How to steep high quality sencha green tea to make an espresso-like shot.
This warm water steeping technique (we like to call it “sencha espresso”) is unique to Wazuka and the surrounding areas of Southern Kyoto, and is not very well known even in Japan.
Before you begin, you’ll need to have some pretty high quality sencha, Obubu’s Kabuse Sencha or Sencha of the Wind is our recommendation of course. If you can find a good quality gyokuro or shincha, those will do just fine as well.
Flavor: The tea produced by this brewing technique is very sweet, almost syrupy, because the lower temperature of the water brings out the sugars in the leaf stems more than the amino acids in the leaves. Because Obubu’s teas are sold straight from the farm, there are more leaf stems than other high quality teas producing a sweeter flavor using this steeping method.
INSTRUCTIONS
- Use approximately 80 cc (or 80 ml, 2.7 fluid ounces, 1/3 cup) of boiling water. Pour into your teapot.
- When the teapot feels warm, pour into cup.
- Place your tea leaves (5 grams or about a palm’s worth) into the pot and wait one minute.
- After a minute or two, the hot water in the cup should have cooled to about 70C/160F degrees (warm but not hot to touch). Pour it back into your teapot to steep the leaves.
- Steep for 1.5 – 2 minutes and pour back into your cup for some tea espresso!
You now have some used tea leaves. I hate the word “used” because in truth, the leaves after this steeping is now ready for a 2nd standard steeping (using boiling water, about 20-30 seconds). After the 3rd or 4th standard steeping, you can then eat the tea leaves! We usually splash a bit of soy sauce to create a tea leaf salad, but we’re interested in gathering a few recipes!
Otanoshimini! Enjoy!
BEST WITH THE FOLLOWING TEAS
(Best) Kabuse Sencha
(Best) Sencha of the Spring Sun
(Best) Sencha of the Wind
(Not bad) Sencha of the Earth
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