It has been a long time since I had Gyokuro, and I made this wrong. I didn’t remember that the Breville only heats water to 160 degrees. I’ve set the Zojirushi for 140 degrees now, so I’ll be able to have the right temperature water.
I was also messing around quite a bit because I had put the tea in the Breville basket before I realized the temperature problem, and it was damp from having rinsed out yesterday’s leaves. So a lot of the tea stuck to the basket. I transferred as much as I could from the basket to a Finum basket, and then poured the water through both to loosen up the leaves in the Breville so I could move them to the Finum. As a result, I really don’t know how long I steeped. In any case, I am going to try doing it Samovar’s way next time because however I did it was apparently quite inauthentic even though it approximated the directions on the back of the sample packet.
But I will say that despite all the error, this is a nice cup of tea. I’d forgotten how dark and beautiful Gyokuro is in the dry leaf and how green and murky it makes the liquor. I’d forgotten the richness of how the dry leaves smell and the dusky, brothy flavor of the steeped tea. One day I’ll learn to make it correctly.
Flavors: Seaweed, Soybean, Umami