Kukicha problem

[soske]

Hi, this is my first topic, and i need some help.
I bought few days ago some kukicha, that evening i tried it, but, with surprise, an awful surprise, it taste like chestnut mixed with a bit of rotten fish. So i thought "maybe the water was too hot" so i did it again, with cooler water, but the result is the same.
I bought kukicha because i wanted to try another kind of green tea (i daily drink sencha), i know that there is difference between those two, but i didn't believe so much.
Can someone tellme where i go wrong?
Thanks

[Chip]

Where did you get the kukicha?

A good kukicha will have an aroma of a warm tropical sea breeze, both dry leaf and brewed. Sometimes citrusy. The tropical sea breeze I mention is not fishy, it is clean and refreshing.

Could be the kukicha. How is the dry leaf aroma?

I tend to use 1 gram per 30 ml water. A gram is pretty much volume wise compared to a sencha.

I usually do 80* C/175* F in a non preheated kyusu for about 1 minute, but you can usually do it longer. If I preheat the pot, then definitely cooler. Kukicha can be cold brewed, so reducing temp will not hurt anything.

[soske]

Thanks for the superfast answer.
The dry leaf aroma is good, could be that there is a lot of "twig" compared to the leaves?
The fishy is not so sturdy, wath i fell so much is this "chestnut" aroma, that i can't suffer.
That day i bought an oolong, and it smell like chestnut too.
I want precise that all other teas that i buy from this little shop are very good (for what i can understand, i'm pretty new on drinking tea).
Thanks

[Chip]

Almost all sencha and sencha byproduct teas go through a very light roasting at the very end of the manufacturing process.

If it is roasted too much, the subtle qualities can be lost and the roasted flavors will dominate ... this can be perceived as a nuttiness or grainy or maybe chestnut.

Is the dry leaf green??? If it is brownish, then it is roasted tea called houji-kukicha. If it is green, it is kukicha.

[soske]

The dry leaf is green/yellow/brown, tomorrow i'll take a picture, so you can see.
Thanks

[Chip]

Cool, though the mix of colors is unusual.

[AlexZorach]

I've found that when Japanese green teas have "off" aromas it often tends to be either of a seaweedy or fishy nature. I've had this happen with many types of Japanese green tea, most often sencha, as this is what I've tried the most of.

It may just be a bad batch.

I absolutely love kukicha, and I've found that in general, it tends to be less likely to have those fishy qualities than sencha. However, some kukicha has more leaves than twigs. I've found the more purely twiggy kukicha is less likely to have those seaweedy or fishy qualities.

My advice would be to just find a different source...and look at the leaf before buying, and see if you can get one that is really mostly twig/stem. But that could just be my personal taste, I really like the aroma profile of the mostly twig ones!