Gyokuro

Dry Smell: like a fruit rollup.

Wet Smell: Like snow peas.

Tastes like snow peas. Maybe grass as well. Not bad I’ve never had Gyokuro before but it’s nice I think I might like Sencha Better though.

This came on Saturday and I thought this would be the perfect day to rip into it since it’s the Select item- and it’s my 1st gyokuro!

Prepared as suggested. 1tsp/170 degree purified water. I’m really glad they’ve gotten away from the 1tsp/180 degree water parameters, but this isn’t close enough. Leaf amount is right, but water volume has got to be less, the temp has got to be cooler, and it’s way over steeped. But, this is what they suggest, so it’s what I’ll try 1st.

The liquor is a light olive color w/ a very sweet aroma- almost as sweet as the musk melon I just had. The mouth feel is very smooth- not exactly what I expected since the leaves are so tiny leaving particles in my cup. The flavor is very sweet with just a hint of astringency. Good, but I think an overhaul of the steeping parameters will give me a better cuppa.

This is part of the “green savant” sampler from Adagio, which I find an amusing name. I don’t consider myself anything close to a green savant, or for that matter any type of savant, but I got this sampler because it had two kinds of green tea I’d been wanting to try, gyokuro and dragonwell.

For my last caffeinated round tonight (I can already see a sleeping pill in my future) I chose to taste this. I am not going to rate it because (a) I’m not sure I prepared it correctly and (b) it’s my first gyokuro and I want to compare it to others before I give it a number.

After reading up on gyokuro on the net, I made this at a very low temperature after preheating the cup, with about a tablespoon of leaves, and steeped for 2 minutes.

The dry leaves are a gorgeous color. A very deep, intense, almost emerald green. They are fine little things. If oolong is dreadlocks, this is baby-fine hair. They smell like sweet, cooked spinach with a pat of butter melted over it.

The liquor is a light greenish color. The hue is pretty close to lime. There’s some sediment in it (the smallest of the fine leaves are close to powdery and they were too fine for my finum filter).

The tea smells like the color green looks. Seriously. If someone put this under your nose and asked you what it smelled like, I’m guessing you’d say “green.” There’s the spinachy note of the dry leaves, but also something that is mown grass-like. In any case, it is verdant, more in the sense of field than jungle as this verdure is fresh-smelling and airy. The mouthfeel is thick and soft. It’s thicker than brothy; it’s milky. Very smooth.

The taste is slightly sweet, slightly not sweet. It’s not bitter, but it has a tiny downswing right before the finish that could be bitter if it was any stronger. But it’s not true bitter of the sort I’ve experienced in green teas before, where it’s downright yuck. This is much more complicated and interesting than that. I am going out on a limb here and guessing this is the taste that is called umami, but since I don’t know whether I’ve tasted umami before I could just be talking out of my… And then, in the aftertaste, this sweetens up to a pleasant vegetal memory. It leaves a fresh taste and feel — the same kind of feel you get after chewing Clorets, but far less crass.

This was a nice introduction and I’ll enjoy exploring this one some more, and others on its heels.

I had another pleasure of trying Gyokuro this time around since my last impression was from an “up-selling establishment”. My first impression was almost always the intense vegetal and spinach aroma along with a deep jaded color. Adagio’s take of Gyokuro is highly authentic grown by respected hands…yet a shadow of its essence. I don’t know exactly, maybe someone out here would explain but my idea is probably the age of the batch is a bit old for a sample, possible a bad batch, or yet the dreaded draw down of intense flavors for customer appeal (something I hate to see in this tea that’s know for its rich taste). Either way, this tea is light in comparison…even T’s gyokuro could rival in its umami salty-like, savory aspect, its tastes much more like grass, a faint familiar vegetal aroma and flavor. The liqour has a light green color beyond two minutes, though at first I gave it a go at forty-five seconds but it was all too light that its liquor could have been mistaken for White Tea. Negatives aside, its an enjoyable tea with a balance not seen with gyokuro, smooth taste without tannins,without` bitterness after brew after brew. As much as I praise Adagio and the tea grower for this gyokuro, every sip I take always so often it seem generic yet I may be wrong.

Update: I kinda regret what I just mentioned above, It appears it does have an umami flavor close to sushi and seaweed. I dont know what went wrong with brewing this tea before but I certainly enjoy more often then I should of…I ran out of this stuff:( oh well…

First off , just straight awesome!! I brewed it for 45 seconds and the brew had a emerald colour, the taste was that of steamed spinach and melted butter, the texture was like you were drinking melted butter! MMMMM and I got 3 steepings out of it, a first for a tea from adagio.

I brewed this at a slightly lower temp (a recommendation from Twitter) – 160 degrees – and I saw a slightly milder taste than the bitter edge I got at 180d. Grassy is a def, vegatal with a slight sweet taste. Full, grassy scent. The second steep was milder still.

This is a great pick-me-up when I need to focus and keep getting distracted.

I’m not sold on this yet, but from reading some of the tasting notes, it appears that it may take a lot of experimentation with the time/temp/amount of leaf.

On the advice of the tasting notes, I used 2 tsp of leaf and steeped for 2 min at 160°. This produced a brew that, while initially lightly sweet, quickly turns fairly bitter and leaves an unpleasant aftertaste.

Rating pending. Going to try a second, much shorter steeping now.

All you wonderful Gyokuro fans who so kindly wrote about brewing this stuff. I tried, I really tried, I brewed it every which way and I still don’t like it. I am a big hater of fish and seaweedy stuff and there is just enough that I must sadly decline. It is an attractive tea and I leave it to you all with my best.

I love the look of the leaves resembling dark green silky needles. The smell is very grassy and a bit off-putting. Some people, I recall, describing this tea as a broccoli water :) But I actually like the taste. It is grassy, vegetal not as sweet as Sencha.
Sometimes I think my body has a mind of its own and it says: “Give me more of this! I like it!”
Now, I’m talking to myself …. Sigh. Never mind, I’ll have some more tea.

Grassy and sweet. Yum!

Okay, so this is my first experience with Gyokuro. Encouraged by my recent successes with Sencha, I decided it was time to branch out and move on.

So far, so good. Looking at the dry leaves, I’m actually struck by their similarity the Sencha I drank. They’re a similar very dark green, but maybe slightly smaller and finer. They definetly have the same sweet, hay-like scent. This still surprises me — until recently, sweetness wasn’t something I’d ever associated with green tea.

Brewed, the leaves are very soft, and the smell is of freshly steamed, buttered green vegetables. Quite yummy, and quite unexpected. The liquor is a deep yellow, and, joy of joys, it tastes just like it smells. Very fresh, very green. It’s smooth, ever so slightly sweet with no bitterness or astringency anywhere in sight. To my mind, it has a more intense flavour than Adagio’s Sencha, which isn’t a bad thing at all. It’s a pleasure to drink this tea, and it definetly cheered up a miserable day!

I have to say, I’m actually really glad I decided to try gourmet loose leaf green tea. I approached them with trepidation initially, as I’ve always believed myself to be a green tea hater. I’m definetly being proved wrong, though, and I’m completely amazed at the difference. I think I’ll always prefer black tea, but a few more experiences like this could make a habitual green tea drinker of me yet.

Gyokuro bills itself as one of the more high-end green teas on the market, and so perhaps I expected too much of Adagio’s gyokuro offering. It is a fine green tea nonetheless, light and smooth with a bright, clean finish, but it simply did not have the subtle richness that I was hoping for. A pity, for I certainly would have rated this higher if I could.

First time I made this, I must have had the water too hot. It was not good. Based on what I’ve read this one will get bad quick with water that is too warm. I didn’t rate that first try since something was obviously wrong.

Leaves are very different from what I’m used to in other loose leaf teas. It looks a lot like grass clippings to be honest. Smell is of rice mixed with vegetables. Color when steeped is a pale gold and green mixture. It steeps cloudy and has a lot of tiny particles floating in it. Taste is more of the cereal grains than rice with an ending astringency that is not bad, but doesn’t tip the scales to great for my taste buds.

My search for a green tea that I consider excellent, will continue.

For the last of my tea experiments for the day, I tried the ice-brew method. I layered about a tablespoon of this gyokuro at the bottom of my banko houhin and plopped a chunk of ice on it. 45 minutes later when the ice melted I took a sip and it was like…. cold veggie stew. I get the sweet, and happily no bitter, but I feel this will probably taste better to me when just a little warm. But this was really fun to try. Might revisit this method again, with ice made from a different source of water.

Quite good!
I second Jennlea’s description of grassy and sweet.
Just the way I like it :)

Yet another great Japanese green tea. The first, second and third infusions each bring out different aromas to the tea. Note that the tea leaves should have plenty of space to infuse and as they are very gentle, the water should be cooler too.

I got a sample of this from Adagio since it’s such an expensive tea. This is my first Gyokuro, but I can see why the price is so high! It’s very smooth and flavorful. I brewed it at about 160 due to recommendations, but I am going to play around with the temperatures a bit to explore it a little bit more.

Nice tea, but too expensive. This tea seemed a little on the broken and dusty side. I guess it could have been beat up during shipping, but i would guess it’s more a sign of the quality of the tea, or lack thereof. This is definitely the best tea i’ve had from Adagio….but that’s not saying very much. I’ve yet to be truly impressed by any of their offerings.

I’d say a tea that’s at least as good as this one for less money is the Gyokuro Hoshino from Shizuokatea.com.

I got this as part of one of Adagio’s Green Samplers. I was probably destined to like this tea since it’s fun to say especially when combined with “vs. Gojira.” Anywho, the smell really concerned me since it seemed like I could’ve gone out to the lawnmower, scraped up some grass, and made some tea from that (and it would’ve been the same thing as the tea). I’m sooo glad that I didn’t let the smell discourage me. It’s really a lovely tea. Yes, there’s a grassy taste, but it’s like a pleasant springtime grass. NE

I’m on my third pot of this. It is a good green tea. As others have noted, I believe a 165 to 170 brew temp is optimal for this tea. It seems to bring on a bit of bitterness at 180. The appearance is a bright green. The taste is very fresh. It’s more subtle, as most greens are, but there is still a lot of flavor.