Gyokuro Green Tea Uji

The husband caught a whiff of this while we were in the bulk teas section of the grocery store so I picked up a little bit to sample. This stuff is selling for $199.99 a pound! Goodness. I hope this is good but I’ve never had much luck with enjoying gyokuro. But eh, that’s the joy of bulk food buying – I can try just a little.

I’m going to up late tonight so I’m not too concerned with caffeine so I went ahead and did the suggested 4g of leaf in 6oz of water. I’m really surprised at how nice the leaf looks considering where I got it. Dark green, clear, somewhat silky (not silky enough to be super-fresh but fresh enough, I think). Dry it smells both clean and buttery.

And now I remember one reason I rarely drink gyokuro. I’m impatient for the water to cool. Sigh. But finally, the water is ready and in 45s I’ll have some gyokuro.

Mmm, okay, this is good. Very clean tasting but still sweet. Makes me think of honeydew melon. There’s also a thicker taste that gets mixed in there. What I assume they are calling butter but the husband says reminds him of Le Sueur very young sweet peas (a household favorite). I can see both butter and pea-like but waffle between the two. Ultimately, it is more a feeling of creaminess than an actual taste for me.

I can see why this is supposedly award-winning. This is good. The husband thought so too as he tried to drink about half my cup. Depending on how subsequent steeps go, this tea might get my elusive 5 star rating.

ETA:
Steep 2 – pour started at 5s. OMG, it’s buttered grass. So awesome.
Steep 3 – pour started at 1min. This steep isn’t as intense as the first two. Should have done 1:15 – 1:30. Still nice (if light). Tastes like thin honey.

Let’s just get this out of the way: Auggy is a goddess.

No, seriously. Because I think I’ve finally gotten what all the hullabaloo has been about Japanese greens.

I’m perpetually amazed at how different various permutations of tea can be. Not only through the white – black scale, but from different companies and different preparations. It’s almost frightening. I thought I pretty much knew what gyokuro was about from the Harney & Sons version I had a few weeks ago.

I thought wrong. Completely wrong.

Gyokuro is one of those teas that’s beautiful to look at. I don’t think that photos do it justice. The leaves are silky and a deep blue-green, most thinner than a toothpick. Really gorgeous stuff. The smell coming off them is a sweet, very grassy note, with just a hint of butter.

So I waited… and waited… and waited for the damned water to cool down enough to begin steeping this one. I believe I started the pour at 50 secs, just because I really wanted to make sure that this one didn’t oversteep. It’s that delicate. I also steeped with the lid off, to give the gyokuro some room to breathe. I don’t want to scorch the leaves in ANY way.

I knew immediately while the tea was pouring that this was going to be something special. The smell… oh my gahd. Very grass, but also very, very buttery. Mmmmm. The wet leaves smelled much the same. It’s like a freshly cut grass smell, mixed with melted butter. It smells delicious.

And the taste? Joygasm. Seriously.

I’ve been having a lot of trouble with greens, I think mainly because in general, I tend to dislike green things. I really don’t like vegetables. I hate salads. Beyond artichokes and asparagus, and maybe the occasional piece of broccoli… yeah, they’re not my thing. But this tea… it’s lighter than Harney’s gyokuro, but just as intense and interesting. It’s pretty grassy, but that grassiness is tempered by butter. Rich butter. It’s silky-smooth and delicious and satisfying and REFRESHING. You can taste the award-winningness of this one.

There’s just this general sweetness to the entire cup as well. There’s really no astringency. Towards the end of some sips I sometimes get this almost tart feeling that develops just into a green sweetness. It’s almost similar to the sweetness you find in sugar snap peas (another green thing that I love).

I think Auggy just converted me with one cup of tea. I can’t wait to see what the second steep tastes like, although I probably won’t drink the entire thing, since gyokuro’s caffeine levels are off the charts. But DELICIOUS and NOM. Wow. Taste the quality!

The Second Steep (5 secs, 140 degrees) was pretty tasty, but a bit thinner than the first. The taste was a bit more grassy and a bit less buttery. Hrm. I’ll try to get a third steep out of this, but I doubt I’m going to finish the cup at all. It’ll be just for tasting purposes! NOM, though!

So Steep Three (1:10, 140 degrees) just sort of tasted like grassy umami water. Not that it was bad, but there’s no tea-ness to it. So I dumped the leaves out. I also played around with the wet leaves a bit, and they’re as soft as silk.

Auggy was kind enough to send me a little of this. This is the first gyokuro I’ve made myself and I wanted to do it up right so I got a kyusu. The tea arrived here before the kyusu did, so there was a bit of an internal battle going on until I got my Rishi stuff. I was literally, at one point, standing and staring at this tea until I caught myself and shook myself out of it.

Anyhow, I was good and I waited. I’m not sure what difference making this in the kyusu made, but I liked rocking and swishing the stuff out.

I read/heard/saw somewhere that gyokuros are supposed to sit for 5 or so minutes in cold/room temperature water to open them up and keep them from before steeping them warm. That’s something that’s stuck with me for some reason, but I’m also not sure how specific that is to the type of gyokuro, and whatnot. I’ve also read many different things about water to leaf ratios and the temperature of water that’s “supposed” to be used for hot/warm infusions. I’ve heard that you’re not supposed to use water hotter than 160°F and that you should infuse in ice water. What all of this has led me to believe is that I just need to drink a lot more gyokuro and see what slams my door.

Anyway, I let this sit in some room temperature for five minutes. [I did try to drink that but it was relatively flavorless.] Then I did about four steeps at 1 minute in 140°F water, all of which tasted relatively the same. I probably could have kept going, to be honest, and I make a face as I type this – I think I might have wasted the leaves as a result. I also see that Auggy has varied her steeping times for different infusions [which is what you’re probably supposed to do]. Luckily, I have some left of this to play around with, so I’ll have to try steeping otherwise. I think I’m going to try and read some more about these before I do, because right now I’m very much saturated with conflicting information and I think some of it’s going to begin dripping out if I don’t try and filter and sort some of it.

All right, enough about my brain scream over “proper” gyokuro steeping. The tea. The tea was good! I really doubt that this truly shows the range of where this can go, but I enjoyed what I got out of it and that’s a good thing. What I was missing was that buttery taste that both the description and Auggy both mentioned. I was searching for it, and I think that maybe because I was I thought I caught a glimpse of it, but that could have been purely psychological. What I did get was a vegetal taste followed by a delicious, chlorophyll-y sweetness. The sweetness was bright and high and clear, and only grew in volume when accompanied by inhalation. It also, and I’m really not sure how to describe this accurately, it tingled. It hopped around on my tongue.

This experience has intrigued me enough to really become interested in gyokuro, so I think I’ll be trying to procure some more and do a little experimenting.

Also, should you be interested, pictures of the new kyusu begin here [they are, however, without tea]. http://bit.ly/5oRgh0

So I bought some gyokuro from englishteastore.com for an almost too good to be true price. So I was skeptical about its quality considering that most places charge 3 times the amount. So far I’m not that impressed. Maybe its a lower end gyokuro or something. I’ve experimented with a range of temps and steep times….100-160 and 1 second to 2 minutes. The later steeps are shortest. I looked online about ways to prepare it and the customary japanese method is very complicated but super cool! And they eat the leaves afterwards. He used vinegar and sesame oil so I tryed the same and it was delicious! It tasted like a seaweed salad from a sushi restaurant. Its nice to know how healthy it is too.
So most of my steeps are a little bitter despite using very low steep times and low temps. And I don’t use the last few drops becasue thats typically the most bitter. I heard that the more rolled up the leave the higher end it is. And these are maybe a little tighter rolled than my stock sencha. I ‘ll just keep experimenting. I’ve have had a couple lucky steeps that taste way better than the regular sencha so there is hope!

I’ve had gyokuro from different sources but I think this is one of the best. It comes from Uji, which is the province of Japan that is best for green tea. It has a delicate and pretty high vegetal flavor, with a hint of sweetness at the end