Gyokuro Kin

So it seems that the disgustingly humid New York summer has officially begun. For that reason, I currently have two different teas cold brewing in the fridge. I had a liter of Swampwater in the fridge two days ago. Most of it was consumed in one day. Now I’m looking for a more traditional flavor. Mmmm gyokuro to the rescue. So delicious. So unbelievably refreshing and quick to cold brew. It might be because the leaves are a bit cut up but this was ready for drinking in less than an hour of cold brewing. The leaves had turned a lovely bright green. Sniffing the wet leaves, you’d swear you’re holding a handful of fresh bruised leaves. So green and vibrant! And the color! Japanese tea makers know how to make tea beautiful!

And even though this was a cold brew steeped for under an hour, the flavor was all there! Green and sweet and and smooth. It’s a bit vegetal and slightly oceanic.

My husband, drawn in by the bright green liquid, eagerly took a sip and made a disgusted face. “Is this Japanese green tea? Why are they always so seaweedy?” haha I happen to love the oceanic aspect but he pretty much hates all Japanese greens. So while I think this tea is lovely, it’s not for those who aren’t fond of oceanic flavors. :)

Also, since the first glass was cold brewed so quickly, I used the same leaves for another glass of cold brewing. This second glass is lightly flavored and more of a yellow green but the taste is still refreshing and delicious. I get more of a minerally/vitaminy flavor now. I love this!

Next cold brew in my fridge: a pitcher of 52 Teas’ Cantaloupe White tea. Can’t wait to get to that one!

I received a sample of this from Mercuryhime , thank you! I can’t believe I’ve waited so long to brew this one up – it’s such an appealing dark green, and I’m fairly certain that gyokuros have that intense vegetal, beany flavour that I adore (like Laoshan green!)

Sure enough, the aroma from this one brewed is absolutely delightful! Potent and like steamed green beans, I feel like I could almost chew the tea! The colour of the brew is also a fantastic bright green (although the colour fades as the tea sits). Mmmm, yup, this one is delicious. Beany yet grassy and strong. Unfortunately, I think I gave it 15 seconds too long, which has caused some bitterness :( but it’s still pretty good.

Thanks Mercuryhime! This one’s totally up my alley! :D

Excuse me Gyokuro, where have you been hiding all my tea-drinking life? My first Gyokuro and, needless to say, I am happily in love.

This is my second time drinking it and tinkering around with the steeping time and temperature. The first time I killed it on the second steep by following Den’s instructions (180* at 30 sec). I should have known better from reading about Gyokuro and its low temperature preference, but sometimes I like finding out these things myself (and wasting expensive tea in the meantime).

This cup I brewed is deliciously buttery and sweet. Even onto the third infusion it’s holding onto flavor. I didn’t think I enjoyed sweetness in tea, especially green, but this is a different kind of sweetness- a mellow, buttery and grassy one. The first infusion was vegetal and grassy. The second infusion was probably my favorite, highlighting the buttery taste I can’t get enough of. The third was like the second, but less potent.

Steeping notes: 3oz. with 2 g
1. 145* at 90 sec.
2. 160* at 60 sec.
3. 170* at 90 sec.

I usually choose a strong black tea for my morning cup, but we were out of town all weekend and don’t have any milk in the fridge, so I’m happily settling with this green tea instead. It gives me a chance to get to some of my green tea samples, like this one is from Mercuryhime. The dry leaves smell slightly sweet and grassy. The tea itself has a vegetal aroma. I usually tend to choose flavored green teas, so this one was bit of a surprise to me. It has a fresh seaweed flavor with a sweet finish. There is a a strong vegetal aftertaste that reminds me of one of my favorite snacks, SnapPea Crisps. I have no idea if you’re suppose to add sweetener to this tea, but I tried it with a little sugar. You can still taste the vegetal notes, and it just brought out more of the sweetness in the flavor. I don’t know that this is a tea that I would drink every day, since I mostly prefer strong black teas, but it was fun to try it! And I’m amazed at all of the flavors that come out of steeping this one for just 1.5 minutes! Thanks, Mercuryhime, for the sample!

-Dry blend has long, small, flat green tea leaves.
-Dry leaves smell slightly sweet and grassy. Tea liquor aroma is vegetal.
-Tea liquor is a clear medium greenish yellow color.
-Fresh seaweed flavor with a sweet finish. Strong vegetal aftertaste.
-Best with the smallest amount of sweetener.
-Good tea. Flavor is reminiscent of SnapPea Crisps.

My first gyokuro! What an experience! Such a beautiful tea with that lush emerald colour. Isn’t that colour “in” right now in fashion?

I made sure I was very awake for this tea so I didn’t mess up steeping. Overall, very good mix of buttery, sweet and veg – but I didn’t like the astringency, as I’m not a fan of astringency at all.

Cold steep? MAGICAL!

With that said, I really don’t know what to rate this tea as.

Full review on my blog, the oolong owl. I took lots of pics!
http://oolongowl.wordpress.com/2013/03/07/gyokuro-kin-from-dens-tea-tea-review/

My new favorite snack is edamame. It’s green, healthy, and delicious.

At first sniff of this tea, I was worried I had dropped a bean or 2 into my cup. It smells almost identical to my edamame. Can this be true?? Liquid edamame?? I am amazed at how much it even tastes like it too. How intriguing.

Den’s Gyokuro Kin was my eye-opening introduction to what “real” green tea could be. After I finished my first 50g a couple months back, I waited for my houhin to arrive before I broke into my new packages. I’m still working on getting my timing and leaf ratio correct, but it’s a great choice for anyone looking for an affordable “daily gyokuro.”

First steep (145*; 90secs): Delightful! Even though it soaked for a good minute and a half, the tea has a light, grassy emerald color and a lot of sweetness. Love the umami, the taste of freshly steamed vegetables, and the smooth mouthfeel afterwards. The flavor lingers slightly, but is usually gone by the time I finish brewing up the next cup.

Second (165*; 60 secs): A gorgeous color that’s closer to the jade you might find in a fukamushi sencha, but with a lot more umami and very little astringency. This is my favorite cup — slightly buttery, wholly vegetal, and a joy to sip and “take in.” There wasn’t as much of that smooth mouthfeel I get from the first one, but I love the flavor of this cup!

Third (175/ 2+ mins): A little longer than I usually steep it for, but it still turned out OK. By now, the bright umami flavor is starting to get a bit diluted, but I can still taste what I liked about the last two cups with a burst of astringency.

Fourth (Boiling; 5+ mins): Final steep this time. Still green, but more bitter up front/astringent in its finish. Very little of that vegetal umami taste remains, but it has more of that “bitter freshness” I enjoy in sencha. I could never get four cups out of my kyusu, but the smaller size of the houhin seems to “stretch it out” a lot.

In summation: not as varied and nuanced as higher-end gyokuro, but a tasty alternative to Karigane blends for the price.

Oh my good golly gosh! This tea is fantastic. It is a lot sweeter than I thought it would be. The grassy/vegetal flavor just glides across my tongue. Absolutely no bitterness, but just a hint of astringency.

The color of this tea is a beautiful bright green. It makes me impatient for spring to arrive…

I think I am going to cheat on my buddy, Sencha, and hangout more with Gyokuro today.

This is the third of the three teas that I recently purchased from Den’s tea and this is by far my favorite of the three. Of course that is a slightly unfair comparison because the other two were senchas, and I am a much bigger fan of gyokuro, but I felt that the two senchas really did not have that much flavor.

Regardless, this gyokuro has the sweet/bitter combination that you expect out of a gyokuro, but it also has an interesting note of pine tree after the initial burst of flavor.

Gyokuro Kin, is truly a great gyokuro at a fair price.

Open the bag and you can instantly smell the delicious fresh sweetness this tea gives. The leaves are an even mix of broken and unbroken needles with a rich dark green color.

I brewed this tea following very closely Den’s brewing guide using 160F water and 1 and a half min steep time in a Kyusu.

The resulting brew had a very subtle sweet aroma with a very saturated green color (mostly due to a large amount of particles in the cup). This gyokuro is sweet and full bodied with a slight bitterness that becomes more apparent as your cup cools down. My second cup, this time brewed at 180F, had a much stronger bitter finish but still had the sweetness of the first.

Overall, I like this gyokuro. It has the sweetness that you expect, but with a heavy mouthfeel similar to that of a fukamushi sencha. This combination makes a heartier brew than other gyokuros, perfect to drink with a meal.

Let me add my encomiums to the list of postive reviews of this “affordable luxury.” Even with a lower tea to water ratio than Den’s suggests (I want to make this 2 oz. last a bit!), this is a green tea you can really sink your teeth into—a vibrant brothy soup that (especially on the second infusion) tastes like the briny ocean. If you are not scared away by a bold, sweet, fishy spume of a tea, you’ll love this. As a black tea lover first and foremost, this is one green that really satisfies my soul, especially on a foggy day like yesterday, when the southeast wind blanketed my house in salty ocean air.

I had a tough week, so last night I opened up my pouch of Den’s Gyokuro Kin, placed a good rounded teaspoon of leaves into my Sincha Kyusu and started to relax just smelling the aroma of this beautiful tea.

When Den’s says that “Gyokuro Kin is a cup of affordable luxury,” they are being modest as this is one really fantastic Gyokuro. There truly is a great harmony of natural sweetness and slight bitterness, supplemented by a mellow umami flavor and very light astringency.

1st cup: Water @ 160F; Steep 90 sec
2nd cup: Water @ 180F; Steep 30 sec
I couldn’t resist a 3rd steep, which was nice but gets a bit too astringent for me, and looses the mellowness. Truly a wonderful way to end the week!

How can I be so blind? You know you have too many teas when you forget you have a gyokuro hiding around. I received this from Christmas as a gift from my mom. I finally found it in my green tea shelf. This has been an awesome week in tea for me. I had my first silver needle, first milk oolong, now the first gyokuro.

WOW, this tea is so beautifully green! When brewed, it just smells and LOOKS like fresh spinach. I let it cool a little, and this is truly a cup of perfection. It’s just so tasty, grassy. I really don’t feel experienced enough to give a description, it’s beyond words, too.

It was indeed much sweeter than I expected. Very refreshing, smooth and sweet.

I used 3 teaspons for 9-10 ounces water, which is approximately what Den’s called for in the instructions. Incredibly sweet stuff. I have had Gyokuru before from other vendors, but nothing this powerful. Smells like the sea and freshly mowed fields. The liqour is greenish yellow and cloudy. It has a touch of umami, but an amazing blast of sweetness too. Thick on the tongue, but with no astringency. Each sip from the first steep was really a pleasure. I did a second steep at 180F for 30 seconds. This steep was about the same color, but I could taste some bitter, probably due to the higher water temperature. Still has a thick mouthfeel (I like that word) and a sweetness though that make it worth the second steep. Strangely, on sips of the second steep, I could taste almost a minty-ness at the end of the swallow. An interesting tea that I shall purchase again, but sparingly, since you do use a lot per serving and it is fairly expensive.

This is probably a completely inaccurate rating, as I am pretty sick right now and can barely taste anything. I’m not sure why I thought to brew up one of my higher-end teas while ill, but I did it anyway, and I may as well write about it.

This is my third time trying to brew this tea; I’ve been having quite a struggle with it. I’ve wanted to try gyokuro for a long time and considering, from what I hear, its picky-ness with brewing parameters, I figure I would start with something…economical.

Well, the first time I tried, I guess the water was too hot—incredible, puckering astringency that only got stronger. The second time I think it was too cool, and tasted like nearly nothing. This time I stuck with the cooler temperature (140-145), upped the leaf ratio to 1g/1oz, and forced myself, against all my past experiences, to let it steep for a full 90 seconds. I have an incredibly low tolerance for bitterness, and will often brew my sencha at a lower temp and for a shorter time than most people, so it was hard to make myself actually steep this as long as I did, but it was worth a shot.

The resulting first cup was interesting— it was mostly smooth and mellow and, I think “brothy” is the word most tea-snobs use. But it was flecked with these “spots” it seemed, of sharp astringency that was just a little offputting, but interesting. I kind of want to attribute this to the many bits of leaves that passed through the strainer, but no idea if that was really the case. It felt wonderful going down though, even if I couldn’t taste it very well. Kind of a chicken soup sort of feel.

The second infusion was even better— stronger in flavor and lacking those little sharp points of astringency (which again would make sense if the flecks of leaf were a cause, since most of them were washed out in the first steeping). By the third steeping it had mellowed out and I couldn’t taste much (but again, my nose feels like someone managed to cram an entire sock into it right now).

I forgot to mention I’m using my little 2oz green kyusu from Den’s Tea. It is the cutest little thing and gyokuro seems to be my best excuse to use it. Sometimes— I know this is probably the most uncultured and rude-sounding behavior in the tea world, but I can’t help myself— I enjoy sipping the tea straight from the tiny spout. Shhhh.

I actually ended up re-steeping this many, many more times, probably around 10-15. Weird as it sounds, that warm, grassy water went a long way in helping me feel better.

It’ll be interesting to duplicate these brewing parameters again when I’m feeling better and see if it’s actually any good. I’m a little skeptical of my own tastes right now, since I tried a bit of my boyfriend’s orange spice tea that had apparently been accidentally left steeping for half an hour, and thought it was pretty good. Which makes me think I should be using my temporary taste-loss as an opportunity to sip through all my cheap and/or stale tea that I need to clear out, instead of drinking higher-end stuff like this. But it’s hard to regret it; I really did enjoy this tea!

My first gyokuro- coming from senchas and dragonwells, the umami and overall complexity of this tea kind of kicked me in the face- but not in a bad way. Very interesting, but definitely not an everyday tea for me. Also, I followed the instructions from Den’s, but I think I may have used a little too much leaf/not enough water. Anyway, I’m going to do another infusion later, I’d like to try and pull out a little more sweetness in that one.

This is one of the teas that I got in the Den’s Tea starters kit thing. I personally thought that it was kind of strange to be giving this away after seeing the price of it normally, but I’m not one to turn away awesome things.

This tea was strange to me. The second infusion was better than the first by at least an order of magnitude. The first infusion had a light flavor with a slight bitter undertone and gave off a unique but relaxing aroma. The second infusion was significantly darker than the first and came out much more bitter.

I am more of a fan of bitter things (just making the switch from coffee to tea) and as such, I have yet to break myself of that desire.

This is a much more fine tea than any sencha you may encounter (although I am lead to understand that such is the case for higher quality teas) , so just keep that in mind.

All in all, i think this tea is solid. Another quality product from Den’s.

To my surprise, this tea came as a complimentary sample, and I am sure glad it did. I have had only one opportunity to drink gyokuro before, and it was for only one sip – a “just to try” kind of thing.

The dry leaves are lovely. Emerald green. Seaweed aroma. Wet, they are even more beautiful. Darkened in color, smelling of grass. The aroma of the tea is grassy as well. The bright green liquor is clear (save for the leaf particles). The flavor is medium-bodied, and both bitter and sweet.

During the second infusion, the leaves expanded more. The flavor was more full-bodied and flavorful. While it was a more bitter (not overly so), the aftertaste was sweeter. Because of this quality, I prefer the second infusion to the first.

This gyokuro is not only a pleasure to drink, but a beautiful tea as well. It is for anyone who aesthetically appreciates tea.

Sample. Okay. Definitely very seaweedy/grassy. Don’t taste any bitterness.