Teabag - Sencha

Tea: Sencha
Vendor: Maeda-En
Price: $4.50 / 10pc
Vendor Description: Craving a good cup of tea, but not in the mood to deal with the mess? We have just the solution for you!
Maeda-en is proud to offer you deliciousness and convenience all at the same time: crushed Sencha leaves are packed in mesh pyramid bags for the maximum steeping & easy clean up. It brews the beautiful green liquor, and tastes just like a whole leaf brew!

About this tea: Recently Maeda-en contacted me and wondered if I would like to give their teabags another go around. It seems that since my last review of their gyokuro teabags they switched from using a satchel type teabag to using a tetrahedral teabag shape.

Teabag: Each of these teabags comes individually wrapped. When opening up the teabag, quite a bit of powder comes out with the teabag. The amount of tea reminds me of a matcha laced genmaicha, but this is just because maeda-en apparently crushes their sencha for packing in the teabag. The teabags are in fact now a tetrahedral shape, and they are filled with small pieces of sencha leaf. The leaf is all very uniform in size and shape, it is smaller than rooibos in size. There is a noticeable light green glint of stem in the mix. The aroma of the teabag is a bit unusual, it is lightly marine in aroma and smells very broad in nature. Unlike some of the more specific teas it has a very overall green aroma to it.

1st Infusion Parameters: 1 teabag (2g), 5oz, 185F, 2min
1st Infusion: This teabag produces a murky darker green colored tea. There is not much of an aroma to it. The flavor is light and clear. The flavor is quite broad with a light central flavor to it. There is no astringency or bitterness, but overall the flavor seems a bit light. The used teabag is not pressing against the sides of the mesh strongly meaning plenty of space in the teabag, but at the same time there is room to have added more leaf in and still not see any size issues.

Rating: 5/10

Conclusion: While this is a significant improvement from the satchel type of teabags before, the tea is not terribly impressive. Granted it probably felt a bit weak due to the ratio I used, one teabag held 2g, wheras for this volume of water I'm normally using 3-5g at a shorter infusion time. The flavor was very broad, which I am getting the feeling that this was intentionally blended as such. All in all it's a somewhat inexepensive solution for individually wrapped teabags, good for taking tea on the go.