Maeda-en

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I received this as a sample with one of my shipments from Maeda-en.

The smell is unmistakably Genmaicha. I love that toasted rice aroma.

Delicious roasted, nutty flavor of Genmaicha. Sweet tasting! The matcha adds a little bit of sweet to it as well.

Perfect everyday tea. I like to have this when I get to work after breakfast. The puffed rice gives a nice toasty depth to Maeda-en’s great sencha.

I absolutely am addicted to mugicha; it’s hard to find the good stuff outside of Japan but Maeda-en makes my favorite so far. It’s got a great balance of toasty and light, although I tend to brew it a long time because I really like a strong mugi flavor to come out. It’s definitely best straight from the fridge! Nothing better on a hot day without an air conditioner.

This is my favorite everyday tea; it’s got a great toasted flavor, a cross between a good houjicha and the typical sencha. Also, comes in fabulous hundred-bag sacks! Although I generally like to use loose, this is my go-to teabag.

Super-pungent grassy butter cream achieved! Such a picky little beast!
^{6g/6oz/~30s with the Tokoname}

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Soooo, yeah. I must like this a whole lot, because I’m having it again today. This means I am out of the sample that Auggy sent, which means I really do like it, which means I’ll be entering a state of beverage emergency until I can restock it. I wanted something cozy, something tasty, something that would feel like a snuggle in my stomach after another day of having too much caffeine for my own good. Something to help me get in the right mindset for going to sleep (no small feat, with me. There are Rx chemicals that have balked at such a task in the past — I’m looking at you, ambien!).

So. Good.

And I love that it can take me through several 16oz. steeps — I can be sure that I’ll get my fill. (So will the buckwheat berries, as it happens; they suck up a lot of the water in my cup, so it does require a little bit of topping off).

Now, if only it weren’t so infernally hot outside, it’d be the perfect end to my day!

I am so excited that Auggy included some of this in the package of tea that she sent me. It sounded so weird and interesting that I’ve wanted to try it ever since it made the rounds a few months ago. The hardest part of getting packages of new tea is caffeine management, or at least enough restraint to achieve something akin to it. A few steeps of Bohea and Golden Monkey were delicious, and I very much wanted to continue down the roster of black teas she sent me, but prudence requires that I consider uncaffeinated options instead. Soba-Cha to the rescue!

Confession: I screwed up my portions. I added my standard 2tsp. to the infuser of my 16oz cup, only to find (after two minutes of steeping) that the recommended amount was a tablespoon per cup! I didn’t add quite that much — just another two teaspoons — because I wanted to have enough left to make more later.

I was never a huge fan of puffed cereal as a kid (except for rice krispies, and even those were hit and miss with me). When I went off to school for highschool I grew rather (unfortunately) fond of corn pops (hello, early freshman fifteen!). I think that genmaicha has completed the revision of my prior wariness, and paved the way for my enjoyment of soba-cha.

And I do enjoy it! The nuttiness is delicious. There’s something just sweet enough about it that seems to recall honey-nut cheerios to me, which is a win. It’s not an incredibly complex flavor, but there’s more complexity than I might have expected, and what’s there is warm, roasty, and savory. The fact that this is not only a caffeine-free option for the evening, but also edible as-is so that it can be sprinkled onto other things — those are just extra wins in my book.

Every now and then I try a tea that I am certain I will get cravings for in the future, and I know that I need to buy it because it’s going to begin creating very specific itches that only it can scratch — like Ryokucha, or the Sticky Rice Tuo-Cha. This is one of those teas. My wallet, it groans with the strain of many upcoming tea orders.

Only vaguely related: I saw in one of Auggy’s tasting notes that she wanted to sing ‘Jimmy Crack Corn’ while drinking this. It kind of made me lol, but I have to agree. This is what I decided to queue up:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LRX91eF_cY0

(Stuff like this is why I can’t set my itunes to shuffle. This, sandwiched between Burial’s dubstep and things like Arcade Fire, would make for a totally schizophrenic listening experience. The trials and tribulations of having a wide musical palate! These guys are pretty good though. This is the money-tune: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wKTXJUYiAT4 )

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A tier below the Maeda-en 88th Night 2010 Shincha in enjoyment. It has less complexity and depth and less elements of interest overall. Still nice to drink, but definitely prefer the 88th Night. I think this might get boring quickly with a larger sample as well.

Price: $10 USD for 85g.
Buy Again: No

Well rounded mouthfeel with a nice kick of sweetness. Very good, but doesn’t quite live up to some of my other favourite Shinchas from 2010.

Price: $20 USD for 85g
Buy again: Maybe

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What an utterly delicious green tea. It’s brilliant green leaves have a fresh and vegetal aroma. The brewed tea (2 mins) is sensational: one of the best—if not the best—green I have had. It does have a very buttery vegetable taste with both elements of natural sweetness and a tinge of a bitterness that is not at all unpleasant.

This is like a really good liquid salad!

I’ve got some serious Steepstering to catch up on. Saturday night, I (through my own stupidity) broke my Zojirushi. Not awesome. At all. But with the combination of an understanding husband, an Amazon Prime free trial, five additional dollars for a next day shipping upgrade and, of course, the joy that is the internet, I am now the proud owner of a new Zojirushi (the CD-WBC40). Thank goodness. The kettle and I just weren’t getting along.

To celebrate the return of temperature-controlled water-dispensing to the household, I thought I’d give this one another go, this time with Shinobicha’s suggestion of just a tiny amount of water. I did 4.2g of tea to 4oz of water and gave it about 30s in my preheated Tokoname.

First off, I was surprised at how mild this was with so much leaf. And sweet! Not quite creamy like my first delightful taste of this, but still very enjoyable. Oddly, it made me think that if the Japanese made green tea gum (what am I talking about? I’m sure they do somewhere), this would probably be what it would taste like. Like a sweet mint gum but without the mint – just the sweetness and freshness.

I’m still not raising the rating any on this one though because 1) for a higher rating, I need easily-found buttercream and 2) as tasty as this is, there’s not a whole lot of depth to the flavor aside from sweetness and fresh green-ness. But still, this ratio is definitely worth repeating.

OK, I have to retract (a little) a previous statement I made.
Out of curiosity, I tried the steeping parameters that Maeda-en suggested for this tea. I was sure it was going to be bitter, but I did it anyway.
In my pre-warmed teapot, I put a rounded tsp of leaf. I then poured nearly boiling water (190F) over it (I was planning on doing 2 oz water, but instead didn’t quite even cover the leaf, so it was just around 1 oz water). I waited 30 seconds and then poured into the cup.
(Maeda-en’s suggestion is 190F for 30-40 seconds or so).

The result was nothing less than green tea nectar! Pure, intensely sweet, and fresh cooked asparagus. It really surprised me, especially how very sweet it was. I wished I had used all 2oz of water, just so I’d have had more tea!
So again, my retractment is, don’t necessarily ignore the brewing suggestions given! Try it out once. The very first time I had this tea, I ignored their suggestions thinking it would be bitter; but if you’re careful, this tea works at a big range of temperatures. :-)

This tea almost tastes like brown sugar to me. Well, brown sugar it it wasn’t sweet. I don’t know, it makes sense in my head.

So yeah, I’m dropping the rating on this one down a little bit. It’s just too picky. Sure, my first cup was amazing but I haven’t been able to repeat the brilliance and since then just gotten a very nice but not overly special cup. I know that there is delight hiding somewhere in there, it’s just hard to find. Hopefully I’ll be able to recreate it before I run out of this tea.
^{Tokoname pot, 5.1g/10oz, pour started at 25s. I’m thinking it doesn’t do well in larger quantities.}

Tonight this one is giving me some strong nori notes and some faint creamy/icing notes. Which makes me think of nori-flavored icing and that’s a bit weird but actually pretty tasty. Still doesn’t quite match up to the first experience with this one though so looks like next time I’ll be brewing this in my Tokoname pot (I used my glass one this time) and in a smaller cup.
^{5.1g/10oz/35~40s}

This is so yummy!
The 2nd infusion left such an amazing aroma in my mouth after I finished the cup. I don’t remember all the flavors, but the lingering flavor actually continued to develop for at least 5-10 minutes after I’d finished!

I’m testing this one a bit by brewing it, not in my Tokoname kyusu like before, but rather in an in-cup infuser. It’s more pungent and traditionally sencha flavored than before. It has a strong note that makes me think of unripened honeydew (or perhaps the bit right next to the rind) and there are only faint hints of the creamy sencha icing tail that shows up when more careful brewing parameters are used. Done this way, the Yutaka Midori is better (though this isn’t bad) so I’ll have to put forth the bit of extra effort to really make this sparkle. It’s worth it.

Thanks LiberTEAS!

In water it looked like matcha – plain and simple…
The dry leaves were silky soft.

Vegetal aroma and taste. Yet fairly sweet considering.
Pretty good!

Having brewed this the first time with probably too much leaf and maybe too much water temperature, I pulled out my bag of this tea and brewed it the way I brewed the other five shinchas in the tasting set. I found it much more palatable.

The aroma was light, but quite briny when it made it’s way through my nostrils. Flavors in the first steep were bright, clean and had strong doses of kelp, spinach, and watermelon rind. It wasn’t as sweet as most of the other samples I’ve had, but was up there. The best part of the first steep was that it a fantastic minty cooling sensation on the lips, tongue, and back of the throat that lingered long after the soup disappeared, making me want to return to my cup for more.

I even took this tea out to a fourth steep since it was my only session this morning and was amused to find that it looked much like the first steep, but tasted like thin tea-water. The second and third steeps gave full-flavored and rich cups, but they held the more classic profile of ocean vegetables, salty brine, and melon pith. I think this is an exemplary and clean example of the classic profile of flavors for a decent shincha.

Full blog post: http://tea.theskua.com/?p=21