This tea was so unexciting the first time I had it, it’s been sitting in my pantry for the past 5 months, ignored and unloved. But with The Final Sipdown: Day 3 approaching rapidly, I decided to do some prep work and used up about half of the remaining sample. For one really big cup. Okay, the initial idea was to decupboard more than one tea today, but I do not need to drink 40-some oz of green tea at a go, so it’s being split in half. Plan on seeing this one go bye-bye tomorrow.
It’s not as bad as I remember it but it’s still not super-tasty. I decreased the steep time by a minute and that helped it a lot – there is a fair amount of astringency but it doesn’t dip into bitterness like it did at 3minutes. I’m sure being abandoned in my pantry for months and months has not helped it any as far as freshness but it was still acceptably tasty. I tend to prefer deeper steamed senchas and this one doesn’t have that same sweetness or quite the same thickness I’d get with one of those, but as lighter steaming goes, it’s nifty.
