Sencha of Brightness

Tea type
Green Tea
Ingredients
Green Tea
Flavors
Bitter, Kale, Savory, Spinach, Thick, Umami, Vegetables, Vegetal, Astringent, Broth, Brussels Sprouts, Cauliflower, Dry Grass, Drying, Grass, Viscous, Corn Husk, Flowers, Nutty, Seaweed, Sweet
Sold in
Loose Leaf
Caffeine
Medium
Certification
Not available
Edit tea info Last updated by Cameron B.
Average preparation
165 °F / 73 °C 1 min, 0 sec 4 g 7 oz / 203 ml

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6 Tasting Notes View all

  • “Dry leaves smell very.. deeply green, very chlorophyll-rich, with that bitter edge that tends to accompany darker greens, like chard and lacinato kale. Wet leaves remind me of a pond overgrown with...” Read full tasting note
  • “Sipdown! (11 | 420) Finishing off an old packet of this one. Still has plenty of flavor left though! It’s a very savory sencha, with a lot of deep-steamed vegetal notes. Mostly intense, slightly...” Read full tasting note
    78
  • “This was a rather odd tea. It had a slight fenugreek like smell that reminded me of a green oolong starting to go stale. The smell persisted from the dry to the wet leaf and down to the flavor of...” Read full tasting note
    59
  • “This will be the first sencha tea to brew and review in my new tokonome kyusu, which is absolutely gorgeous (and my first kyusu). I bought an expensive one because I wanted to be set with one that...” Read full tasting note
    93

From Kyoto Obubu Tea Farms

Pale yellow in color, Brightness has a floral aroma with gentle tones of elderberry. It is a medium-bodied tea with a subtle umami taste and underlying notes of avocado and apricot. Before its summer harvest, it is shaded from the sun for two weeks which creates a smooth and airy Sencha.

Taste: Umami
Body: Rich
Texture: Rounded
Length: Medium
Harvest: July
Tea Cultivar: Yabukita
Origin: Wazuka
Cultivation: Shaded
Processing: Lightly Steamed, Rolled, Dried

About Kyoto Obubu Tea Farms View company

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.

6 Tasting Notes

76 tasting notes

Dry leaves smell very.. deeply green, very chlorophyll-rich, with that bitter edge that tends to accompany darker greens, like chard and lacinato kale. Wet leaves remind me of a pond overgrown with algae and teeming with life.

Despite my attempt to brave my fears and not understeep this, letting it sit a whole 15 seconds longer, the first steeping is still quite mild, slightly green-bitter at the backend, otherwise, vaguely pondwater flavored.

The second steeping explodes. Green peas and spinach, a slight nuttiness and a vegetal sweetness, a pretty intense green flavor that makes me feel like I am getting a lot of vitamins in this. I don’t know how much of that is actually true. I guess for one they’d have to be water soluble nutrients, and probably only in very small quantities, equating to those in a mouthful of spinach at most. But, no matter. I’ve never been into tea for any alleged health benefits, but it’s a nice perk when it happens.

There’s a hint of a crisp mineral-ness to this too, brightening the dark-green depth just enough. I keep coming back to “pondwater” and believe me when I say I mean that in the most affectionate way. The minerally and algal flavors just meld into something I can’t think of a better way to describe.

Unfortunately, I don’t think it’s agreeing very well with my empty stomach. Some green teas are just… like that, and I don’t entirely know why. Maybe I can narrow it down, though, if I keep taking notes.

I will say, I am also getting a very relaxed headiness from this tea, what I used to (and I guess may as well still) call “tea-high.” It is also something that some teas do better than others, for reasons I’ve never really narrowed down. I think in the past I’ve most commonly gotten it from younger sheng, and once very intensely from a mid-grade silver needle. I’m uncertain if I’ve ever gotten this from a sencha before. It’s interesting. But for all I know, it’s nothing to do with the tea, and more to do with other biochemical factors of whatever else is going on in my body at the moment. I’ve never really scienced it out that far.

I really need to start noting whether or not I would purchase more of this in these notes, because otherwise I am going to forget. I think only very rarely do I re-purchase tea, though, it’s so much more fun to try new things than familiar things, even things that I know I love. And when I do want to repurchase tea, it’s usually for the comforting factor of it rather than the complexity or interest of it, and the comforting factors are usually factors that are present in teas of lower grades, so it becomes a matter of finding the most budget-friendly version of the tea rather than the version that most perfectly encapsulates what I am looking for.

And tea is so darn seasonal, really, especially sencha. who knows if a repurchase of this tea would be from the same harvest, it might be entirely different! But I guess one can assume that summer harvest teas from the same farm would at least retain similar enough characteristics.

Anyway… as for this tea, I’m not sure I would go out of my way for it, but if I did end up with more of it, I think I might like to try it with a hearty, smokey stew, or some kind of campfire-meal. It just tastes like such an outdoorsy sort of tea. I’d also like to try cold-brewing it, I think.

Cameron B.

I usually steep for about 45-60s the first time, and then shorten the second to about 15s.

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78
3986 tasting notes

Sipdown! (11 | 420)

Finishing off an old packet of this one. Still has plenty of flavor left though!

It’s a very savory sencha, with a lot of deep-steamed vegetal notes. Mostly intense, slightly bitter greens like kale or chard, layered with umami.

It’s pleasant, but a bit heavy and one-dimensional compared to other Obubu sencha I’ve had recently. I see it’s a shaded tea which explains the intensity of flavor. But it’s not one I would order as they have many other sencha that I like more. :)

Flavors: Bitter, Kale, Savory, Spinach, Thick, Umami, Vegetables, Vegetal

Preparation
170 °F / 76 °C 0 min, 45 sec 5 g 8 OZ / 240 ML

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59
676 tasting notes

This was a rather odd tea. It had a slight fenugreek like smell that reminded me of a green oolong starting to go stale. The smell persisted from the dry to the wet leaf and down to the flavor of the steeped tea. It didn’t have any of the usual grassiness or umami, just a strong underlying note of cruciferous vegetables.

Looking at the other reviews on here, I suspect there was something off as others seem to have had a completely different impression of this tea.

Flavors: Vegetal

Preparation
165 °F / 73 °C 0 min, 45 sec 4 g 8 OZ / 240 ML

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93
306 tasting notes

This will be the first sencha tea to brew and review in my new tokonome kyusu, which is absolutely gorgeous (and my first kyusu). I bought an expensive one because I wanted to be set with one that was really my tastes and not be tempted to buy another down the road. If anyone is curious, it’s this one: http://www.amazon.com/Japanese-teapot-Tokoname-Umehara-7-78oz/dp/B00CD8NPTU/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1413654555&sr=8-1&keywords=kyusu+shoji

Anyhow, on to the tea. The scent of Sencha of Brightness is intoxicating after letting the leaves sit in the warm kyusu for a minute. The smell is of sweet corn on the cob, peony flowers and toasted almonds. It’s smelling eerily similar to my all time favorite tea, Kenyan Silver Needle. Let’s see how it brews up.

The brew is a delicate spring green. The taste is sublime. It has an incredibly smooth mouthfeel… and this may sound weird but the texture reminds me of yogurt. It’s velvety and thick. The flavor has a mellow nutty start that changes to a slightly green and vegetal one with afternotes of cooling mint sensation. I can easily see why this Sencha of Brightness was named from the idea of sparkling light reflecting on cooling waters. The tea is very mellow with almost no astringency, only a slight bit in the finish.

On the second infusion the taste is much more mild. It’s still quite sweet and there are little notes of seaweed and grass like one might expect from sencha. The third infusion is also rather light in flavor and tastes similar to the second. I may have used a lower amount of leaf than I should have.

This tea was humbling. I really like it a lot.

Flavors: Corn Husk, Flowers, Nutty, Seaweed, Sweet

Preparation
160 °F / 71 °C 1 min, 0 sec 2 g 3 OZ / 100 ML
Ubacat

I’m adding that one to my wish list!

Lion

It’s so good. I am trying to not fly right through this Obubu sampler because these are the only Japanese green teas I have right now to brew in my Kyusu! On the other hand, I almost want to get straight through them so I can figure out which ones I want to order and order them altogether instead of paying more for shipping separately!

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84
2816 tasting notes

This was my one indulgence for June which just arrived today … YIPPEE! I’ve always wanted to try the Obubu tea sampler pack and now I have the time to try them all and even write tasting notes. :) I love Japanese teas so I can’t imagine I’ll have anything too bad to say about the selections.

I picked this one at random from the sampler pack, I knew I wanted to try a sencha but I wasn’t sure which one. It has such a lovely name. I steeped this for 90 seconds and it has a very light colored infusion, one that I might associate more with Chinese tea than Japanese. The aroma is lightly vegetal and a bit flowery.

For a sencha, this is very mild. The description says this tea is made with more mature leaves so perhaps that is why. Also they claim it is good as an iced tea, so I’ll have to try the rest of my sample that way. For now I’m enjoying it hot. The flavor is very mild and sweet. It has some light grassy notes but also a bit of sweet vegetables like corn. I don’t think I’ve ever had a Japanese tea that’s this mild before, no astringency whatsover. It’s very tasty and soothing, like floating away on a green tea cloud.

Flavors: Corn Husk, Grass

Preparation
170 °F / 76 °C 1 min, 30 sec 1 tsp 8 OZ / 236 ML
Cameron B.

That’s a lot of sencha in that sampler! I’m excited to see all of your notes. :D

TeaBrat

ha ha – you’ll be sick of me soon!

Cameron B.

They definitely knew what they were doing when they named all of them. How can you not want to try something called “Sencha of the Summer Sun”?

TeaBrat

Agreed, their names are very poetic. I’ve been wanting to try their teas for years.

Lion

Aha! Our reviews are so similar! I made sure not to look at others before I wrote mine. I’d say we got a pretty similar impression! This tea was sublime, but yes very mild to me!

TeaBrat

I definitely liked this a lot but I think I prefer the deeper steamed sencha like fukamushi style…

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