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Flavour, milk, and sugar
-- Why not? But there is a line --
Every Japanese green tea is traditionally drunk without sugar. Adding milk to tea is introduced by Madame de Sévigné in late 17th century, and at the same time, adding precious sugar is a kind of status of aristocrats. I believe all the tea should originally been drunk without adding anything.
But especially Matcha really matches milk & sugar. Since 1980's, Matcha ice cream and sweet Matcha beverages like Matcha au lait have widely been accepted in Japan and actually very popular now. I suppose the sweeten Matcha has huge potential to popularize Japanese green tea for the western people who even do not like green tea.
For flavours, like jasmine and rosemary, I thought Japanese green tea was not suited. But one of my suppliers has begun to make "Thé vert à la menthe" for French market, and got very good result from the preference survey of 60 people, even me and my wife, Japanese, found it very good. Now I deal in it as a whole sale product, so if you are a professional and interested in it, please contact me. I will send you a sample.
I have been thinking the balance of the tradition and new style of Japanese green tea for a long time, and now I would like to advance the provisional opinion for it.
- Gyokuro has several style of brewing, but should be drunk straight regardless the way of brewing.
- Sencha and Bancha can be drunk with sugar but milk. Lemon and honey is also relevant to add to. But I would like the people to enjoy the original taste of Sencha after getting use to it, especially for the expensive leaf.
- Strong brewed Hojicha can be drunk with sugar and milk, it is like Chai Latte.
- Matcha should be drunk straight in Japanese tea ceremony, as a matter of course. But it can be drunk with milk, cream and sugar as a casual tea drink.
- Some people say sugar is addictive, and I partially agree with it (but I prefer Coke to Diet Coke anyway). I do not suppose it is good to drink gallons of sweeten green tea.
I have proposed the tea recipes for drink, cooking, baking, and cocktail. Please enjoy your cup of tea with your own style.
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Practical Sencha brewing
There are several way to make a cup of Sencha, but the most of the instructions are based on "Japanese condition" and lack the measuring method, which confuses the people living in other counties.
The following video shows very basic, traditional and also practical for everyone.
The leaf: 2g for 1 cup. I recommend to brew 2 or 3 cup in one time.
The water: 70℃. The hardness has to be below 180mg/l, which may be tap water through Brita (below 50 with new filter), Volvic (60), or CRYSTAL GEYSER (38).
The infusion time: 1 minute for good quality Sencha (Yame tea can be always 1 minute). 90 seconds or 2 minutes for others. Fukamushi (deep steamed tea, typical Shizuoka tea) can be 30 seconds regardless the quality.
Other infusion: For the second infusion, you do not need to wait. Pour water into the Kyusu and serve the tea into cups right away. You can enjoy the third or fourth infusion.
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Introducing Shinobi-cha
For all Gyokuro lovers and people who would like to get on the life with Gyokuro, it is a pretty easy way to enjoy it. You do not need to care for brewing at all.
There is a scientific background why an ice-brewing method keeps Gyokuro taste for such a long time. The signature of Gyokuro taste is coming from umami of L-Theanine. L-Theanine has very delicate taste and it takes long time to be extracted into water from leaf.
In case of hot water brewing, water "cooks" leaf to force L-Theanine out, then the leaf locks remaining L-Theanine in. So when it comes to the second infusion, we are actually using "cooked" leaf, which makes tea taste like Sencha rather than Gyokuro.
Inside the pot of Shinobi-cha, both infusing and infused water keeps the temperatue around 4 Celsius. The leaf cannot be cooked under this environment and takes time to infuse the tea contents.
After all the ice qubes melt, you can use hot water (70-80C) to brew the second.
Gyokuro
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Thanks for that helpful tip!
Keep up the good work ;)
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