I have been craving green tea all day today. I came home, desperately in need of a nap (I almost fell asleep on drive home), but I wanted shincha so badly that I asked the husband to only let me nap a couple of hours because then I’d still have time to have some of this tea without worrying about staying up until 2am (which is what got me needing a nap in the first place). The husband (delightful man that he is) just woke me up so first thing I did – make this.
Of course, I’m a sweet and loving wife, so naturally I made enough to share with him. I wasn’t ultra precise as to temp though, which turns this normally citrusy crisp tea into this fuzzy, thick, pungent thing that, while not as striking as the bright freshness that comes from more detailed brewing, is still pretty awesome. Totally worth a shortened nap. I’ve been drinking on this for a month almost (and had zero sencha for a month or two before that, waiting for shincha) so I’ve pretty much forgotten what bad sencha tastes like. Oh, logically I know it is out there (vague recollections of Golden Moon’s sampler poke at the back of my brain) but this tea, no matter how it is brewed, is so perfectly sencha that I think it all sencha tastes just like this.
I’m approaching the end of the bag of this tea and I’ve really enjoyed it. Like a lot. (Duh, we all knew that. Just look at the score.) But I have two more packages of shincha in my pantry, another from O-cha and one from Maeda-en, both unopened and I’m really looking forward to busting one of those out soon. Hopefully I will get on with them as well as I have with this one.