Bright green matcha powder covering flat, dark green leaves. The leaves are broken, badly. It almost looks as if I opened a tea bag and dumped the contents. Dry is smells very sweet and grassy, same with the wet leaves and infusion. The leaves, even badly broken, did open fully on the first steep. The liquior was a very bright and vibrant green. Taste was very sweet from the matcha, grassy from the sencha and had an astringent/bitter aftertaste on the tip of my tongue. I know that sounds weird, but that’s what I was getting and I’m assuming that the bitterness was from the leaves being so broken. Even though it was bitter the smoothness of the matcha balanced it out and made it pleasant. The second steep though had lost most of the smooth sweetness, I guess since the matcha went out into the first infusion. Unfortunately because there was no more sweetness the bitterness was much stronger almost making it undrinkable. I know I didn’t oversteep it, temp was 160-165 and the first brew was 10-15 seconds, the second was 15-20 seconds. Maybe i should’ve added more matcha from my stash, but I wanted to try it without doing anything to it first. Maybe I’ll buy my own sencha and add matcha too it since the first steep was really good.
