Thai sheng maocha and Vietnamese old-tree source green

Thai sheng left, Vietnamese ancient tree green right

I'm comparison tasting an ancient tree Vietnamese green tea with a Thai version of sheng pu'er from Lampang Tea (only similar to pu'er, really, since that's used as a Yunnan region-specific designation).  This green tea is another that Huyen Dinh passed on in that visit a month or so back, with a white tea version and Northern Vietnamese sheng version reviewed here.  It's nice having tea friends like that.

I love this family picture of Huyen (she's on the left)

A bit about the "ancient tree" source part for the green tea:  it's not the same type of claim as is made for gushu sheng, even though it's talking about roughly the same plants, and it certainly sounds like it.  The quality of sheng pu'er has come to be associated with the age of the tea plants, which evolved into related claims meaning a certain thing, and to some of those being exaggerated.  Related to green tea in Vietnam they're just describing the plant origin; it's not really used as a claim to a type, quality, or aspect range of the tea, as I understand it.

that Lampang Tea Moonlight version was cool looking

That tea style always reminded me of sheng, and this will be a good way to check on the overlap, even though the Thai version might not be typical of a style of Yunnan sheng, and those vary a good bit anyway.  I mentioned making that type association in this post three years ago, after a visit to Hanoi; funny how rough those reviews seemed back then.


In the last post on a Moonlight White tea by the same vendor I mentioned that they also compress this Thai tea into tuochas, which I'm nearly certain applies to this tea version.

Lampang Tea Thai sheng tuochas

Review

I often go a bit light on the first infusion, to see where things are going to go and get a feel for tweaking brewing approach, as I did this time.

The Vietnamese green tea is nice, sweet and complex, a bit earthy, and a little dry.  It has some vegetal range, with a mineral base that seems common with a lot more typical style green teas from Vietnam, in particular with those fish-hook style Thai Nguyen originated teas.  The astringency is moderated for using cooler temperature water (just over 70 C), but it has plenty of feel from what is present.  The sweetness stays present nicely as an aftertaste aspect.

The Thai sheng is quite different (or sheng-like tea, if you really don't use that term too for pu'er-like teas outside of Yunnan, but why wouldn't you).  It's fruity; not unheard of in Yunnan sheng but not how that usually works out.  It has some mineral structure that gives it a touch of dryness too but not as much astringency as the Vietnamese tea, even though I'm using hotter water to brew it (not full boiling point, around 90 C).  The character is quite positive; complex, intense, and bright.

The green tea is a lot more broken, almost chopped, really, and that one factor alone might account for a lot of the difference in astringency, possibly as much or more of the type difference.  Of course estimating the proportion of that input difference would just be a guess.  I can notice clear patterns in having tried a lot of different versions of teas but extending that to assigning cause and effect is difficult.

they look similar brewed; the sheng was slightly darker in some rounds

Second infusion

This was a fast infusion, around 10 seconds, but this green tea is bordering on brewed too strong.  It's still in an ok range, it works, but this tea is probably better suited for a light version of Western style brewing than for a Gongfu approach.  Just another guess, of course, but that one I can check during a breakfast this week.  Somehow the astringency is moderate for this, down to just a bit of edge and dryness, low considering the flavor intensity level.  The sweetness is really nice in this; any more intense and it would be too much.


That flavor range seems mostly floral.  It's complex; a catchy kind of floral that seems like a mix of flowers, maybe something like orchid and violet.  I keep smelling plumeria since they grow around our house and on the walk to school I do with my daughter; it's not too far from those.  They're really sweet and pleasant.  We just picked two from the yard and they smells different than the ones that grown along a local sidewalk, or at the pool where those two do lessons, a lot more lemony.

that plumeria in the yard (just blooming a little now)

with her in the other yard section

The Thai sheng is in such a different range comparison tasting won't help in terms of outlining common ground.  These are vaguely similar, in a sense, but not in enough of a sense listing out common ground for aspects would work.  The general character runs in a slightly similar direction but that's about it.  This tea is fruity, as the main aspect that hits you.  Beyond that there's an earthiness, a light mineral tone.  It's softer in feel than the green but has decent complexity.  I'll do more with teasing apart a flavor list next round.

Thai tea left; Huyen said the other was roughed up a bit in transit

Third infusion

The Vietnamese green is still really intense and pleasant; that sweetness and pronounced floral falls into a nice balance with the feel and faint trace of bitterness.  It's a bit sweeter and more floral than sheng tends to come across, without all that much vegetal background in this infusion, but some.  The taste of that relates to the bitterness, as if it's similar to dandelion green.  To me it all works together, but it would depend on preference how one takes it.

The Thai sheng is warmer, richer in flavor, also sweet and complex, but more towards fruit versus floral tone.  Mineral range seems to pick up, drawing that one part of the tea closer to the other Vietnamese green version.  The flavor is a bit complex, not so easy to unpack.  It's really in between floral and fruit (transitioning some, maybe), or spans a range that integrates as one related set.  The floral range is nondescript (to me), with the fruit a little towards juicyfruit gum, something bright and sweet, like dried mango.  It doesn't have the same degree of bitterness but other range fills in so that it doesn't come across as really simple.  At the same time it's not challenging, and it is on the light, sweet, and approachable side as sheng can go.

People familiar with a limited range of sheng might have trouble relating to placing that.  Wild tree versions tend to be softer, milder, and sweeter than commercial plantation source teas, at least in my experience.  To be clear it is hard to separate the effect of factory teas' leaves from tending to be quite broken and more wild-sourced versions from not.  That's mixing a few levels of input, isn't it, not just tree source and processing but also producer type?  Maybe it works better to just describe these teas.

Fourth infusion

The Vietnamese green is transitioning to being warmer, slightly earthier, and more complex, moving past a more simple expression of just sweet floral tone, with the mineral and slight bitterness "below" that.  It starts to trail into spice a bit.  The bitterness fades back even further; it's nice at this balance, with lots of floral still coming across.

Bitterness picks up for the Thai sheng version; these teas have essentially met related to that factor.  The sheng I'm brewing a good bit hotter though, which would tend to draw that out more.  The fruit range has shifted in balance to more floral overall.  They're still not really close as aspects sets go but much closer than in earlier rounds; they overlap a good bit now.  The feel of this tea is full but not as dry.  I'd expect brewing leaves versus a chopped tea would account for a lot of that, and at least some of the difference in bitterness.

It would be difficult to place them related to each other to the same degree based on drinking them separately, one day after the other.  Trying one then the other just after would help; the tea aspects could stand out in memory better.  But the the round by round direct comparison and matching up of individual aspects wouldn't be the same.

Thai tea left; only slightly different

Fifth infusion

These teas aren't even close to fading but not really transitioning much either.  In the Vietnamese green tea that balance of sweetness, floral tone, warmer flavor complexity, trace of bitterness, full feel and sweet aftertaste is nice.  It works.

It's interesting how similar the Thai tea is, how all those aspects are matched by slightly different versions in the Thai sheng, which balance a little differently.  It would be possible to tease it all out, describing how floral, sweetness, the trace of warmer earthier range, and overall balance are all different, but all related.  It would just be more trouble than it's worth for being informative.  That trace of more vegetal range in the green tea stands out as a difference, swapped out for fruit in the other, and the astringency (feel) is a little different, but these are closer than I expected.

The next round is more of the same; bitterness seems to be picking up a little in both.  I still really like both teas though.

Conclusions

It's interesting how they started so different and drew closer, and interesting they're that similar for being two different tea types.  Those "ancient tree" Vietnamese green teas always did remind me of sheng, and it's interesting to try them alongside each other to see just how close they are, or ways they don't match.  It helps that they're both nice versions of the different types.

It's hard to put this Thai tea on a scale for being typical of some version of Yunnan sheng.  Those vary a lot in character, by region, related to processing and source material, and quality, by lots of factors.  It works well as a young tea but it might have enough of the right aspect range to benefit from aging, but at this point that's more of a guess.  I really should buy a couple of tuochas and check on that, since the pricing seems fine for what the tea is.  They cover that in their FB vendor page, and the last post on a Moonlight White version includes a conversion from baht (which isn't that tricky; it's usually around 32 or 33 to 1 USD).

Orange peel stuffed with black tea from Jip Eu

I should've added a coin for scale; it's on the small side

scale indicated by large gaiwan size

When visiting Jip Eu in the Bangkok Chinatown with Huyen Dinh a few weeks ago the owner passed on a few extra samples (always so nice of them to do that).  I reviewed the Longjing I bought, and some Shui Xian they gave me, but there are two more others.  One is an orange peel stuffed with tea, which I'm reviewing here.  Those seem about as popular now as they ever were, or maybe they peaked last year.  I thought those were usually made with shou pu'er but I'm not sure about that.


This is something different, a real mystery tea.  I didn't even remember which kind of tea this is prior to tasting, although it did turn out to be black tea, as it seemed.

Review

The look is cool; it's a dried orange peel, stuffed with tea, with some of a flower sticking out at the top (chrysanthemum, it seems).  The first infusion was just wetting the peel, after a rinse.  It tasted like dried orange peel.  I started digging some tea out after that first infusion or else I'd be brewing this all day to just get the tea wet.  A second infusion still tastes a lot more like dried orange peel than tea.  It's actually nice though; including a good bit of dried orange peel in a tisane blend might work.  I've used a fruit peeler to only strip off the outside thin layer for blends in the past since it's easy to dry and contains a lot of the citrusy, volatile aspects and not the bitterness of the white part but so far this is fine, just like orange.

Around the third infusion I'm starting to taste tea.  This might just be black tea [I'll leave that guesswork in the review format after editing]; the flavor profile and look seems wrong for shou.  I somehow thought it might be oolong--not that I have much memory to work with at all, based on what someone told me a month ago--but that just doesn't seem possible based on the look and taste.  Between the citrus (orange peel) giving it a high end and a flower adding some smoothness and depth just that black tea earthiness and edge comes across.  Or something oddly like that, if contributed by another tea type.

It's interesting the way those flavors layer together on the fourth infusion.  They're not as unified as they might be once this brews a couple of more rounds but it makes for an interesting tea blend.  The individual contribution of the tea itself doesn't stand out much, given how pronounced the citrus is, and how drinking three things at once works out.  I'm so used to single-type teas this is unfamiliar ground.  That tea has a depth I wouldn't necessarily expect from a black tea, a mild earthy oiliness, not unlike the trace of tar that can come across in shou.  But it can't be shou, since it doesn't look like it, and that edgy malt isn't common to shou.  Funny being four rounds into a tea and not knowing what it is.  It really has to be black tea though.

A half dozen infusions in I tore the orange peel partly in half to expose the last of this tea.  This will probably brew for another dozen infusions at least, it seems.  It was too much for a large gaiwan but I couldn't bring myself to pass on the messing around and put it in an infuser or teapot instead.  If snapping it in half was easier this would work well for brewing tea grandpa style.  Leaving it whole like that you could probably brew tea with it more than a dozen times made that way, just lots of light infusions, over the course of a day.  You could be the first person in history to "brew out" a dried orange peel.

I kind of like it.  I've made it a point to stay open to blends, and I've drank a good bit of the Earl Grey and floral Ceylon blend I brought back for the staff at the office from Russia.  I never reviewed those here, due to a plain tea bias I guess, but they've been ok.  It can be nice drinking a tea that you don't feel any impulse to pay much attention to or get right for brewing parameters.

This tea isn't transitioning that much.  The "tea" part blends into the rest; other than seeming vaguely like black tea but a bit thick, oily, and earthy for being that it seems nice.  I don't feel compelled to try to expand description out into a flavors list beyond that.  It tastes like black tea, and there's orange citrus, and that flower gets buried a bit, just filling in and giving it depth.

"Stacking" the infusions seems an obvious thing to do, mixing subsequent rounds together.  In part that's to mix a cooler and hotter cup, to drink it in the middle, and to allow for keeping up a brewing pace.  In another context it's about combining the two thin "time-slices" of brewing aspects into one more even layer.  I guess that sort of works too, but in this case more about evening out the sloppy brewing time than getting two time-slices worth of transition into one cup versus one.

This tea itself is two distinct colors; surely it's not a mix of types?  It looks like they've combined black teas that came out differently, one lighter and one that could pass for something else.  Oolongs look a lot like that one version too, dark but oxidized less.  Could this really be oolong?  I suppose I could be interpreting edginess and malt as what's really coming from an orange peel.  It seems unlikely though.  This orange peel really does bury the flavor of the tea, to some extent.  I think I might like this better with shou since at least that blast of earthiness would stand out more, or fill in as a deeper underlying layer that expressed itself.  This works though, but the tea blends in under those other layers, or I guess between them.  I'd probably appreciate that more if I had tried a version where it didn't that didn't work well; this just integrates.

I could tell going in this would be way too much tea to brew at one go.  It fits in a large gaiwan but it's going to brew two liters of tea, two ounces at a time (or two quarts, 60-80 ml at a time, in the other set of units).

happy independence day!

Conclusions

I brewed around a dozen infusions, all nice enough, or maybe more.  It came across a bit like an Earl Grey, to be honest.  I guess that's a good thing for me; I like Earl Grey.  It was interesting that it wasn't exactly like an Earl Grey.  It wasn't bergamot orange theme flavor and for being a good bit of peel instead of an essential oil it came across much differently, just not different in a way I really had success in describing.  I wouldn't base my tea habit on drinking this very regularly but mixing in some or trying it a few times to vary the experience would be nice.  I'd think shou might work even better.  I guess the down-side is that no one is going to stuff above average shou into an orange peel so the tea itself would always be on the average side at best, and mediocre shou can get a bit rough.

drying mandarin orange peel for blend trials awhile back

It kind of goes without saying but it's easy enough to experiment with making something like this, without actually buying it.  Fresh orange peel wouldn't work at all, I don't think; it wouldn't absorb the water and wouldn't contribute flavor as a result.


Just drying an orange peel in a toaster oven would probably work, probably for 45 minutes at low heat, but still at around 120 C / 250 F, not that low.  Peeling off the outer layer of the skin, as I'd mentioned, is another approach, one that retains the positive flavor but that's much easier to dry.


It would work with lemon or grapefruit too, but I'm not so sure about lemon tea, maybe better for making an iced version.  Mandarin orange peel would be nice, and they do sell those all over here (which they refer to as Chinese oranges), but I don't remember seeing those back in the States.  Now that I think of it maybe this was a Mandarin or Chinese orange; that would explain how it could be so small.  The taste of both is similar but different enough they're easy to tell apart but fruit peel is something else; I didn't notice what kind of orange this was from.  I've used mandarin orange peel for blending awhile back (the last picture) but it's not the kind of thing I could keep a mental database of flavors for.

Of course just buying them from a Chinatown shop, like Jip Eu here, also works.  I didn't check on how much they sell this version for but it shouldn't be too much, and it was interesting to try.  One nice part about visiting Jip Eu is walking around Chinatown, with lots of cool shops all over the place, and a wholesale vending area on the other side, below the main street (Yaowarat).  Jip Eu might have had other versions and another shop very nearby had a couple related types (shown in a photo here).

meeting Huyen there a month or so ago

we saw these at a different shop that day; odd I didn't think to buy any

that other shop is a block or two away, towards the MRT from Jip Eu

Teamania Fukamushi Sencha (sencha that's steamed longer)

very dark green tea

I'll cite the vendor description towards the end

It'll be nice to take a break from tea types that make up frequently recurring themes here, and this Japanese green tea definitely counts as that (a higher end version of sencha, it seems).  I've emphasized that green tea is my least favorite among all the types in the past, but that's offset by better versions of different tea styles allowing aspects sets to make sense in a different way.

Oddly enough I started on Japanese green tea for loose tea.  We visited Japan and Vietnam around 8 years ago and I brought back Japanese green tea from both places.  And also tea from Laos around that time frame, but that tea was local, not made in any particular established style and not good quality.  I moved onto Thai oolongs more next, and later got into Chinese teas, partly tied to visiting China a couple of times.  Not very far along all that I just let the Japanese teas drop.

Really good and bad versions of Japanese green teas both tend to taste like seaweed, but in a bad or mediocre version that's grassy, not completely clean in effect, relatively astringent and more vegetal than sweet.  In a good version it all balances, with the umami working well with other clean flavors.


Seaweed really isn't just one thing anyway; there are lots of types that taste different ways.  It all takes getting used to but once you get past the initial "eww!" they can be interesting, not so much as something to eat by itself, but as an ingredient that works along with others.  It's hard to pin down why seaweed doesn't taste better than it does to most people.  Unfamiliarity, probably.  I had it with sushi or in other Japanese foods some back in the States but it came up a lot more often living in Hawaii (Japanese food and seaweed both, really).  One form of seaweed is the dried sheets they use to make sushi, a bit similar to the version that's found in miso soup, but different.  My wife loved poke, raw tuna mixed with a completely different form of seaweed, a chewier version that's not leafy.

People can go out in the ocean and just pick it there, if they know what they're doing.  My wife is on close terms with a local family and they would.  They had an "in" for local sea salt too, if I'm remembering that right.

That Hawaiian family sort of took her in.  Asians in general don't limit family as much to who is born of common genetics.  Of course that's not intended as any sort of claim, as saying "my wife is Hawaiian now," because she's definitely not.  It was an interesting and positive experience there, knowing them.  My wife had no intention of setting it aside after we moved back to Thailand, and naming our kids Keoni and Kalani is something of a tribute to what that means to her.

near our old apartment in Honolulu, on Kapahulu street

it wasn't very far from Diamondhead

the Alawai canal, in the other direction, the northern edge of Waikiki

he was so cute six years ago

not at all traditional Japanese teaware

I actually met this vendor in Bangkok once, Peter Pocajt, after we had talked for awhile.  He founded the Teapedia wiki site, and varies in how active he seems to be in social media, probably busy with this shop, different work, and other interests.  He gets out; I met him on the way back from a sourcing trip in China, and he was just in Japan this year.  All that travel must be helping his tea selection, which I'll say more about in reviews.


Onto tasting issues.  This would be a perfect opportunity to specify exact brewing parameters to make for a controlled, repeatable trial, since I will finally get back to reviewing a tea brewed Western style.  But I won't.  I will brew the tea using much cooler water (70 C sounds standard for sencha, unless I'm remembering that wrong), but I'll pass on the measuring weight and timing.

Review

Wow!  That's different.  Heavy on seaweed, sure, but with interesting layers going on beyond that, which balances in with the rest.  Sweetness stands out; that's normal.  One aspect reminds me of fresh popped popcorn; that works well with the rest.  It's not too far off the toasted rice aspect that I love in Longjing.  That Chinese tea type is the only one I drink regularly, and if versions emphasize that over grassiness I like them.

Umami is pronounced.  Of course that's the basic flavor described best as "savory," one that is so hard to pin down further that it still goes by a Japanese name.  Maybe that stands out the most; this tea reminds me of other gyokuro I've tried, where that aspect was a lot stronger than in any sencha I'd ever tried.  It almost comes across as a touch of salt, but it's different.

There isn't much for vegetable aspects coming to mind to describe.  Seaweed, sure, and that trails a good bit into fresh spinach, but beyond that those other layers / aspects stand out.  The flavor is nicely balanced, sweet and clean.


Overall this works.  Someone else could place it better on a scale of other sencha.  It's finer ground than some other versions I've tried, and the umami is more pronounced, with plenty of sweetness and complexity.  The astringency is limited and the overall feel and flavor effect is very rich.  It's hard to compare it to similar teas since I can't remember the last time I tried a good version of sencha, and may or may not have ever reviewed one in this blog.  It could've been five years ago, accounting for that.


That's a little odd since I was in Japan myself around four years ago (for the second time), but I didn't put effort into finding different better green teas.  I wanted to try something else from Japan, to test out a black tea from there, and the search part worked but the version wasn't great.  So it goes trying one random tea version.


I would expect it to make a few rounds of interesting, positive tea but I'm bored with the two-page posts myself, flavor by flavor extending round after round.  Describing a second infusion will inform a bit about natural transition across those.

Second infusion

The tea did transition a good bit.  Someone more on the page of optimizing sencha brewing to their own preference would pass on a better best-case more-objective review, how this tea fits their preference and expectations of type related to quality level, but I still can communicate what I'm experiencing.

The brightness exchanged a bit for depth.  That one fresh popcorn aspect--which wasn't really a main flavor element--traded out for more vegetal range, again seaweed with some fresh spinach, but in a different presentation this round.  Mineral seems to pick up, giving it more base.  Sweetness is still pronounced, and umami level hasn't necessarily changed, but the way the aspect range all fits together is different.  It's still quite limited in astringency level and full in flavor and richness.  It's still catchy and pleasant; I like the tea.  It's pretty far from the "buy whatever you find" sencha versions I'd mostly tried in the past.

People might get the impression that changes a lot in another country, if you visit a tea producing nation, that if you buy lower quality level teas there they'd still be a lot better.  To a very limited extent that's true, but to some degree it's not.  Of course green tea from a local market or supermarket booth in China is better than grocery store gunpowder you buy in the states, but it's not necessarily better than specialty tea versions, and normally probably wouldn't be.  You can run across pleasant and interesting surprises buying tea that way, some unusually good versions, but also some bad tea.  I probably should've put more effort into it on that last visit to Japan but I was really focused on the theme of trying something other than green tea.

It's hard to describe how vegetal range ramps up in this; it gains complexity as much or more than intensity.  It might extend into grassiness, but not the "straight grass" version I and some others tend to be turned off by in some green teas, more that complex range in fresh cut hay.  For everyone who grew up outside of farm country that's not going to mean much.  When you cut hay it smells a bit like grass, but different, more complex.  Quite soon in starts to change in smell, as the tea begins a curing process, just not soon enough that it changes before you bale it and store it in a barn (which is a lot of work; helping someone do that can make for a very long day).  Aging / drying / curing hay has a cool smell, sweet and complex and vegetal, but dried hay is a totally different thing.  I'm talking about the new version here, when it's first cut.  It's not a form of grass, at least not like your lawn is, so it's not grassy in the same sense.  It's simpler to just say it's closer to kale but that's not exactly right.

The flavors still work.  Umami is still really pronounced, a bit intense.  I might've liked it better that first round but this is still pleasant.  This tea is so complex that drinking it once probably wouldn't get you to the same experience you'd have a dozen sessions later.  Maybe you'd burn out on it and give it away, or more likely come to love it even more as you gain exposure.  For someone who likes green tea more the fit would be that much more natural.  It's nothing like teas they serve in Japanese restaurants, any more than a Chinese restaurant is really going to pour you a good version of Da Hong Pao or Shui Xian.

Tasting Conclusions

There're probably plenty more to say about transitions over the next couple of rounds (it was similar, and still good), and I really didn't even start in on aspect range related to feel or aftertaste, as one might dwell on related to other tea type reviews.  I liked the tea; I'll mostly leave it at that, beyond that earlier description.  It works for an example of how better versions of teas transcend preference for a type to some extent.  I think just about anyone could appreciate this tea, with or without loving Japanese green teas first.  Unless they just couldn't handle umami as a main flavor component; then it wouldn't work at all.

I won't switch over to drinking Japanese green teas just yet but someday I probably will cycle back to those more.

Vendor input about the tea

What I've said so far didn't seem to capture it.  I'll mention a bit about Peter's input about the tea, starting with citing a blog post covering travels in Japan.  Since he's Swiss everyone from outside there (except maybe Germany) would have to hit the extra "translate this page" button.  I commented in picture posts of his travel in Facebook that those images show how beautiful and orderly Japan looks.  They even keep nature tidy and perfect looking there.  I'm from a beautiful part of the country in the US, from Pennsylvania, which means "Penn's woods," but nature there tends to go its own way a bit, beautiful but less orderly.

just beautiful, which is just normal for Japan (credit the Teamania blog)

Here is the vendor page for that tea, with the idea here being citing what he says about it:


This exceptional Fukamushi Sencha is grown in the small village of  Ujitawara . Fukamushi Sencha is characterized by a longer steaming time compared to standard Sencha. As a result, the tea is milder and the tea flow gets more into the foreground. 

For our premium Fukamushi Sencha the excellent tea variety Saemidori in Shincha quality is used by which only the young and tender shoots are used. Tea made from Saemidori tastes much sweeter than tea of ​​a Yabukita which is normally used. Since Saemidori is less frost-resistant than Yabukita, unfortunately, it can only be used in southern regions such as Kyoto or Kagoshima and is therefore also a special rarity for Japanese!

The village of Ujitawara is located in Kyoto Prefecture, not far from the tea town of Uji. Kyoto itself is known as the cradle of Japanese tea-making and many well-known teas such as Matcha and Gyokuro have their origins here.

This exceptional tea is packed in fine Washi paper. 

Harvest:  April 2017  
Taste:  Sweet and refreshing aroma with an incredible amount of umami. 
Origin:  Ujitawa, Kyoto Prefecture, Japan. 
Variety:  Saemidori 
Preparation: Per pot about 3g, water temperature 50 - 60 ° C, brewing time max. 1 min. 
Tip: Take more tea leaves and pour in for a short and several times. First infusion max. 45s and each additional 20s since the leaves are already soaked. The best is a Kyusu teapot suitable.

one more of Keo as a three year old; so cute

That's why you should always read those descriptions before brewing unfamiliar versions; it might have turned out better using slightly cooler water.  There's more to try it again.  Gyokuro brewing recommendations do sometimes suggest using 50 C water, getting way down towards bath-water temperature; so it goes with some Japanese green teas.




This would be a natural place to close but I wanted to cite just a little more about how that long steaming time works out and typical character from a really nice blog about Japanese teas, My Japanese Green Tea by Ricardo Caicedo:


Fukamushicha (深蒸し茶, deep-steamed tea) is a green tea that is initially steamed for a longer time than what it’s considered to be usual. It’s commonly produced in the prefecture of Shizuoka.

Normally, the steaming process for green tea runs for about 30 seconds to 1 minute, and the resulting tea is called futsuumushicha (普通蒸し茶, normal steamed tea).  In contrast, fukamushicha is steamed for longer than 1 or 2 minutes...

...The steaming process makes a big difference in the flavor of green tea. The main advantages of using the fukamushi process is that the astringency is suppressed, while gaining more body and sweetness.

The longer steaming time makes the leaves very soft, and during the rolling process the tips often break. This small particles make the fukamushicha look like if it was a lower-quality tea, but it really isn’t. When brewed it also has a darker color, with sediments on the bottom. One would think that it’s a very bitter tea, such as funmatsucha.


So far so good; this tea seemed like that in character.  I hadn't really thought it through but it was odd that a tea so finely ground would be that low in astringency, even given using cooler water as is common across green tea types.  Green teas vary in flavor range and astringency but the less whole a leaf is should increase the infusion of the related compounds that cause astringency.  This is quite noticeable in black teas and sheng pu'er, both of which vary a lot within those broad types, with the tendency for somewhat broken and finer chopped leaves to ramp up that aspect range more as the leaf-piece sizes decrease, as one separate factor among others.

Related to all that Ricardo mentions other factors tied to this difference:

The appearance of fukamushicha is a disadvantage, although as a bonus, the small particles means that the health benefits increase. How come? Just as  with matcha and funmatsucha, when drinking the small solid particles you’ll get more of the nutrients found in green tea (such as catechins), plus the ones that aren’t water-soluble like fiber, some vitamins, and chlorophyll.  


So there's that.  It'll add up to about half of that blog post but I'll also mention his brewing advice as well for completeness:


It’s brewed just like sencha, but with a lower steeping time.  The general guideline is: 60 to 100 ml ( 2 to 3.33 oz) per cup, 3 gr (3/4 of a teaspoon), 70 to 80°C (158°F to 176°F), 40 seconds of steeping time.


I was using that temperature, on the low side, but a higher proportion and shorter infusion times, so more like the alternative version listed in the Teamania site, but around 70 C as opposed to 50-60.

Anyway, the tea was really nice.  It was probably too good for me to fully appreciate just how good it is.  It'll be even better once I get brewing parameters dialed in a bit and slightly more re-acclimated to the general range.