Shincha & Shaving

I've not gotten around to buying any of this years shincha harvest and so was delighted to receive a sample of o-cha shincha from a fellow tea enthusiast, who really knows his Japanese greens.

My Japanese green tea drinking is a rather sporadic affair, months of very little punctuated by a few weeks of intense consumption of the freshest stuff know to man.

This particular Shincha is Fukamushi Supreme from Shizuoka prefecture of Japan. I've had a few sessions with it now and all have been very enjoyable ways to spend my time. The onslaught of freshness and flavour was not quite as intense as I had built it up to be but on reflection I put this down to the fact that that the only decent Japanese green I've been drinking recently has been matcha which is rather hard to compete with on those terms.

The advice that came with this gift was that this was a tea which could really be stretched as far as number of steeps was concerned. The advice was astoundingly accurate and has led me to push more than I usually would with this kind of tea, Japanese greens from now on will be pushed that little bit further from here on in. At the end of a late night of tea drinking I have been filling the kyusu with boiling water and have been rising to a breakfast accompanied with some beautifully sweet, cool shincha. The photo above is of an overnight steep decanted into a tetsubin to improve even more so an experience I thought I would never come to relish, shaving - discounting the period where I was too young to shave.

I'm on a steep learning curve with this kind of tea but even when I discarded the brewing parameters and started experimenting I never produced anything short of remarkable. The brew is delicate, sweet, complex and evolves charmingly with each steep. I have been drinking this with such gusto that by the start of the second or third steep I'm sure I'm sweating tea.

Not only does tea enhance my shaving experience just by enjoying it whilst I shave, I'm now fairly convinced it helps with the general mechanics of the process. Warming and wetting the face with hot water is a necessity that is helped along by drinking excessive amounts of tea to the point where I have warm tea coming out of my pores as I shave.

The slow and gentle pour required for decanting the shincha, due to the fine particles, is something I will need to work on. If tea like this can be improved with a little work then I think it might time to start applying more of that kung fu limb control to tea pouring.

Thanks for the samples and advice Chip.

The photo above is again courtesy of my mobile phone. In the, fruitless, hunt for my digital camera I completely forgot I have an old SLR lying in a gadget bag in the loft complete with trimmings. Anyone checking in should be on the lookout for some awful photos taken with enthusiasm as opposed to some make do photos taken with regret.

Pre Ming Zhe Jiang Mao Jian

Pre Ming Zhe Jiang Mao Jian
Everyday tea
Spring 2006 Harvest
Date - 1st May '07



Source – Jingteashop

Cost - $3.99/100g

Amount used – lots maybe 8g

Method – Cooled boiled water in glass jug, brita maxtra filtered tap water

Dry leaf – drab dark green, small twisted leaf.

Aroma in glass – sweet, thick, not too fresh, very pleasant

No rinse

1st infusion – short as possible

Wet leaf smells seaweedy/ seaside perhaps even salty.

Liquor colour – nice mellow, yellowy green

Drinking – unobtrusive pleasing taste, nothing harsh or bitter to be found, certainly no salt.

2nd infusion, same brew time, much stronger with edge of bitterness, a nice 'wake up juice' if you like early morning lu cha. I can imagine this tea being a good base for flavoured green tea if such a thing didn't unsettle me.

3rd infusion, slightly longer, 15secs, less bitterness, I notice some brown leaves swimming around in the jug – can't really complain for the price. I can't imagine they affect the taste too much, it must be around 100-1.

12/13th infusion – completely forgot about the tea and must have left for over 5 mins. The brew was quite strong and a little astringent, showing I could have gotten another few good brews if I wasn't so careless, although still very drinkable – akin to underestimating the water temp for the first steep.

It's not the prettiest of leaf to watch in the glass although I've been rather greedy with the amount of leaf to give them much room for dancing.

Overall – does exactly what it says on the vacuum sealed foiled pack, Everyday green tea. And it really is. I took everyday to mean low quality that I wouldn't mind every once in a while( I shouldn't really assume this after drinking their everyday Yunnan Gold) or even using as a base from which to test exceptional teas and while the latter may be true this really is a tea that I will enjoy drinking frequently. I suspect it may be a good candidate for my version of 'grandad style' – a few leaves in a small gaiwan, topping up frequently, used when I am very pushed for time. I use the gaiwan as I'm to lazy to learn to use my teeth as a filter, maybe one when I'm really stuck.

Tenbu Sencha

Tenbu Sencha

Source – 6g sample from TChing

Water – Brita Max filtered tap water

Temp – boiled then left to cool until lower than normal for green , +/- gyokoro temp

Vessel – 7oz gaiwan – filter – faircup

Dry leaf – mix of normal sized sencha leaves and some very small particles, could spell trouble for the filter. Colour is mix of classic sencha green with some leaves looking darker and more akin to gyokoro.

Aroma – more depth than I've ever detected in a sencha before. I usually expect clean freshness, and a newly cut lawn type fragrance from sencha but this has something far more hearty although I'm not exactly sure what it is yet.

1st infusion 60s – longer than I'm used to steeping. The liquor appears lighter than expected for the time it spent in the gaiwan, maybe I'm used to using too much tea. It has good clarity and the mystery aroma is still eluding me, I now have my nose in the gaiwan. Tasting the infusion is again not what I expected. Far more mellow and subtle, not the fresh almost mint like slap in the face I associate with sencha. This tea, although obviously Japanese, seems to have a little of the subtleties associated with Chinese green.

2nd 15s – The liquor is darker this time and closer to what I expected first time around. The clarity is not so good and this is probably explained by me having a small struggle with the filter and my tea digger to get the brew though quicker. The aroma from the gaiwan is fading into typical sencha, I may have to wait until the next session to explore this further – thanks for the 6gram packs! By the end of the 2nd infusion I'm sweating, I'm sure it usually takes far longer normally. The taste is more intense immediately and still has the delicate after taste of the first infusion.

3rd – 15s – Similar appearance to the 2nd. The tastes seemed to have mingled, the upfront more typical sencha taste has joined forces with the subtle character predominant in the 1st infusion to create a nice rounded cuppa.

4th 30s – very similar to the 3rd taste wise although it does taste a lot more like a 4th infusion gyokoro at this stage than a 4th infusion sencha.

Spent leaf – Japanese greens are never of much interest to myself at this point. It does confirm the observation of the dry leaf, some large, some very fine, some light, some dark.

Conclusion – Aside from the fact that analysing my drinking had made me realise I should really invest in a proper teapot for this stuff, I really enjoyed this tea. As far as green tea goes I have been drinking gyokoro, long jing and liu an gua pian over the past few weeks. I was a little surprised to find a more of those kinds of tea hiding in here than the return to sencha 'only fresher' I was expecting.

Thanks to tching not only for the free samples but also for helping to keep my mind open to brewing variations and not have internal cries of 'heresy' when 60s is suggested in the future.

Link to the rest of the TChing tasting notes.