Guricha

I’ve never had a guricha before so here goes nothing. ooooh. It looks like I ended up liking this a bit more than the other testers. :)

Steeped mine at around 180 F for 90 seconds. I got a nice greenish-yellow cup. The wet leaves are very green and smell so vegetal. I did notice if you steep this for a while it can get kind of pungent so I think shorter steeps of 30 – 60 seconds work well here.

This reminds me of sencha’s grandpa, hee hee. It’s more robust and full, with lots of green spinach-y flavors. I think it’s even a bit buttery, brothy, and thick like drinking green tea soup. This would certainly not appeal to everyone’s palette but to me it seems very nourishing, fortifying.

Overall I’m loving my Den’s tea experience….

This is cloudy and has a texture to it but it’s a lovely green. It’s mellow and calming but quite flavorful without being grassy or bitter. I would say it’s semi-pan fried and almost popcorn tasting. This is nice!

I received a free sample of this tea with a Den’s Tea order – it’s always great when a company does stuff like this because it allows me to try new teas without having to spend money on a larger quantity of a tea that I might potentially not even like.

This one has a flavour I’m more used to tasting in Chinese green teas rather than Japanese greens. It has a full-bodied, savory flavour rather than the grassy notes I’m used to tasting in sencha and gyokuros. The resteep also produces a nice, flavourful cup even though I followed the directions and only steeped it for 15 seconds.

Thank you to TeaEqualsBliss for sending me some of this tea.

Wow! This is really quite delightful… mellow tasting, no sharpness, the vegetative flavors are mild and sweet, along with a sweet, nutty flavor that makes for an extremely smooth cup. Very little astringency with this.

This would be a great green tea for those who find the stronger flavors of Sencha to be a little off for them… this is so smooth and sweet and likable. Really wonderful.

I got a sample of this, and it is very nice.
I’d call it a pleasant, every-day kind of sencha. It’s grassy, a little sweet, and there’s very little about it that I think non-green tea drinkers would find unpleasant. The 2nd and 3rd infusions were also very dark, almost like a fukamushi, but it seems to be light-steamed.

I’m glad to have finally tried this, and I’d recommend it for anyone new to Japanese tea.

One of the first ones I have had from Den’s that I don’t particularly care to buy again. Its taste is like a cross between sencha and the bancha suruga, it is not bad, but the taste was just a little too “strong”. Worth a try if you’ve never had it before because the taste is so unique it is hard for me to describe….almost a vegetable broth, but not quite. Definitely full of taste and caffeine.