Kyoto Obubu Tea Farms

I feel like I love this tea more and more each time I brew it. This sencha has some body, and a brothyness, that makes me really want to make chazuke from it some time. The spent leaves already make a good salad ;)

I got this as a free sample from Yunomi. Very excited to try it… After sitting through it this morning, however, I’ve decided it’s not my cup of tea. I think that it is very good tea, but personally just not my favorite flavor profile.

I started this session with 5g of tea steeped at 140 degrees. The initial cup was sweet and grassy. There was an ever so slight hint of astringency and umami, but both were quite balanced. The overall flavor was of green beans.

The second steep was done at 175 degrees and was surprisingly similar to the first steep. It was overall still sweet, yet still had a strong “tea” flavor without the astringent bite. I realize that is not very descriptive, but it is very hard to describe. Almost the flavor of an astringent tea without the bite of astringency. Perhaps I simply mean a very vegetal tea. Not sure… :)

Finally, the last steep was conducted at 190 degrees. Finally, the tea was a bit more astringent. At the same time, however, it starts to lose its fullness and flavor. It was simply like a cheap astringent green tea. The wonderful flavor profile dissipated quite fast.

Overall, the quality of this tea was quite good and I did enjoy it. I just prefer less sweetness and more bold flavors in my Japanese green teas, or at least I did today.

2016 Harvest

I Haven’t done a non-puerh review in awhile.
I had last year’s harvest, and I think I liked that one more.
The leaf are long thin delicate emerald shards. They carry a sweet and inviting scent of warm grass, seaweed, and a creamy undertone, I dusted off my kyusu and prepared for brewing. I made mine thick, so I can pull more sweetness out. The brew was slightly clouded, but I bright pale jade. The taste is sweet with a lemon finish. The aftertaste presents thick umami which wipes away the citrus tone. I can catch some bitterness and harsh veggies within the body. The final finish is with raw kale; a very strong vegetal tone that strikes with bitterness. I brewed another pot (different leaves) to see if I can spot any other tones, and the brew was mostly consistent with what was previously stated; however, a slight dandelion floral tone was spotted mid sip. I liked this tea, but I do remember 2015 being sweeter, thicker, and less bitter green tones.

https://www.instagram.com/p/BMhJ7tqgpBm/?taken-by=haveteawilltravel

These leaves look crazy compared to your average sencha! Long leaves with some thick stems mixed in as well. Flavor was pretty different as well. I got a bit of grassiness, but it wasn’t quite the super green umami flavors that I sometimes get from sencha – it was more of a dry grassy flavor. I’m not 100% sure if that’s a result of the clearly different processing of the leaf or if it’s because it’s not quite as fresh as other ones I’ve been drinking. I preferred it with 175F water, as opposed to the 195F temp recommended on the package, but both were good.

I’m really liking the senchas from Kyoto Obubu that I picked up on Yunomi. One of their Hojichas was really good too. This might be my favorite sencha yet (I think I might have said that about the last one I tried from them too). I found this one best with a 1m first steep rather than 2m. This had decently large leaves as well, like the Sencha of the Wind. Also, some small print on the bag states “this tea is an aracha (unrefined) version of sencha, the state which tea is sold from the farm to refinement factories.” I’m pretty sure this is a misprint. I’m fairly certain sencha can’t also be aracha…maybe? If it is aracha then I’m super confused lol.

The brewed leaves smelled like nice steamed vegetables, maybe asparagus as another reviewer noted. The first steep was a bit bitter with nutty and piney notes and a sweet grassy honey finish. Reaaaally good. This one was pretty powerful as well. I’m sure it wasn’t just this tea, as I had been drinking quite a bit before this one as well, but I noticed myself just trance out listening to whatever house-type beats my brother happened to be playing for a couple minutes at a time. Good times. Next steep was less bitter, but also not quite as sweet on the finish if that makes any sense. Still grassy, nutty and piney though. Went for another couple steeps, so didn’t quite have the longevity of the Sencha of the Wind, but I’m a sucker for that strength which comes through as a bitter flavor in tea, so if I was forced to choose, I’d pick this one.

I have more from this farm coming in another Yunomi order, including a Sencha of the Summer Sun or something. I wonder what it would be like to drink a blend of Sencha of the Wind, Earth, and Sun…Sencha of Earth, Wind and Fire? Anyways…good tea from Kyoto Obubu! Recommended for sure.

This one was just too roasty for me. I enjoyed the Amber Roast, but knew this one might be a little rough after I smelled how roasty the comparatively lighter Amber one was. Yea, if the last one smelled a little charcoaly with nice roasted nuttiness to it, this one was just a charcoal blast, a little sour smelling as well. It tasted alright, and I did get some decent sweetness coming through, but I just couldn’t get past that roast. Good to know I guess! And some people might like this if they’re really into roast. Maybe it’ll be better in a few months when its had some more time to rest as well.

This may be my favorite sencha I’ve tasted so far. Interestingly, the leaves looked quite similar to the aracha I drank earlier today, rather than the more fragmentary look of most of the other sencha I’ve had. I again tried two different steeping methods – one with a longer first steep and then very quick steeps with hotter temperatures immediately, and then one with a shorter first steep and keeping temps down a bit. On this one, I preferred the shorter first steep method.

I don’t know if this is just an association in my brain between the name of this tea and the taste, or if whoever named it just did a good job, but I think a good descriptor for this tea’s flavor is “breezy.” Reading others’ reviews, I had to look up the word “petrichor,” but I think it descries the aroma of the warmed leaves very well. The flavor of this tea was very sweet and grassy. The tea had a thickness to it, but it didn’t feel heavy if that makes any sense. The leaves also just kept on giving. I got five steeps and feel like I could’ve gotten at least one more decent one if I wanted to. At the third steep, the grassiness died off a bit, replaced by a sweet green floral flavor. This is what kept it going for me, that flavor was awesome and didn’t feel like it was about to give out at any point. Good stuff, this.

I followed the steeping instructions from Yunomi for this one and it tastes like crap to me. First sencha I’ve not liked. It’s not grassy and fresh like most sencha’s. Just tastes old and astringent with a bit of bitterness. I’ve got some sencha’s a year old that tastes better than this. This is supposed to be a 2016 tea. Glad I only got a sample. Most others on here left a good review so I’ll try some different brewing of this tea before rating.

My favorite flower? Sakura. Judging by my screen name, I’ve kinda got a thing for just about anything sakura. I’ve been wanting to try this tea for awhile and finally splurged. I understand that the salted blossom tea is the traditional, accepted version, but I’ve had salted cherry blossoms in pastries and Japanese dishes, and it doesn’t thrill me. More beautiful to look at than to eat. Besides, I’m watching my salt intake these days. Sugar’s not healthy, either, but hey, YOLO.

Faintly sweet and almost fruity, this is nuanced on the palate, but a feast for the eyes. The blossoms looked so beautiful floating in the cup, I had to take photos. Because you only need a few blossoms to make a cup of this tea, it’s not overly flavorful, but very contemplative. I found it rather soothing. A beautiful, subtle tea that welcomes spring. Glad I purchased it!

I have taken up fighting games again! So a bit of backstory, not sure the exact cause but a couple years ago my hands decided that playing fighting games and beat’em ups was not going to happen, all that movement was stupid painful. I gave up playing them and just delved deep into watching the pros play them at tournaments, but that seems to have changed. Ben got Killer Instinct on a whim (it has a free character that rotates so you can try it out, which is handy) and I played a bit, and what do ya know, no hand pain! Now I have to get back in shape, maybe in a year of grinding I can go to a tournament and play with the pros! Guess all the hand exercises and Ark playing paid off.

Today I continue on dreaming of spring teas (mine are still slowly making their way to me) by drinking the last of my stash from last year. Presenting Yunomi’s Obubu #4 Sencha of the Earth Spring Green Tea (2015 specifically) I love the names for Obubu’s Sencha, it is their names that has made me go along and try almost all of them, I think I have two left I have not tried yet. This tea is called this because it is made from Zairai plants, and those are tea plants grown from seeds taken from a tea plant before it was recognized as a specific cultivar. These specific plants are over 30 years old, and the strength of the earth is celebrated in the strength of the plants, because tea that tells a story is awesome in my book! They were not kidding when they said this tea is potent, the aroma is sweet like broken hay and sweetgrass with a very tiny touch of cotton (like the plant, not like the fabric) there are also green notes of course, blending edamame, bell pepper skin, and cut bamboo leaves. At the end there is a touch of dried seaweed and rice giving a bit of starchy and sea air quality to it.

I love how vibrant Sencha leaves get once steeped, they go from pine green to summer grass and its so pretty! What I don’t love is the deafening roar of the lawnmower outside destroying my ability to think, one day I will live in a place that doesn’t have grass…my yard will be moss, clover, rocks, and flowers! Anyway, the aroma of the soggy leaves is so green! It smells like crisp bamboo leaves, clover leaves and flowers, edamame, and sea air, it smells to me like summer. The liquid is light and sweet, like clovers and honey with distant cut grass and broken vegetation, it smells refreshing.

The first that that struck me about this tea is the really pleasant mouthfeel, it has body kinda like an Oolong, being thick and smooth. Usually I find Sencha to be fairly light, so this was a fun change of things. The taste starts with a blend of starchy rice and edamame with a gentle sweet quality to it, this moves onto the more expected green notes of broccoli and cut bamboo with just a subtle edge of mown grass adding a subtle bitterness. The finish is distant flowers and sea air, and I am sorry I cannot remember the name of the specific coastal flower I am thinking of, but it is light and a bit like sweet pea flower.

I steeped this tea a couple more times, jacking the heat up and flash steeping it for a double punch of intense sweetness at the front and bitterness at the middle with a lingering honey sweet finish. The thickness of the first steep stuck around which was fun, and later steeps bring out spinach and stronger ocean notes. As much as this was a spring tea it really reminds me of summer, late May when everything is lush and warm but the heat of summer has not started doing its worst yet.

For blog and photos: http://ramblingbutterflythoughts.blogspot.com/2016/05/yunomi-obubu-4-sencha-of-earth-spring.html

a bit too dusty/bitter tasting for me, but it smells wonderful — flowery, sweet, and after three steepings i ate the leaves with salmon furikake (wish i had rice as well) and that was wonderful. it’s a bit too light with the 160F temperature so i went up closer to 180 for shorter steepings, which is when i got a stronger astringency and vegetal taste.

I really enjoy this tea. It’s sweet and grassy but doesn’t have that slight astringency that other senchas have. It’s very smooth and bright.

2015 Autumn batch:
I’m pretty sure this may be different than the past years. The leaf is large for a Japanese sencha.
https://instagram.com/p/9NFnYExYCN/ (middle left)
There are roughly four different shades between the leaf as it is dry as well which looks pretty before being steeped. This is a smooth and easy to brew sencha, but I believe the reason that this would be something to get over the other ‘Sencha of the" series would be it’s slightly less vegetable taste which is replaced with a tiny bit of dryness that reminds me of fall leaves.
I enjoy that the ‘fall’ / ‘autumn’ taste of this tea is not provided by a roasted taste, rather it is done by having the taste of the dry leaf that is somewhat dead; not that this doesn’t taste fresh, one just has to try it.

I ended up drinking all of this within two days and it is one of the few sencha that I have resteeped as well.

So
https://instagram.com/p/8gwX_5RYGA/
Dang
https://instagram.com/p/8gw4ftRYG2/
Good.

Very vegetable and pure. The liquid comes out darker as you rebrew it, which is rare for me to do with sencha. I brewed this three times and was quite happy every single time, it was close to a gyokuro without the buttery texture. The smoothness and size of the leaf of this tea when combined to its color… makes it certain that I will have my first flush sencha from Obubu on preorder come February 2016 :)

While drinking this I was able to pick up some astringent notes that are typical when it comes to Japanese sencha and me, but this tea just continued to make me want more of the Sench of the Wind because that one has seemed to be the best of the four that YUNOMI puts in their sencha set. I highly recommend trying multiple senchas though because everyone has their own taste preference and this may just be the one you want :)

Tonight I finished packing over 1.2kg of tea to send out to people to discover new teas :)
What a process that was… however, Netflix helps a lot

Anyways, I was packing this tea up and realized I never actually drank it so I decided that I needed to. WOW talk about an instant flashback… drinking this reminded me of the tea that Japanese tea houses in Tokyo provide when you sit down inside. Normally the liquid is very green and has some bitterness to it because they don’t offer their highest tea or gyokuro but free tea is free tea :)
What I really enjoyed most about this is how pure it is. This is nothing but Japanese bancha and that is something to embrace. It isn’t the best and it isn’t bad, it is simply good. Everyday teas are quite a beautiful thing!

My best friend picked this out of the 4 samples I got from YUNOMI for sencha… unfortunately this one tasted a bit funky. I know I brewed it correctly, and twice at that, however something was off with this tea and I am unable to place it because I describe it as a sour fruit which shouldn’t find its way in a sencha. I believe this is just not as vegetable as I was hoping for a sencha nor was it as light as I like mine.
Generally I like my sencha to be like fresh dew off of a tea plant… which is what gyokuro reminds me of :)

One of my other press samples. It came with an origami crane. :)

Happy Summer. Though I made my first iced tea today, I have still been having it hot. This has a nutty/ roast scent, with some sweetness. The flavour is kinda caramel nut, with a rich roast almost coffee taste. There is a little grain/ toast as well.

Happy Solstice everyone! This was my choice to sit on my patio and enjoy. I absolutely love all of this company’s green teas. This one was not an exception. The dry leaf consists of very dark and faded green. This isn’t as vibrant as most of their spring harvests. I was discouraged at first by the leafs color, but I could tell it will be a treat by the aroma. The long dark green leaves carried a smooth deep umami and vegetal aroma. I placed these inside my warmed kyusu and shook them up a bit. The scent from my brewing vessel was very light. I could hint at fresh vegetables wrapped with a light floral tone. I brewed these up with very delicately heated water. The steeped leaves deepened to a robust spinach scent. The liquor was a pale iridescent jade. The initial sip was fantastic. This is truly a spring fiery brew. The flavor is light and floral with just the right amount of vegetal and umami. This brew carries a sweet honey undertone and is deeply refreshing. The brew became deeper and more full of darker tones as the steeps increased. I was able to pull three flavorful steepings out of my kyusu. This was a perfect smooth and beautiful brew for this summer solstice.

https://instagram.com/p/4NYtQGTGZr/?taken-by=haveteawilltravel

One of my press samples. I got an origami crane too (which is sitting on my dresser.) The scent was mostly vegetal. There is a kinda malty flavour, but I get more mild fruit.
I could see having this with meals.

Origin: Obubu Tea, Kyoto, Japan
Harvest: Summer 2014

So I received a new houhin from O-Cha and decided to break it in with this Sencha. I haven’t been that impressed with many of the Japanese teas I’ve had this year even though Senchas are probably my favorite kind of tea, so I was a little cautious about this tea even though it is from Obubu Tea being sold by What-Cha.

Dry Leaves: I think this is a machine harvested, judging by some of the smaller tea leaves. This isn’t as uniform tea as I like for Sencha, there are quite a few bits that would not stand out from Long Jings, while others are tightly coiled and sill there are some smaller fragments. I wasn’t too impressed by the leaves, but they had a lovely green bean aroma and a nice spectrum of colors. There were more yellows and blues in my sample packet.

First Steeping
Temperature: 158oF
Brewing Time: One Minute
Aroma: Vegetal and Camphor
Flavor: Sweet Grass, Seaweed and Spinach
Tasting Notes: The first steeping was bitterer then I expected, although I did not find it entirely unpleasant, at first I thought I used more tea leaves then I should have, but in subsequent infusions the tea started to shine. Besides the bitterness this first infusion felt very much like a run of the mill Sencha.

Second Steeping
Temperature: 163oF
Brewing Time: One and a half Minutes
Aroma: Vegetal
Flavor: Wet Grass, Vegetal, Hay, Citrus and Savory Bitterness
Tasting Notes: While it wasn’t as bitter as the previous infusion, it still had some bitterness, although it became much more pleasant. I was quite surprised, while I wasn’t that shocked to find a Japanese tea with some initial bitterness, I was amazed by how quick it became pleasant. Otherwise it started to develop a sweet finish.

I was quite fond of this infusion even though I liked the previous, this time it had a nice balance.

Third Steeping
Temperature: 168oF
Brewing Time: Two Minutes
Aroma: Vegetal
Flavor: Grass, Savory Bitterness, Buttery and Sweet
Tasting Notes: It became much more simple than the previous infusions, and not as nuanced, although it was still quite pleasant. Even though the flavors were not as complex or as crisp as previous infusions, this was my favorite of the three infusions.

Overall I was impressed with this it was rather enjoyable for a summer tea. And at $8.80 for 50g (at the time of writing this) it is well worth the price. I am not sure if I would recommend this tea unless someone was familiar with Japanese greens. I haven’t had many summer senchas that start out as strong as this one then become sweeter in subsequent infusions which was a rather interesting transition for a sencha. While it may not be a daily drinker for everyone, it certainly s for me I can easily see myself buying more of this as my morning tea. I got about five infusions out of this tea although I might stop at four the next time.

[Images: http://rah-tea.blogspot.com/2015/01/sencha-of-summer-sun-2014-from-obubu.html}