Zenhodo

Easily forms a dense and stable foam. Taste bold, dense and sweet but not ovewhelming. Creamy. Intense aftertaste.

As described it is a smooth and light tea with a green and roasty aroma . The tea is mainly stems with a small quantity of leaves.

The recommended instructions worked fine, but coming back home in a cold winter night, I prefer to prepare a single infusion, with just boiled water and steeping from 3 to 5 min for a stronger infusion.

Didn’t seem to exist on the site. I guess Steepster is not very JP green focused. As a disclaimer, I have never had gyokuro before (or any Japanese green for that matter). I wanted a small kyusu, and Zenhodo had one that caught my eye, so I figured I might as well tack some tea onto the the order.

It took me a try or two to get this brewing correctly — some other gyokuro apparently need more leaf, and the first time I tried 10g/80ml. This made a bitter and overpowering tea. When I dropped the dosing to 7g, the tea was much mellower and more pleasant, and my description of the flavor will be under these conditions.

The tea liquor is the thickest I’ve ever seen in a green tea, almost like a good shu puerh.
The flavor is very strong, but brewed properly there is very little bitterness. The main flavors I were able to discern were umami, some leafy vegetables, some grass, and a wonderful, thick, deep sweetness. This was a very, very pleasant tea to drink and I can find very little to complain about in it.

As far as physiological effects go, green tea is pretty predictable, though this is no bad thing. I find this tea, as most other greens, has a cooling, calming effect on me — gentler than puerh, but without the flush or dizziness that accompanies the latter. The post-brew leaves are pretty edible too, though very high in caffeine as far as I can tell. I ate a good few of them with soy sauce.

I have 3 shincha coming that I’ll probably review as well, and I’m sure more puerh will happen after that. Summer is just particularly suited to greens, I guess.