Now that my one week sip-down is over, I can try new teas again! The next two teas will be from The Tea Crane’s monthly tea subscription and they are both made from Benifuuki cultivars! As you may remember, I love this cultivar in black tea form so I am very excited to try these.

This time, the tea is a kamairicha from Yame, Fukuoka, which is a type of Japanese tea that is pan-fried, not steamed.

First Impressions

Since this is a kamairicha, the dry leaves are long and twisted (even though it is a green tea). They smell sweet, rich, and floral, almost like a scented tea.

Tasting Notes

The Tea Crane recommends high temperatures (90 degrees Celsius) and very short steep (20s) for these, so that’s what I did. For the first steep, the tea liquor is a very light yellow. The floral note isn’t as strong compared to the black tea version, but it’s still distinct. Apart from the floral note, I also found this tea to be sweet and fresh. Interestingly, the wet leaves have a stronger vegetal smell.

Although the photo looks very similar to the first steep, I thought that the tea liquor from the second steep looked slightly darker but was still a light yellow. The sweet and floral notes are a bit milder in this steep, possibly because I’m starting to get a hint of umami and some astringency here. Interestingly, the empty teacup smelled very sweet, like candy. In my second session with this tea, I wanted to avoid the bitter notes (for them to come out in the second steep seems really early!) so I tried using less hot water and it seems to have worked out better – the sweet and floral notes were still strong and the astringency was milder.

Now we’re moving on to the third steep, which produced a yellow tea liquor with a sweet and roasted fragrance. There is a floral note but it tastes rather bitter. I didn’t like this much so I waited for the tea to cool a bit and that’s when I realised that the bitter note is more of a very present aftertaste (does this make sense?) that appears as soon as you swallow the tea. I had the same results in my second session – a distinct bitter note at the edges of the mouth that was telling me I was done with the tea. It felt like the tea was more or less done by the end of this steep, at least for me, but I was a curious about the bitter note so I carried on.

However, instead of steeping with hot water, I decided to use room temperature water and steeped it for 15 minutes, to see if it was the high water temperatures causing it. The tea was still bitter and I was wondering if I had “burnt” the leaves. So I started a fresh batch and left it to room-temperature steep for 30 minutes. The tea that resulted was umami, vegetal, a little bitter, and with minimal floral notes, implying that the tea isn’t going to be very suitable for cold-brewing.

As expected from looking at the dry leaves, the spent leaves were largely whole leaves.

Overall Thoughts

This was an interesting experience! I really enjoyed the sweet and floral notes of this green tea, but it’s a pity that it got bitter so quickly. I’m used to steeping teas multiple times, so the sessions that I had with this tea felt very short – I’ll probably have to experiment to see what’s the best way to enjoy this tea (any tips?).

It’s also very clear that the floral notes for benifuuki come from the cultivar and that their intensity is affected by the processing method. I’ve got a benifuuki sencha coming up, so stay tuned for a review of that!