Midmorning tea

 After three days of oolongs, I was feeling like a sencha and Jade provided several samples from Kyoto Obobu Tea Farm. (Bookmarking it because their tea samplers are pretty reasonable.)

As a kid who spent twenty plus years around horses and has often said, "That looks good enough to eat," I've always felt that good sencha (and matcha) taste like freshly turned dirt and new mown grass - in the best possible way. This sencha is called "Earth" - and it tastes like it. The English label on the 5g sample packet says "Feel the power of the Earth with this full-bodied spring tea harvested from 30 year old tea trees." 

No notes from Jade, but I brewed at 160 degrees* with a 30 second steep, then increased each steep by 15 seconds. This has a strong earthy note mixed with spinach. It was a little more bitter on the second steep and the green-yellow color deepened as well. The umami is downright hearty. Pondering a third cup in a bit. 

*Sencha brews well between 160-175F. Having a kettle with variable temperature settings is nice and I love mine (it's a Cuisinart one), but you can splash a little cold water into just-boiled or pour and let cool for a couple minutes before steeping your tea. Higher temperatures will increase bitterness. 

Tea research continues and I am enjoying the Mei Leaf channel on Youtube. Don is knowledgeable without being snooty: he often says to experiment with brewing to find the flavor profile you like best and the video on how you can do gongfu cha with two bowls and a tea strainer takes a lot of the holy-crap-I-must-buy-all-the-tea-utensils bewilderment by the scruff of the neck. (Though I'm sure he'd be happy to sell you all the tea things at his website. Even in UK pounds, the teaware prices seem reasonable enough.) He also gets geeky and scientific with things like side-by-side visual and taste comparisons of teas stored for eight months under varying conditions, or what teas go with what clay pot varieties. The emphasis is mostly on Chinese teas, but he does touch upon Japanese varieties as well, so if this interests you at all check out Mei-Leaf on Youtube. 

Yeah, I want another cup. Let's go warm that kettle up.

3rd steep, 160F, 60 seconds, color is slightly greener, bitterness has backed off and it tastes greener.
 

(UPDATE: I looked at Obobu's website and they have a sampler that is extremely tempting. Unfortunately, they only ship DHL and it's prohibitively expensive to me.)