Sen Cha

Wow, I love this Sencha. This is my first Fukamushi and I’m so impressed. Such a lovely green cup and tastes exactly like it smells. It’s not too bitter or grassy, but lightly sweet and vegetal. It definitely tastes of buttery asparagus with a hints of artichoke, and it’s just a little bit brothy. Divine. I will definitely be purchasing more to this.

*Quick Note

I got this from a Marukai Japanese market in San Diego during my spring break. I thought it was plain sencha until read the back of the packaging and realized it was a fukamushi type.

Anyways, I was pleased with the taste of this tea. It is lightly sweet, medium bodied, a bit nutty, and with no astringency whatsoever.

Very good store bought sencha.

THE BIG FUKAMUSHI TASTING CONTEST
So I recently tried 5 different fukamushis, took notes each day, and now I’m ready to post the results and rank them! I used as equal parameters as possible to eliminate factors that could have affected the flavor or results. I am no expert or scientist; plus the results pretty much lined up with the cost of each tea, so there’s no big suprises here either!
(I’m going to put only the tasting note for each tea involved under the steepster profile of that tea, but the results I’ll include on each one).

Sencha (Fukamushi) Sugimoto USA
4 oz + 2.5g leaf in teabag (1+ tsp)
1st – 160, 45scds: The color was a very pure, light green. It almost looked more like a gyokuro, (it still smelled/tasted like sencha though). The first thing I noticed about this tea was how sweet it was. It felt like very high quality leaves…it was a very sweet-tasting tea, and very delicious.
2nd – 180, 15scds: I could still feel the tea, it did not taste watery, but I didn’t taste much of anything either. That’s the trouble with this sample….the first cup of tea was excellent and a good fukamushi (at least, I only know it was that because they say so on their website).
3rd + 4th – 212, 15scds: The last 2 steeps were the same as the 2nd essentially. A deeper green color, I could feel the tea, and while it didn’t taste watery, I didn’t taste much of anything either. I would really like to sample some of Sugimoto’s loose leaf. I think they would be fairly high quality and decent value, but I can’t tell from the 3 sample teabags I’ve tried.

1. Shincha Houryoku (Den’s)
2. Fukamushi Sencha Yame (Den’s)
3. Sen Cha (Sugimoto USA)
4. Fukamushi Sencha Special (Den’s)
5. Ocha-Zanmai Fukamushi (Yamamotoyama)

Lately I feel like I should be trying to drink more green tea just for the health benefits especially theanine. That is difficult when black teas are clearly my favorite!

Anyway I picked this up in Japantown yesterday. I got the mesh teabags but I don’t think I’ll create a new entry for it.

I steeped this for 60 seconds and got a vivid neon green color. This appears to be a fukumushi sencha, according to the Sugimoto website. I’m getting mostly gentle grassy notes with a bit of nuttiness and a slight astringency in the finish… It’s far less “seaweed” like than some other Japanese green teas I’ve had, but not the most flavorful fukumushi I’ve had. You can definitely get two steeps out of these teabags. This is a good everyday tea, however I prefer the bagged sencha from Den’s.