Winter is still sending more snow to my place. It´s an unusually cold one for us this year. Even better when you don´t have to leave the house too often. I rather have endless numbers of nice cups of tea, while reading interesting books. Reflecting on whether to, or not to, put some posts on food on this blog. Since i´ll be a future chef, this might be quite an idea. But still i like to keep it simple here. It should all be about tea, shouldn´t it?

However there are exciting months ahead, and i´m willing to take the challenge.Hope all is well with you guys out there.

Keep up posting and commenting my page, i really appreciate it!

Regards Stephen

Well, Matcha, right….i didn´t have any good Matcha for a long time, although my love for greens started with a matcha kit. The tea that came with it was Keiko´s “Kabuse No.1″ which i prepared totally wrong…and then was forgotten forever, in some kitchen cupboard.With my knowledge on tea growing and having had loads of sencha cups the past year, I brought the very same matcha back to live. Mmmh, not excactly, but i tried to. As you might figure, there wasn´t much going on any more…the tea was way too old…lacking mostly everything you´d normally expect it to taste like.

So i scraped my last pennies together and bought a new Matcha from Ippodo´s Webshop…recently i was kind of broke, having spent quite some money on two brilliantly handmade Raku Chawans. The only stuff i bought from Ippodo so far were some nice Senchas, and a Gyokuro tea i really liked.

Got to say it again, it´s so much fun ordering from Japan. Everything seems to be treated with a lot of care, beautifully wrapped…so many nice little details. And it´s even cheaper than buying my teas here.

Matcha “Horai-no-mukashi” is one of Ippodo´s Premium Quality teas.

Vendor description:

“For the matcha lover who likes a rich umami flavor with slightly less aftertaste, Horai-no-mukashii is a good choice. Attractively priced, this premium matcha is also an excellent choice for preparing the thicker koicha. This matcha was named by Jimyosai-sosho XIV, the grand master of the Omote-Senke family of tea masters.

This grade of matcha is the same as that used for Sayaka-no-mukashi, which was named by the Ura-Senke family of tea masters.”

Matcha preparation might seem tricky for beginners, maybe it is…but take your time…don´t rush, and you´ll succeed soon.

First thing i do, is to preheat my Chawan (bowl) and Chasen (whisk). Place some boiling water in your bowl and put the whisk in there. That helps the water to cool off and the Chasen brushes to soften. 

It´s useful to sift your Matcha before putting it into the chawan. So all the lumps can be removed. You could use a special Matcha sifter for that. Instead I use a steel tea filter basket from my old Tetsubin (iron tea kettle), and it just works fine.

After you´re done with that put the Matcha powder (1 teaspoon)  into the Chawan, pour about 60 cl. cooled-off water over it, then start whisking your tea. First slowly, than brisk. Always triying to whisk the letter “M”. Don´t go in circles. There are lots of videos and descriptions all over the web, on how excactly to do it. When you´re done, your tea should be frothy on top…without any big bubbles.

And….Wow! What a cup. What a difference to my old matcha! But even compared to a fresh one, this would be a lovely tea. It´s sweet, no bitterness at all, lingers in your mouth for a long time. A very thick matcha, smooth an elegant. But most dominant are those, let me call them, “maritime” flavours. There is “Nori”, grassiness…aromas you could also find in japanese food. 

I´m really glad i found this tea, and i´ll definately prepare it as Koicha one day. 

Feel free to give me some feedback. And ´til then enjoy your teas!

So here they are…my first real unicum, handmade chawans.

I was surfing up and down the web looking at new teaware for decades. Found a nice piece here and there, but mostly they were too expensive. Plus there wasn´t too much good Raku stuff from Japan, i could find. So i put my focus on local german artists, such as Janus Gunder. 

I got to his page by accident, but fell in love with his raku work right away.

Mister Gunder was born in 1963 in Selesia, and is working on his very own art since the early 1980´s. His first studio (JaGuDesign) opened up in 2001. Focussing on works made of  artificial and natural stones. Since 2004 he is also creating brazen scupltures. The same year traditional Japanese Raku Pottery became part of his oeuvre.

After having had a close look on his webpage, and those lovely chawans displayed, i had a very friendly chat with mister Gunder. Showing him the pieces i liked most, a package arrived at my door in basically no time. Thanks for that again!

From this day on the chawans have been good companions, making my teatime a real treat.

Excited?

Here are some pictures of the red chawan, i usually use for senchas.

And here´s the blue one….used for Matcha only!

So that´s a beauty!

Janus Gunder Website

The Star of todays review is O-cha´s Daily Sencha.

An absolute budget Sencha. It´s on the market for about 10$. Being a second flush tea, the first i had for a very long time, i didn´t know what to expect. Well, maybe I did. To be honest, not too much. 

Daily Sencha is a blend of two breeds. Yabukita and Sayamakaori-Oolwase, grown in the Shizuoka area.

O-cha´s website calls it a good starter if you are new to green tea. And i found out why..it´s just so easy to brew. A very forgiving tea.

But to start with: What´s in the bag? Not very surprising, always remembering this is second harvest tea, you´ll find a lot of small leafs, heaps of broken ones and teadust too. Here and there some big leafs. 

But all that counts is performance, right? So i gave it a shot.

Infusions. As i said before, it´s a forgiving tea. Which means, you don´t have to get too excited about your water being too cold or too hot. With the first infusion i used slightly hotter water than i´d normally do (about 80°C). Using 1 heaped teaspoon of leafs with my 10 oz Kyusu being half-filled. Steeping time was no longer than 90 seconds. 

So there it was in my cup. I took the first sip….and well, not too bad…actually surprisingly good. What comes to mind first, is a sweetness i had never experienced on a sencha before. It´s wasn´t Gyokuro but what it was i didn´t know. Maybe compareable to the taste of sweet potatoes, somewhat nutty, but for sure delicous. Once that flavour disappears, there´s a very nice grassyness that stays on your tongue for quite a while. The tea itself looked very yellow-green in the cup, the liquid wasn´t really clear, but slightly murky.

The second infusion, came along more mellow. Now there was almost only that sweetness with just a tiny bitterness left. That cup was only dark green and murky. Almost like a Fukamushi. I guess, that is due to all the broken leafs and that dust.

I didn´t try a third infusion, expecting the tea to be too weak then.

Conclusion. After being so sceptic at the beginning, this tea really surprised me. It´s for sure better than the rest you could get for the same value of money. It´s not noble but unique. It might actually be good for beginners, because it´s so easy to handle. And plus, it tastes good. I wouldn´t have guessed this to be a second flush without having a look at the leafs.

If you´ll like it or not, is going to depend on your will to downgrade and if you´ll be enjoying its special sweetness.

Tea: Sencha Daily

Vendor: o-cha

Price: 10.95 $

This is going to be the very next review. I´m really looking forward to it!

O-cha: Daily Sencha

It´s that time of year i like a lot. It´s so tea-ish. With the weather getting colder, the leafs of the trees falling, all those beautiful colors. Very laid back for me, even though people are getting that christmas rush! Streets and shops of my hometown Heidelberg (Germany), with it´s beautiful castle are becoming busy.

So I take my time, and relax in one of the numerous cafés you can find here. Most of them are still lacking a good tea selection, but it´s gotten better through the years. 

It´s so enjoyable when it´s cold outside and you warm your heart on a good cup of green tea. Thanks to all the companys providing great tea from Japan or China or elswhere, I had the possibility to get plenty of them.

So I enjoy the pre-holiday season, and hope you do too!

It´s that time of year i like a lot!

So here it is, my first review. Hope that you´ll like it!

As I said I´ve been a customer to Hibiki-an for quite a long time now. I like to order tea fresh from Japan, instead of buying it in some grocerystore here. The quality provided there is often horrible. 

An order placed in Hibiki-an´s webshop, usally takes four days to arrive at my place in germany.

Sencha Superior is supposed to be a midrange, first flush Sencha wich will cost you 12.50$ per 100grams.

The Tea is being shipped in two separate Packages (each containing 100gr.). All very nicely wrapped in some japanese-style paper.

Opening the bag was a real enjoyment. Fresh, grassy notes coming out  of it. You could notice that this Sencha wasn´t very old.

 Since this is a first flush Sencha, but still very affordable, I was very  excited how the leafs might look like. Darkish green, a lot of very  long ones, not too many broken leafs and no tea dust. All in all very  even and pleasing.

 Infusions and Taste. I brew this tea using  1 1/2 teaspoons of leafs, with water about 76°C hot. Steeping time was a littler longer than two minutes for the first infusion, no steeping for the second. 

What you´ll find pouring in your cup is a bright yellow liquid. The aroma for the first infusion was very intense. Strong Sencha flavours, such as grassyness, and a very balanced bitterness. Refreshing indeed! The second infusion was, as you might have expected, more mellow, with a nice sweetness at the beginning. But still not too weak. The tea looked more murky in the cup. Just not as yellow as the first infusion. I didn´t try a third one. 

 I guess you could play with the  parameters, such as steeping time  and water temperature. But for me it  was just perfect that way.

 Conclusion. This is a very good first  flush sencha. Maybe not top class,  but for it´s price even better. It  might be rougher, than some of o-  cha´s high-class senchas, but for  me it´s a perfect everyday Sencha.

 Tea:       Sencha Superior (Organic)

 Vendor: Hibiki-an

 Price:     25$ per 2 x 100 grams

Today my new order from Hibiki-an arrived! I´ve been a customer of theirs for a year now, but i´m still excited every time my fresh tea arrives from Japan. 

This time I wanted to try the Sencha Superior, wich is about 25$ per 200 grams. The tea arrived well packaged in two separate 100gr. bags.

After a few cups today i have to admit, i like it…….

If you´d like to find out more, be excited for a detailed photo-review i wanna put up here the next couple days!

Take care and have a good tea time

So i just started this site today. While not knowing as much about tea as i´d like to…i hope to learn, and share my future experiences with you.If you feel like participating, i´m looking forward on your input.