Sakura Sencha

Whenever I talk to someone about tea, there's a good chance I'll say how I only drink "real" tea and how there's a difference between tea and tisanes ("herbal tea" that contains no camellia sinensis). And even though Jasmine green tea was the stepping stone into my current tea obsession, I can't remember the last time I actually drank a flavored/infused tea. This week at Wegman's though I saw that they had some Sakura Sencha in their loose leaf section and I can't recall ever seeing it there before. And since I just ran out of my green tea stock, I thought it a good idea to give this a try.

The Twelve Days of Japan: Oishii desu!

EHHH??!!??
[/Japanese voice]

I've really fallen behind on these posts, but now I finally come back to you with a detailed account of my trip to Japan this April!

Get ready because you're in for a lot of reading....

What happens when a campfire and black tea have sex

There's a little cafe near Johns Hopkins University called Chocolatea that I discovered a year or so ago. As you can probably surmise from the name, they specialize in gourmet chocolates and tea, the latter of which being the only thing I'm really interested in. In addition to their cafe selection of tea, they have a decent retail section that includes bulk bags of loose-leaf tea, tea-ware and there is always some kind of Ito En tea available in the cooler.

Despite their focus on chocolate and tea, it seems like everyone that goes there just treats it like any other cafe and just orders normal fare, which is a shame. I mean, a lot of people do order specialty drinks that you wouldn't normally be able to find a Starbucks, but they're always like a latte version or something. I've also never even seen someone so much as LOOK at the chocolate display case either. I'm surprised they haven't cut their losses and gotten rid of it already.

Anyway, I like to go here on the weekend sometime to get breakfast and a cup of something I haven't tried before. Today I thought I should "go bold" with a cup of black tea, which it seems like I haven't drank for 1-2 years. I decided to go with the China Lapsang Souchong.

I was pretty sure that I had Lapsang somewhere before and thought it was a pretty basic variety. When the aroma wafted past my nose though, I realized that I don't remember ever drinking a cup of liquid smoke. The first thing that came to mind was chipotle peppers and then I tried to articulate it more specifically and came up with this message I jotted down on my phone:

"Smells like a smokey campfire with remnants of rendered animal fat; no tea aroma"


And that's pretty much what it tasted like, too, minus the part about animal fat. The after taste vaguely made me think that I had just eaten a Slim Jim or like I had been smoking a cigar made out of hickory chips. That being said, it wasn't bad, just very strong and not tea-like.


The only thing I don't like about Chocolatea is that they always use boiling water (straight from that little spout on an industrial coffee maker) to make EVERY kind of tea. Since it's supposed to be a "tea lounge", I really wish they would prepare it the correct way.* 

* This is when you're probably going to think to yourself, "You're such a tea snob". Guess what? Different teas require different brewing techniques, otherwise you can end up with something that tastes nothing like it's supposed to. In the case of black tea, near boiling water is actually fine, but then it becomes an issue of having to wait 5-10 minutes before you can actually start drinking it. I think the best rule of thumb is to serve tea at drinking temperature to begin with, sub 200º F if you want to get technical.


But in general it's a great place, and the food is always pretty good. I thought the Lapsang was a decent companion for the egg/sausage/cheese sandwich I got today.

Next time I go I think I'm going to try and ask them where they get their tea from though, just for my own curiosity.

Like Tea Dust in the Wind

This is my tea station at work... more specifically it's the right side of this table in my office where I put all my tea stuff. When I can maintain the rhythm and routine, I will drink tea every morning via a convenient method of using my tea infuser/tumbler and this Zojirushi water heater. It still kinda impresses me how I can do it so easily within an office, which seems to add to the zen-like experience of tea drinking over all... maybe.

Anyway, the mesh screen on my tea infuser is starting to develop larger holes in it from regular use. In addition to that, it's not a superfine screen to begin with. It would normally be a problem for most people, except I happen to almost exclusively drink sencha. Specifically, most of the sencha I use is fairly brittle and either ends up getting broken into smaller pieces, or just turned out that way via it's processing to begin with. There's also usually a good amount of what I like to call "shake" (also referred to as fannings or dust).

Anyone got a bowl?

I usually buy good quality tea in the first place, so it's not like this shake is bullshit grade stuff you would find in a Lipton-esque tea bag (although it closely resembles what you would find if you emptied one), but if I don't separate it, then it gets through the screen of my infuser. Drinking tea fragments in your brewed tea isn't a bad thing either and it's something that happens 90% of the time anyway, especially if brewing via a traditional method (kyusu, etc).

So several months ago I started to try and remove as much as the shake as I can before hand, which is actually pretty easy. I just put the tea into the lid of the infuser and use it like a flour sifter, moving it back and forth until no more small particles make their way through. A lot of the time its a bit depressing too, seeing just how much shake there is in some of the more expensive teas I buy and knowing that it's "going to waste". Seriously, I'll buy a 3oz can of shincha for like $50 and probably end up sifting out 30-40% of it out onto the table. Sometimes I don't know if it's my fault for acquiring a new found sense of OCD or if the tea producers are just not being as careful during the processing of the leaves as they should be.

Doctor Strangebrew or: How I Learned To Stop Complaining and Love Tea [part 2]

 Again, all I have to say is thank god for Wegman's... if it weren't for their insane mission to stock as many amazing food products as they do, I wouldn't have become the avid tea drinker that I am. They're planning on opening new stores in Maryland and a bunch of people were complaining about how "un-green" they are and that they're trying to muscle out competition, but all those people need to shut up. To my knowledge, they were one of the first chain stores to not only carry Ito En products, but to sell them cheaper than anywhere else ($1.50 per 16.9oz bottle... suck on that Whole Foods!)

Doctor Strangebrew or: How I Learned To Stop Complaining and Love Tea [part 1]

This morning it just dawned upon me that I could take my Ito En fandom to new heights by spending about two hours looking at their website via the Internet Archive (www.archive.org). They only have archives from 2005-2009, but I went ahead and looked through most of them and jotted down some notes pertaining to how their product lineup has changed over the years.

Technically the first time I became aware of Ito En was in 2006 when I went to Japan for the first time. It was during cherry blossom season and I remember walking around Ueno Park doing some hanami. Up until then I was taking the gaijin approach to eating and was mostly going for stuff I was familiar with, but kept on seeing people drinking this stuff out of green bottles. I was getting thirsty from walking around in the sun all day and when I went to get some lunch I ran into one of the million vending machines selling the stuff. I figured if everyone else in the country was drinking it, I should probably give it a try. I don't even think I knew what it was before then either; I probably assumed it was tea but had no idea what kind. It wasn't until much later that I realized it would be my first bottle of Ito En's flagship beverage: Oi Ocha.

Example of "real" Oi Ocha bottle from Japan

That first taste I took... was completely awful. I'm sure a lot of other Americans have the same reaction too, mainly due to our country's preference to sugary/flavored beverages. Oi Ocha is pure Japanese green tea, no flavor or sugar added, but to me it just tasted like they brewed fresh grass clippings and bottled it. I really had a hard time finishing the entire bottle too, in fact I think I did end up throwing away the last 1/4 of it; it had gotten especially gross after it started to get get warm in the sun, too. It would a long time before I would ever cross paths with Ito En again, or even figure out what it was that I had drank that day in Japan.

Upcoming Videos

The first big video series I have planned is going to be a Japanese RTD (ready to drink) shoot out. I will be reviewing and comparing various brands including Ito En, Suntory, Asahi and Kirin. There will be several videos in this series and I hope you find them interesting, so please stay tuned as I continue to plan everything out!