2009 Shincha Review Topic

[guitar9876]

I wanted to try a shincha this year and since there was a lot of buzz about the Sae Midori I figured I'd give it a try. After reading several reviews on brewing it I decided to modify between what Cherylopal and serok37C did.

The opening aroma was very intense - grassy but not vegetal. I did remember to let the bag rest after opening. I went with 4gr and 8oz of water at 170 degrees. First brew one minute/2nd brew 30 second/3rd brew 2 minutes ... and I kept going. I was very surprised to find it quite mild with no astringency. Definitely one of the best I have had, I quite enjoyed it and it was actually fun to take the time and get out all the needed equipment including my scale and thermometer, strainer, etc. I was pretty impressed with myself, an oolong girl getting it right getting the first time, DH didn't quite understand my triumph.

I love that tea. Literally no astringency and I went totally nuts with the amount of leaf. Poor kyusu... probably the first greens it's seen in a long time...

[iannon]

ok..my third shincha of this season is from a small organic farm i found while wandering thru the interwebs
Shizuno-en run by Jiro Suzuki which says they are "situated in the northern plateau of Iwata City, Shizuoka Prefecture"




the leaf is much less chopped up than the Zencha takumi or the Yuuki YM and the smell is quite pleasant and strong for an organic..well any that ive had in the past anyway. tried first infusions at both 165 and 170 for 60 seconds with 5g and 8oz I found the 170 actually brought out a bit more of the sweeter flavors than at the 165 starting point. both tasted well balanced and had a strong marine aroma and flavor.

[Chip]

i'm not sure if i should post this here or in the ordering thread...here i guess.

a heads up, i just received my order of organic sinchas from ocha which included the Okitsugawa Miyabi 100 gram. o-cha.com says it's supposed to be 100 grams of sincha, but the bag is labled 70 grams...30% less. i weighed it to confirm the bag wasn't misprinted and it isn't..a bit over 70g.

*edit: kevin has now changed the discription to show the item weighs 70g.

I know a little bit about what happened. This was a brand new farmer for O-Cha, he received a nonshincha sample bag of 100 grams from the farmer, liked it and ordered shincha to offer on his site.

He received the shincha which was in the exact same bag as the 100 grams and added it to the site as such. He found out later that it was 70 gram shincha offering which is the way this farmer sells his shincha. This is not an unheard of practice, for instance Hibiki-an offers 80 gram shincha instead of its normal 100 grams.

Anyway, it was an honest mistake.

[Smells_Familiar]

cool

kevin handled it quickly and explained everything.

fwiw, i didn't know how fast kevin would address the issue (being the weekend), and so i wanted to give my comrades here a heads up until the site was updated, as i would have liked to have one before i ordered.

anyway, i can't wait to try my new teas...but i can't have caffeine for a few more days. has anyone tried the organic miyabi yet?

[puerhking]

Zencha Super Premium Kukicha Shincha

I have had 6-7 sessions with this tea. It has a wonderfull mellowness and deep vegetal flavor. Essentially no bitterness or astringency unless overbrewed. By the third brew it was very grassy and herbaceous with little sweetness. Zencha said to brew it 3 min but I brewed it for 2 and that was perfect....followed by 1min and then 3. Very nice stuff. I split this batch with a friend so I am considering getting more! Nice packaging as well.

[Ed]

That looks really good! Thanks for the review, puerhking. I'll have to try that one.

[bambooforest]

Hatsumi is really good this year.. from O-cha. I just had to get my parameters down first... to get to know this tea.

I actually plan on reviewing every shincha I drink this year... So many reviews to follow.

[Jack_teachat]

Yuuki-Cha Organic Kumamoto Sencha Yabe Supreme

After having had quite a few sessions with this tea I think it's about time I post some thoughts....

Dry Leaf: Appears to be somewhere between a deep and mid-steamed, some small needles. The aroma is absolutely beautiful, one of the best I have experienced - bold, deep & grassy with an almost pine like quality. It also has a subtle hint of what I can only describe as a mild peaty like smokiness, similar to an Islay Scottish single malt whiskey.

When placed in a pre-heated kyusu the aroma remains intense - taking on delicious hints of fresh salmon.

Brewing: I have experimented quite a bit with ratio and parameters and this tea appears to benefit from a little more leaf than usual - I've been using between 5 & 5.5g with 160ml of water.

It's also seems quite sensitive to temperature increases, don't go mad on the subsequent steeps! - I would suggest starting at 70*c and raising the temperature about 2-3 degrees for each steep.

Steeping times I've been using have been as follows - 1st) 55 secs to 1 min 2nd) 35 to 40 secs 3rd) 1.5 mins.

Drinking: Using these parameters the tea pours slightly yellowy green in colour. The body is nicely balanced with a light grassy astringency, but also a touch of sweetness. Notes of smooth buttery salmon are also apparent, with perhaps a touch of citrus/vanilla. The second steep is more bold and grassy, less sweet with a touch more astringency.

Overall: So far I have enjoyed drinking this tea a lot, it has a wonderfully fresh flavour and it's not difficult to brew apart from being a bit temperature sensitive. It has also certainly made me want to sample some more organic offerings, something which appears to have been made considerably easier with O-cha's recent expansion of their line-up!

Pictures to follow!

[olivierco]

I got a taste of some Ippodo Uji Shincha. I've over-brewed the third infusion a bit, but the second was fabulous. Very fresh and shincha like. It might be their only shincha as such, but it is a great example of the concept of shincha: fresh, strong, heady, asamushi. Hypnotic and enduring aftertaste!

+1

[teepo]

The opening aroma was very intense - grassy but not vegetal. I did remember to let the bag rest after opening. I went with 4gr and 8oz of water at 170 degrees. First brew one minute/2nd brew 30 second/3rd brew 2 minutes ... and I kept going. I was very surprised to find it quite mild with no astringency. Definitely one of the best I have had, I quite enjoyed it and it was actually fun to take the time and get out all the needed equipment including my scale and thermometer, strainer, etc. I was pretty impressed with myself, an oolong girl getting it right getting the first time, DH didn't quite understand my triumph.

i'm not familiar with this practice and rather curious as to why and how long i should let it sit. i'm a few days away from finishing my YM and i'm about to open my bag of sea midori!

[tastysencha]

I haven't written a review, but my Yutaka Midori came today and it is absolutely delicious. My favorite is the 2nd cup as it brews to a nice deep green and just incredibly flavorful. Highly recommended.

[clareandromeda]

Thanks Teashionista! Yeah, I would use more leaf. This is either fukamushi or approaching it, so you will not see lots of "needles." Also since it is fuka, the second infusion is characteristically more green.

If you are not already, I would encourage you to preheat your kyusu, put the leaf in and smell it as it warms, quite amazing. When preheating, pour cooler water over the leaf, around 160ish*

Hey Chip, I know I'm late on this but I'm confused about pre-heating a kyusu...wouldn't adding hot water be steeping... sorry if this is obvious...

[Chip]

Thanks Teashionista! Yeah, I would use more leaf. This is either fukamushi or approaching it, so you will not see lots of "needles." Also since it is fuka, the second infusion is characteristically more green.

If you are not already, I would encourage you to preheat your kyusu, put the leaf in and smell it as it warms, quite amazing. When preheating, pour cooler water over the leaf, around 160ish*

Hey Chip, I know I'm late on this but I'm confused about pre-heating a kyusu...wouldn't adding hot water be steeping... sorry if this is obvious...

There are 2 schools of thought on this ...and a nonconformist method that I sometimes use ... preheat or not or a combination method. IMHO, none of them are always right or wrong.

1) To preheat, pour boiling water into the pot for up to 30 seconds, then pour the water off into a cooling pitcher or cups to finish cooling. You put the leaf into the semi dry pot maybe 10 seconds before the hot water is poured back into the pot. If you preheat your kyusu, you are raising the temp of the pot so when you add the leaf, it warms as well (and gives off an incredible aroma).

Therefore, the water temp does not drop much, and you can pour cooler water over the leaf instead of water that is much hotter. When I preheat for sencha, the water temp when pouring back into the pot is around 160*.

2) If you do not preheat, you generally put the leaf into a room temp kyusu. Since everything is cool, you must pour hotter water into the kyusu, around 175*. I have found that if a sencha fails to deliver punch, using this second method with using hotter water will kick it up a notch, unleashing the teas full yet otherwise dormant potential.

3) A third alternative that you won't see on any Japanese vendor sites, that I have used for finicky teas. I pour the hot water into an empty kyusu, when it is at the perfect temp, I pour the premeasured leaf into the hot water ... I have done this when all else fails for me ...

[greenisgood]

I'm a few sessions in to a 50g bag of the new Warashina Supreme organic asamushi from O-cha. So far its the damn-finest organic Japanese tea I've ever had. Although it has some of that dreaded shincha sweetness (the cups after drinking smell kind of like cotton candy), the flavor is well-rounded and very agreeable to my usually fukamushi palate. The sweetness is definitely not overpowering and I think with a little hotter water it will have a nice astringency on top.

I must admit that my brewing/utensils are a little on the creative side these days. My long-time chipped and broken-handled fukugata got left in a storage unit for the summer as I planned to get a new kyusu asap but as of now lack adequate funds (and I've been doing the whole Chinese thing lately so mistakenly didn't think I needed Tokoname anything for a while as long as I had a few gaiwans). So I'm brewing tea in an old filterless glazed kyusu for the time being. It has a normal removable basket filter which I used for a while but was suspicious that the little leaves weren't getting enough space to groove (and it just seemed wrong to pull my precious YM out of the teapot in a little metal basket). So I just tried throwing the Warashina on the bottom of the pot using the filter to strain the pour. At least for a big-leafed asamushi this worked out pretty well with a really negligible amount of leaves actually getting poured out.My brewing parameters are also really lazy/"organic": I used an Ippodo teascoop and and half for about 10 oz. Steeped for about a minute and a half (12 deep breaths, I figured out 8=1min for me) and 30 sec for the 2nd.

I really like this tea. I'm glad that one can get such good sencha without supporting the petrochemical industry and putting who knows what trace chemicals into ones body. Its definitely erased my suspicions that conventional sencha is always better and that organic usually tastes like old bancha.

[Chip]

Thanks for sharing GIG!!! I am hearing positive reports on the new O-Cha organic line up. I was putting off trying them, but may now need to move it up on the schedule.