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Rather than duplicate what has already been said, please just refer to TeaEqualsBliss’ review — I think she described it exactly.

This was my first experience with Gyokuro. I felt pretty overwhelmed by the flavor, it was a little powerful for me (but I loved it…it was just a lot stronger than I expected).
I did the steepings as follows: 5g loose leaf: 1) 2oz water @ 35F for 7 mins, 2) 2oz @ 120F for 2 mins, 3) 2oz water @ 160 for 1 min, 4) 2oz water @ 180F for 30 seconds, and 5) 2oz water @ 200F for 15 seconds.

For the first steeping, I poured the water to the side of the kyusu, instead of directly on top of the leaves, so that not all of the leaf was covered in water (there was a good little pile on top of dry leaf). Closed the lid, and waited. After a few minutes I opened the lid to smelled; the aroma was like seaweed or ocean, salty and a hint of sweet, and there was something present I’ve not yet encountered in a Japanese green (I assume that is because I haven’t had gyokuro before).
I sipped it very slowly, because every drop was FULL of flavor. It didn’t have the typical taste I have come to expect from the other Japanese greens I’ve had… but it was a combination of seaweed (almost salty in an almost irresistible way…so hard to describe because it didn’t taste like drinking salt either) a melon-like fruitiness, and a creamy-sweet that was at first very pleasant, and then ended up being very rich. This tea is VERY rich. If one were lucky enough to have an English pot full of several 8oz cups of this, I doubt one could finish it (though you’d want to!), it is THAT rich.

Subsequent steepings brought out further the overpowering seaweed/salty, melon/fruity, sweet/creaminess in different proportions (with the sweet/creamy and melon coming out more as the temp went up). There was so much going on, and I’m not really that good at describing it.

Like I said, this was a little overwhelming for my tastebuds, but was crazy good. I wonder how much 2oz would cost, if it were for sale?
I hope to get another chance to taste gyokuro like this, and I hope I haven’t ruined my taste for others by trying (I can only guess) one of the best out there!

This is almost gone! :( Maybe 2g left?

I had tried this once a while ago at 140, but I must not have steeped it long enough that time, because the only flavor that came through (that I can remember) was an intense sweetness combined with some pleasant bitterness (not that warming soup-like-greens quality, that extra depth that I was hoping for).

This time I went ahead and steeped it a lot longer, for 90 – 105 seconds.

It really tasted like the most delicous soup broth (without the saltiness), but at the same time it is STILL tea, and doesn’t feel weird to have it with breakfast.

I am not a vegetarian, but the savouriness of this tea makes me a believer that one could find, in vegetables alone, all of the wonderful flavors that roasted meat, beef stock, or bbq provide.

These are just leaves! Yet, they have just as much heart-warming deliciousness as a savoury french onion soup, and a sweetness alongside that rounds the flavor so nicely.

The 2nd steeping was almost as good as the first too… I’m going to miss this tea!

Compared a sample of this directly in a blind tasting against Den’s Zuiko.
I think as others have reported, it must be very temperature sensitive. The first brewing had a lot of bitterness and was also fairly astringent. I still liked it, actually; I can tolerate a lot of bitterness and still enjoy it. However, I don’t remember much else in terms of flavor, though I’m sure my memory isn’t serving me well here. I did like it, but I knew that the other I had tried (at the time I didn’t know which was which, as it was a blind tasting) was better.

Also, I steeped each 3 times, and by the third this one was already spent (tasted mostly watery).

For only one shot, I’m going to give this a little benefit of the doubt, because I did like it, in spite of it having more bitterness/astringency than I expected.

Had a sampler of this and compared it directly to Shin-ryoku. I don’t always like giving a review after just a sample, because if I messed up the brewing parameters (or more likely, if I haven’t found brewing parameters that I like with that particular tea through experimentation, which I can’t obviously do with a sample), I won’t get a very accurate idea of how I like the tea and how it compares to others.

In order to compare this and Shin-ryoku fairly, I did a blind test, and used the same parameters (3 oz @160 F, 2 grams tea, 90 seconds).

This came out with hints of sweetness, a little (just a little) bitterness, creaminess (yes, like delicious whipped cream without the sugaryness), and a little astringency. I think this would do even better at a lower temperature for the first brewing, so I’m going to try it (when I get a full bag) at 140 or iced-brewing and report back.

Had the last of this yesterday.
I brewed it at a bit lower to get the sencha to come through; it had a subtle but tasty umami flavor, but I actually think I prefer it with a more fruity taste and the sencha coming through underneath (instead of being the dominant flavor).

I’m going to miss this until next year, but it is fun to have something to look forward to.

I opened this tea and let my two-year-old smell it. She just said, “Papa, kann ich ein bisschen essen?” (Papa, can I eat a little?) She didn’t know what it was, but that is how delicious the aroma of this tea is,—even a little kid wants to eat it!

The aroma of the brewed tea itself is delcious too; and in my new yunomi the color looked almost as dark as coffee. Such a good tea and I love having it around to switch things up from the normal steamed greens I’ve been drinking.

Sweet, a little thick, so tasty – such good quality tea for the price!
I am very surprised that tea with this flavor is only $15.

If you are getting bitterness, try steeping the first one at 160, and slowly go up from there (10 degrees each steeping).

This has a very nice toasted rice taste; I think I liked the toasted flavor better than the other genmaichas that I’ve tried.

That being said, the matcha flavor doesn’t come through very strongly, nor does the sencha. 1TTEN’s genmaicha has a very wonderful, sencha, fruity-like aftertaste. Den’s has a very nice mix overall (the matcha adds a definite, delicious sweetness). But this is still good and as I said, I really liked the taste of the genmaicha.

For their premium tea bags, so far this is a lot better than the sencha, but not as good as the gyokuro.

I couldn’t wait any longer and finally opened this tea today.
When I opened the canister and dumped the bag of tea into it, I smelled the dry leaf. Surprisingly, the leaf didn’t give off a lot of smell. I saw all the small leaf particles and realized that this was also a fukamushi. (Well, I wasn’t sure until I read other notes on this tea).
I ignored their instructions suggesting 195F water…that seemed too high to me, especially for a first steep. I used 1 TBS leaf, 4 oz water, and 155 temp, and steeped for 45 seconds to 1 minute.

The color was a pleasing light green, and I would say the_skua described the tea very well; I’ll do so again but in layman’s terms, haha!

Basically, it had a very pleasing, fresh aroma, and tasted of fresh cooked greens (without that yucky vegetable flavor that you get from greens…though don’t get my wrong I do love steamed mustard greens). Anyway, the flavor seemed to be a standard Japanese green, but I detected no bitterness, astringency, and a very lingering/filling sweetness that was very different than the other 2 shinchas I’ve tried. I really liked this sweetness, as it tasted like the sweetness of a perfectly ripe melon (no, the tea was not melon flavor, but the sweetness was more like that of a fruit), rather than the extremely intense but short-lived sweetness I’ve tasted in the other shinchas.

As the_skua mentioned, other than the very fresh greens flavor (vegetal as many call it) and that accompanied sweetness, the flavor wasn’t complex or deep. That being said it was delicious! I’m not rating this one quite as high as the other shinchas I’ve tried, as they felt like eye-opening “WOW” experiences, and this did not. However, that may only be due to the fact that I tried the other shinchas first, and had more of an idea of what to expect from this. Even though I wouldn’t say the taste surprised me and made me say “WOW”, I would still say this is an excellent tea; if you’re on the fence about trying a shincha, then I can honestly say this is a good decision.
The reason I say that is because of the amount you get and the price…both of which are better (better price, more tea) than the other 2 I bought in the past couple months. If you’re new to shincha, I’d suggest going with this one; just don’t steep at 195F! (Lower temps always bring out more sweetness and are a lot more friendly to novices like me).

This tea also held up well to 3 more infusions, the sweetness being accompanied by a very slight but pleasant bitterness in the 2nd-3rd infusions, and in the 4th the sweetness was the main flavor. I increased the temp each time (170, 180, near-boiling) and decreased the amount of time I steeped the leaves.

I may buy more of this shincha this year (I think when I’ve finished this, I’ll have had enough shincha for the year!), but I already have my eye on a couple of other offerings by Maeda-en that I hope to get in the coming months.