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“I received my sampler from Obubu Tea and what a beautiful sampler it is. The packaging is artistically done, and all text is in Japanese, so if you may have to do a bit of detective work matching...” Read full tasting note
“This was part of my December Obubu CSA Club shipment, along with a sample of Gokou matcha (which smells fantastic). This is a lovely everyday green, the flavor is much sweeter than I was expecting...” Read full tasting note
“While I enjoyed this cup, the wet leaf smelled like pickled peppers. Now, I liked pickled things (be it peppers, kim chee, or cucumber), but that was a strange smell to get from tea. Stranger still...” Read full tasting note
“This is a nice, cheap, everyday tea. The flavor is really good for bancha, and the leaves are big and whole. I deviate from Obubu’s “standard” steeping method a little, I use 3 oz of boiling water...” Read full tasting note
Yanagi Bancha is light in body but rich in flavor. It has a slightly floral liquor with notes of caramel and birch. Made from more mature leaves, Yanagi Bancha remains one of the most common Japanese teas: very easy to drink and quite affordable.
Taste: Astringent
Body: Light
Texture: Sharp
Length: Short
Harvest: June
Tea Cultivar: Mixed
Origin: Wazuka
Cultivation: Unshaded
Processing: Steamed, Rolled, Dried
It started with a single cup of tea. As the legend goes, our president Akihiro Kita, or Akky-san, visited Wazuka, Kyoto one fateful day. At the time, Akky-san was still a college student in search for life's calling. After trying the region's famous Ujicha (literally meaning tea from the Uji district), he immediately fell in love and his passion for green tea was born. He had finally found what he was looking for in that one simple cup of tea. After fifteen years of learning to master the art of growing tea from tea farmers in Wazuka, Kyoto Obubu Tea Farms was born and as they say, the rest is history. So what's an Obubu? Obubu is the Kyoto slang for tea. Here in the international department we call ourselves Obubu Tea. That's "Tea Tea" for the bilinguals. We love tea so much, we just had to have it twice in our name. Now Obubu means more than just tea to us. It means, family, friends, passion and the place we call home. More than just tea. Though the roots of Obubu stem from tea, it has become more than that over the years. Obubu is an agricultural social venture, operating with three (1) bring quality Japanese tea to the world (2) contribute to the local and global community through tea (3) revitalize interest in tea and agriculture through education.
I received this as a sample from Yunomi.us. This was admittedly my first taste of a bancha but I was pretty impressed. I always read about how bancha is supposed to be one of the lowest grades of green tea so I wasn’t expecting anything that good.
Honestly I did find this to be an extremely drinkable green tea. It had a much lighter green taste as compared to most green teas. It had a slight sweetness to it with some very slight green hints. I may try to steep a bit more at a time next time and see what that produces. Overall this was a pretty good tea experience.
Flavors: Grass, Sweet
A nice everyday tea.
The dried leaves smelled grassy and were a mix of broken large tea leaves and stems.
I used 250ml of boiling water to 3g of tea for 30 sec for the first two infusions. 4 infusions were possible.
The liquor was a pale greenish yellow with a subtle flavor of hay-like sweetness.
It´s a mild tea with a short finish.
Flavors: Grass, Hay
This is my first time having bancha. The leaves are all wiry and long and unkempt, pretty fun to look at.
The flavor is subtle and sweet, with a mostly buttery, nutty taste and a grassy smell. The smell of the wet leaves reminds me of wild prairie grasses in the late spring or early summer when they’re still wet and green.
This tea is very mild. I think I could have brewed it a lot stronger than I usually brew sencha and it would have tasted just fine. I can see why this is considered an everday tea. Everything about the flavor is agreeable but not remarkable. It’s the kind of tea you can appreciate without having to give your full attention to, a casual tea-drinker’s tea. I could see myself loading up a tea thermos with this to drink at work, but at home my time is usually filled with higher grade teas that are more of a centerpiece and a dedicated moment of the day.
For an everyday tea though, this has a really nice taste and quality to it. It’s charming and relaxing. As it’s cooling, I’m catching a little bit of seaweed/fish kind of taste, but I’m also alternating this with eating some food now. Otherwise until this point it was mostly just sweet.
Flavors: Grass, Nutty, Seaweed, Sweet
My husband chose this tea after our recent Japanese tea binge over the last few days.
This tea is rather finely chopped with some largish stem pieces present amongst the dark/medium green shiny leaves. It has a sweet grass scent with a dry, perfume finish.
Yellow tea liquid is produced with a toasted grass scent, mild but still with some sweetness.
Strength is mild with toasted rice and grass flavours. There is a slight bitterness but nothing major. Also a dominant grassy after taste which sweetens and becomes dry.
A further steep reveals more grass notes with bitterness though it remains mild. Still plenty of flavour for a second steep.
Overall it’s a nice Bancha, the sort that would suit every day drinking. Yes it’s considered low grade in terms of quality but it doesn’t taste nor feel that way at all.
Flavors: Sweet, Warm Grass, Toasted Rice
Sometimes I prefer the “lower quality” tea – it has a different flavour profile to the high-grade stuff, and sometimes that’s what you want! (Also, often less bitterness, and easier to brew. Win.)
I meant, of course, lower GRADE. Lower quality tea is… not usually as good, consisting of broken leaf, etc.
Good morning Steepster… I drank a lot of tea yesterday but didn’t post tasting notes because a lot of what I drank were things I have posted notes for multiple times.
Anyway, here’s another sample from the Obubu tea sampler pack. Bancha is a lesser grade of tea than sencha, but it’s still drinkable in my opinion. This has sort of a vegetaly-seaweed taste with a definite bitterness in the finish. It isn’t my favorite from Obubu by far but I will definitely finish off the pot I made this morning. Compared to their senchas it isn’t as light and sweet, but still far better than most if the mass market green teas you find on the market.
I feel like my tasting notes are getting shorter but that’s because I’m trying to limit the time I spend on social media sites… so please forgive me :)
I really like Bancha… actually, sometimes I like it more than Sencha. I have a tin of Harney and Son’s Bancha that is kind of my go-to green tea… just goes great with everything. I think their “Tokyo” blend uses their Bancha base, too, and that blend is really great.
It is definitely more of what I would describe as a delicate flavor. I’d probably recommend something like this to a green tea newcomer if they are iffy on the grassy tastes.
Yeah, I agree. It’s more subtle in its ‘vegetal’ qualities… :)
Yes ‘vegetal’ qualities is a good way to put it :D