Strawberry Sencha No. 24

On Tuesday afternoon, my husband took me out to lunch in the Sellwood neighborhood in Portland, and right around the corner was Tea Chai Te, and after lunch he was good enough to bring me there to grab a cup of iced tea (and some loose leaf to go). This is the tea I ordered iced, but I also got an ounce of it to bring with me, and I brewed some of that tonight. I have to admit that I prefer the tea that I brewed myself over the tea that they served to me, I suspect that they didn’t make the tea strong enough when they added ice to it, making for a weak iced tea. This is MUCH better … lots of delicious, juicy strawberry flavor and sweet, buttery Sencha.

So yummy!

June Wedding! Time for something old! As soon as I got back from my trip out this weekend, I needed to restock my fridge with iced teas, so I cold-brewed this tea which came from my March 2017 trip to Tea Chai Te.

I definitely don’t really like it when fruity green teas are so overpowered with fruit flavorings that you can’t even taste the base tea anymore; this tea certainly doesn’t have that problem. The base tea actually is the dominant flavor here, and it is a very pleasant sencha, having a very fresh, spring-like grassy flavor. I honestly don’t think this particular tea has any natural or artificial fruit flavorings in it; if it does, they are extremely mild, because the strawberry flavor in this tea is actually quite muted. The tea has some dried strawberries in it, so it does have a natural sweetness to it that you wouldn’t normally find in a sencha, and there is a sweet berry note toward the end of the sip, but it is rather subtle. Calling it a strawberry sencha is almost a bit of a stretch, since it just doesn’t have that overwhelming strawberry flavor you’d find in a flavored tea. It is a softer, sweeter green tea, and as far as an iced tea, I found it very thirst quenching… so it did have some nice qualities. But the fruitiness was a bit too subtle here. I don’t like my fruit greens so overpowered I can no longer taste the base green, but I wanted a touch of strawberry here… just a bit more of a happy medium between the base and blended flavor. This came off more as a pure sencha with fruit as an added natural sweetener to me, rather than actually having any fruit flavor. It is certainly a nice sencha, though!

Needs a lot of leaf! After you brew it, I think it smells much stronger than it tastes. First brew was done at 2 minutes, second at 4. I haven’t tried a third, the second was still alright so it could be worth it.
Feels better warm than hot.