"Ujibashi San no Ma" (Kirameki) Uji Asamushi Sencha

The scent of this Kirameki sencha is quite sweet and rich even before the dry leaves hit the preheated pot. Deep green leaves, 4.7 grams into my 5 oz kyusu.

1st infusion in my kyusu was with cooler water, 150 degrees, and absurdly short at 20 seconds (I was thirsty and impatient). Sweet peas, vegetal, but of course too dilute for best impression.

2nd infusion at 30 seconds, 155 degrees, much better, a hint of astringency behind the warm, vegetal, grassy sweetness.

3rd infusion at 45 seconds, 165 degrees, warm, sweet, grassy, delicious. A hint of that warmth of sun-warmed dry hay, not quite caramel, but deep and lovely.

4th 160 degrees, 90 seconds, milder than I expected for what was a longer-than-anticipated infusion—really seems rather dilute. That rich depth of the last infusion is not there, but what is here is sweet and pleasant, if not deep.

5th 170 degrees, about 2 minutes, and again, the depth is lacking but the surface is still good. I now really regret that first too-short infusion because this tea doesn’t seem to be giving me the many infusions that compensate for the first mistake.

Overall, another lovely tea, and I’ll be a lot more careful iwth the first infusions next time. 45 seconds is probably a better starting time, then 30, 60, 90, 2 min.

Smooth, and the flavors are delicious and well-balanced!

I think the best parameters I’ve tried thus far are:
1g per 1oz, 140 F: 2 mins, then 45 seconds, then 2 mins 15 seconds

All three steepings were very pleasing. The third was surprisingly still full of flavor and subtlety. This tea showed that I could find a good asamushi sencha outside of Honyama. I didn’t doubt that it was possible, but hadn’t had any light-steamed sencha that compared. I recommend it!

Quite a nice Asamushi from O-Cha..actually from the Tsuen Tea house said to be one of the oldest in Japan. This tasting is the Shincha version btw. Went fairly cool and a min 30 first steep. nice astringency balance. second steep went 1 min and then back up on third and fourth while going a bit hotter each time. not my favorite Asa Shincha but definitely worth a shot

Shincha 2022.

This was a challenging tea. I waited for a while to rate it as I’ve been trying to make it work to no avail. Now that I’m down to the last few grams of the 100g bag, I’m convinced that the problem is not me but the tea.

Despite playing around with different temperatures and times, the tea remains stubbornly bitter. Once you get past the bitterness, there is umami mingled with spinach, an oceanic saltiness, and fatty tuna. It lacks the freshness of new spring tea and just seems flat to me.

O-Cha is one of the OG online Japanese tea shops and usually has good quality teas but this was a rare miss for me.