So I use a much shorter steep time. This creates a blander tea but that’s better than an over-steeped tea.

Over all I can’t say I can recommend this tea. Neither the smell nor taste were terribly compelling.

Thanks to The Cookie Lady for this sample tea. I liked the pineapple sencha from Den’s Tea and figured this might be good also.

I followed the instructions on the packet: 30 seconds of steeping, 1 tsp. of tea in 4 oz. of water, luckily I do have a little Japanese teapot that is around 4 oz.

I found that this yielded a very light cup of tea, vegetal and creamy with just a bit of green apple flavor. I was hoping for more apple flavor in this one. My second steep was around 30 seconds and now I am getting lots more green tea flavor but almost no apple flavor. I think this is a fairly subtle brew but I think it would be amazing as a cold brew in the summer time! I’d like to try brewing the remainder of my sample at some slightly different parameters before giving this a number rating.

… thanks again, Cookie Lady!

So…I think I brewed this too long (somewhere around 2 1/2 to 3 minutes) and was left with a slightly bitter tea…or maybe sencha just IS bitter? I don’t know because I think this is the first sencha I’ve tried. My fault. BUT!! The apple flavor still exceeded my expectations! While this smells very jolly rancher-ish in the bag, the aftertaste is that of having just swallowed a bite of a very juicy Granny Smith apple. Lovely! I was warned by Jennkay, who was kind enough to send this (and the grape sencha from Den’s, as well) off to me, that I may not end up being incredibly fond of this. As a result, my expectations were quite low…which maybe worked to my benefit here? I don’t know. What I do know is that this grew on me. I’ll definitely be drinking the rest and probably will try ordering some of their other flavored senchas, especially since I keep hearing about how good their pineapple sencha is.

This is the last of the flavored senchas that KiwiDelight sent me in our swap. This has the same sencha leaves – large and flat and yellow/green in color. There are a couple of small pieces of dried apple mixed in as well. Dry scent is crisp, fresh apple. I steeped about a teaspoon for 1 minute at 175 degrees. I think I could’ve steeped it longer.

This one is a bit too mild for me. I don’t taste much vegetal here, just a touch of apple flavor and some sweetness. The texture is very creamy, almost like a milk oolong. It kind of tastes like a really weak apple milkshake? Not for me. :P

Teeny Tiny TTB

This is a tasty green tea, not too vegetal, slightly buttery, even. I’m getting a faint bit of apple (which became more pronounced when I added a little bit of sweetener). This is good, but I definitely enjoyed the green tea I had yesterday more. I certainly wouldn’t turn down another cup, but I’m not sure it’s special enough to stock.

This tea comes to be courtesy of Stephanie. I actually had very high hopes for this tea because I really enjoyed the grape sencha. Unfortunately, it did not live up to my expectations. It started off hopeful with a very candy-like apple scented dry leaf. It actually really reminded me of the smell of apple Jolly Ranchers. After steeping, though, it also started smelling a bit waxy like crayons, which was confusing. The taste of the tea had that nice candy apple flavor, but followed up with a waxy flavor and a greasy feeling as well. I just couldn’t get over that last part. I will probably give this tea another shot as a cold brew, but it was just not what I was expecting and hoping for.

Well, although this is better than the Grape Sencha, I still would have preferred it if I had just ordered 2oz of Sakura sencha and 2oz of pineapple sencha, instead of the 4 flavored sencha tasting set.

It is interesting, this doesn’t taste like apple juice, or apple cider…it’s more like a natural apple candy of some kind. Even though I didn’t sweeten it, it reminds me of taffy or something! Not bad, I’ll enjoy all of these cold brewed this summer for sure. Glad I tried them but I know my order next spring will be different :)

liked this a lot but not as much as the pineapple sencha.