It’s Wednesday morning and my daughter is in school. I finished reading my novel ‘Buddenbrooks’ thanks to a stint of several 4+ hour reading sessions. It’s a quite lengthy classic of German literature, a great recommendation from a friend, and I did enjoy it very much. I started reading ‘Beyond Order: 12 More Rules for Life’ shortly after, but it’s not as engaging as the fictional novels I’ve been into lately (probably because my vocabulary isn’t quite up to par, to be honest) and I find myself dozing off every 45 minutes. The answer to my problems is caffeine, so I did what anyone else in my situation would do: Crushed 14 pots of tea.
It seems like every other article I write is about this tea — Ashikubo Tea Works ‘Mine no Kaori’ Sencha. Surely this thorough examination of it by focusing on its brewing parameters of it will be the conclusion to what I can say about it.
First of all, a fair test of the brewing ratios of tea:water with water temperature, source, steeping time, brewing and drinking vessels being the same. All done in glass with tetsubin boiling temperature water to start:
1:90
Fresh, faint–natural, as if it was the greenery outdoors, perhaps in a forest or garden, somewhere with a lot of plants, amongst nature. It’s brewed too weak to enjoy. Tastes kind of like the air surrounding a children’s pool party in the backyard summer heat, with wet grass and a cheap inflatable pool filled with hose water. The mouthfeel finishes very dry and unappealing.
1:80
The fragrance is weak, I couldn’t commit to saying anything in particular, seems to be lacking flavor but not by much? The texture seems dry and astringent
1:70
Fresh, simple, smells like a classic yabukita sencha, something like steamed edamame
1:65
The aroma is fresh, delicate, ‘breezy, reminds me of a greenhouse, it has a slight astringency, since the infusion tastes rather simple, the astringency stands out
1:60
Fresh, bright, rich, warming, the texture is rich, but the richness doesn’t displace the freshness.
1:55
The aroma is more vegetal (edamame), the aroma seems to have more significance to it, the flavor is rich, straightforward, and lacks astringency which is good
1:50
The aroma is becoming pungent, the flavor seems seaweedy, certainly more marine now than at weaker infusions, the finish is beginning to have a more noticeable presence
1:40
Astringency is noticeable, the flavor is deeper, more savory — more cooked, mushy greens
1:30
The flavor is becoming bitter, it’s bolder, deeper in a pungent cooked vegetable sense, decidedly not sweet. It’s bitter and astringent, a lot of flavors though. A cooked green vegetable fragrance lingers with the bitterness during the finish. Unappealing.
1:20
Overwhelmingly pungent, bitter, soapy floral — like the yellow flowers (weeds) that grow alongside the rail line near my house. Heavy, rich, very astringent, totally coats the tongue with an unwanted flavor.
I would say the sweet spot for brewing it light is between 1:60 and 1:55, the following test was done at the same ratio and temperature (boiling), but different steeping time:
1:57.5@30s
Faint aroma, slightly fragrant steam, slightly sweet with flavors of raw green vegetables, simple, youthful, slightly rich
1:57.5@1m
Overall quite fresh, easy-drinking, good texture, I’m kind of nose blind and flavor blind to the tea at this point being that it’s the 10th pot in an hour. The side by side with 2m is noticeably different though.
1:57.5@2m
Slightly richer in flavor, it has an additional flavor aspect compared to the 1m steeping, a sort of ‘waxiness or ‘rubbery’ quality. It’s comparable in so many ways to the 1m, but this new waxy aspect is undesirable.
1:57.5@3m
The flavor is more concrete, tangible. My tongue feels dry towards the end but I’m not exposed to unpleasant levels of bitterness or astringency. It’s bold, tastes like cooked vegetables such as lightly blanched western green cabbage, it has that sort of raw cabbage sweetness too. I seem to prefer it with more of a focus on sweetness and freshness instead of astringency though. Although I write here that it’s sweet, it’s not as sweet as the weaker infusions it seems.
The sweet spot for timing seems to be between 30 seconds and a minute. I’ll try adjusting the temperature next while keeping the other parameters the same. Perhaps with 45s steeps because it’s the average between the steeping times I enjoyed the most.
1:57.5@45s@70 degrees C
Wow. It’s very different than with boiling water, the sweetness seems doubled. It almost comes off as the green tea flavor that you get in ice cream (minus the flavor contributed by the milk itself)
1:57.5@45s@50 degrees C
OoOoOh! Even different still! So significant! The distinct ‘theanine flavor’ stands out, clear as day. It’s absolutely better than 70C, not even a close race. I wonder at what temperature the theanine flavor is destroyed? 60C?
My only complaint would be that it could be more concentrated, but as this was an exercise to brew the tea lightly, I think it was an utter success. I already know that I can make it taste delicious in the same vein (and more concentrated) with 1:10@2m@50c. I’m sure knowing that those 2 parameters both taste great combined with all the other data presented here means I could plot this out as a graph somehow to find optimal points of brewing filtered by time/ratio/temp. Not that I’m going to do that though.
Edit: I went through the following day and did a comparison between 1:57.5@45s@50 degrees and 1:50@45s@50 degrees. My opinion is that the weaker infusion is better because the flavor is clearer, the sweetness stands out. Adding additional leaf to the pot will increase the flavor level (though not by much in this case) but at the same time blur the crisp lines of flavor that present themselves. In both cases the theanine flavor was very clearly observed (not surprisingly), but how that flavor ended (the finish) was better in the weaker brew because it wasn’t obscured by other flavors like the stronger brew was.
Want to support me AND drink kick-ass tea? This is the sencha this article is about:
https://www.sommerier.com/?product=2020-ashikubo-tea-works-mine-no-kaori-sencha-80g
I have a few bags left in my inventory for the year, and there are a couple at La Table Haut Pastry in Airdrie. 
Thanks!
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