Teabag - Genmaicha

Tea: Genmaicha
Vendor: Maeda-en
Price: $4.50 / 10 teabags
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 Genmai-cha (leaves AND rice!) 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!

Teabag: The teabag for this tea has some very small rice in it. I would guess to say that the rice has been crushed like the tea. There is a quite a bit of dust on the teabag as well as inside of the package. There is a moderate amount of stem pieces in the mix. The mix reminds me quite a bit of the mix that was in the sencha teabag.

1st Infusion Parameters: 185F, 3min, 5 oz, 1 teabag (2g)

1st Infusion: The tea comes out lightly murky, through the murkiness there is a lightly radiant yellow-green color. The aroma is very broad and strong and is primarily represented by the toasted rice aroma. It reminds me very much of rice crackers. The flavor of the tea itself has a medium strength with a very soft flavor. It is very much dominated by the rice flavor.

Rating: 5/10

Conclusion: Like the sencha this teabag was an improvement on their previous product's design, although like the sencha I would have liked to see more leaf in the bag. I also didn't really see any reason to crush the tea, larger leaf like that used by most nicer teabag producers would have probably been nicer.

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.

Brown Rice Tea with Matcha

Tea: Brown Rice Tea with Matcha (genmaicha w/ matcha)
Vendor: Maeda-en

About this tea: This is another tea that I picked up during shincha season, but don't have much information about now. It is essentially a genmaicha extra green from Maeda-en, 2008 shincha crop.

Leaf: The leaf for this had a lot of small pieces to it. There was a very surprising amount of rice in this tea, normally a genmaicha has a fraction of the rice that this one does. The leaf was all rather uniformly small in size, it is fairly uniformly sized and there is a hefty coating of matcha over the whole thing.

1st Infusion: The first infusion had a very murky green color to it, very much expected for a matcha coated tea though. It was surprisingly dark though for a genmaicha. The tea had an almost dusty aroma to it with a light toasted rice aroma. The flavor was very smooth and sweet. The rice was very prominent, almost a bit too prominent. The sweetness from the tea and the matcha had a medium bodied effect and left with a light sense of astringency.

2nd Infusion: Surprisingly this infusion was still a murky green color. The tea took on a bit more of a brown-green color. The flavor of the tea itself was quite light and had a light bite to it. The astringency had increased in this infusion.

Rating: 6/10

Conclusion: The first infusion of this tea was quite good. It was a bit strong on the rice though, the rice:tea ratio was a bit on the high side. The second infusion was a bit more of a lackluster showing. The flavor was enjoyable though, but not spectacular.

Shincha

Tea: Shincha
Vendor: Maeda-en

About this tea: I picked this tea up at a Nijiya grocery store back in May. I unfortunately don't know much about the tea, aside from that it is a 2008 shincha crop from Maeda-en. Information regarding this particular sencha has since been removed from their website due to the seasonality of shincha.

Leaf: The leaf had a very enjoyable sweet aroma to the leaf. The tea had a lot of smaller pieces to it, and a very noticeable blend of colors. There were a significant amount of light green bits and pieces in the mix and a lot of very dark colored pieces.

1st Infusion: The tea had a very bright green color and was moderately cloudy. The flavor was very sweet and thick. Even though the flavor was quite light. It has a light sense of astringency.

2nd Infusion: This was a darker and murkier infusion. There was a light sweet aroma to it with a hint of a roasted aroma to it. The flavor was very light and up front, but there was not much flavor on the back end. This infusion also had a moderate sense of astringency.

Rating: 8/10

Conclusion: This tea was rather surprising for a maeda-en tea. All of my previous tries of this brand had been somewhat lackluster and mediocre. This tea turned out to be quite good, although not exceptional. This is a very solid and good shincha. I unfortunately don't have the price of the tea on hand anymore so I don't know how much of a value it was, but the flavor is enjoyable. I will have to give the Maeda-en brand another try.

Teabag - Gyokuro

Tea: Gyokuro
Vendor: Maeda-en
Price: $6.50/10 teabags
Vendor Description: Maeda-en's Premium Gyokuro Tea Bag is characterized with clear crystal blue-green color along with Gyokuro's unique balance between bitterness and sweetness. For maximum brewing, we use nylon-mesh tea bag.

This is the first teabag that I decided to review. I was a bit skeptical about this when i picked it up, mostly because I picked it up at an asian grocery store. I have had some of the products from them in the past and was generally happy, although as I got more and more into loose leaf tea I started stepping away from buying tea from non-specialty shops. I love the taste of gyokuro and I figured that this might be a good solution for it.

This teabag is made of the nicer non-paper material. Although the shape of the teabag is the flat satchel type. This was actually the first time I had seen one of these in this shape / material combination. The teabag does come individually wrapped in a foil package.

The leaf itself was rather small and it was a smaller particle size than most gyokuro I have had from them in regular loose leaf packaging from them. The brewed liquor was actually more of a yellow color than I normally see in a gyokuro.

The tea has a very mild vegetal flavor to it, with a weak flavor to it. There is a very light sense of astringency, but all in all this was a very weak flavored gyokuro. This was actually rather surprising considering I steeped this teabag with a rather small amount of water so the ratio of tea to water was rather high. All in all this was a very unremarkable gyokuro.

Rating: 2/10

Conclusion: I was hoping for more out of this teabag, but was disappointed. The style of teabag is ok, but I would have thought a tetrahedral or pyramid shape would have been better. The tea is very weak all around and not worth the cost. All in all you're better off looking elsewhere.