Thursday, September 25, 2008

Kukicha

Tea: Kukicha (Organic)
Vendor: Lamyx
Price:$14.95 / 1.5 oz.
Vendor Description: These are the delicate stems of the tea leaves. A light, grassy brew of exceptional quality.

Leaf: The leaf for this tea was a very lightly colored, very pale green kukicha. It seemed very atypical for a green kukicha.

1st Infusion: There was a light murkiness to this tea, it was a light yellow color with shades of brown. It gave off a very light aroma. The flavor was not a very traditional kukicha flavor, it has hints of lemongrass and other unusual flavors for a kukicha. There was a slight tanginess to the flavor and no bitterness. It did however have a light sense of astringnecy. All in all the flavor was very mellow and very hard to pin down to specific flavors.

2nd Infusion: This infusion had the same odd nondescript flavor as the first infusion. Aside from that it seemed weaker and very unusual. It didn't seem much like other green kukichas that I have had before.

Rating: 1/10

Conclusion: At nearly 10 dollars an ouce this tea seems very expensive for a very odd flavor. Normally a kukicha is a much more cost consicous tea, considering it is made primarily of the stems of the tea rather than the more sought after leaf. There were an assortment of flavors going on in this tea, most of which I could not identify.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

cool cup

Unknown said...

It totally depends on the quality of Kukicha, but usually it has to be infused in short time with high temperature, such as 30sec. / 85 Celsius.
Some Karigane made from Gyokuro stem are really nice.

Anonymous said...

I've never been a fan of the stuff myself, I find them too grassy. Sounds like this one was a particularly bad one though.

Eric said...

Yeah, there definitely are some good Kukichas out there. This one was just particularly bad.