Brewing techniques · 5 min read
Brewing Japanese sencha
Cooler water, a kyusu and the last golden drops: how to bring out sencha’s sweetness instead of its bitterness.
Sencha is Japan’s everyday green tea: steamed, rolled into fine needles and dried. Brewed well it is sweet, grassy and savoury. Brewed too hot it turns bitter fast. The trick is cooler water and short steeps.
What you need
- A kyusu, the side-handle teapot, or any small pot with a fine filter. Sencha leaves are small and break up easily.
- Water at 70 to 80 °C.
- Small cups for sharing the pot evenly.
First infusion
- Cool the water in the cups. Pour just-boiled water into the cups first. Each time water moves to a new, cooler vessel it loses about 10 °C, and the cups show you exactly how much you need.
- Add 4 to 5 g of sencha to the kyusu for two small cups (about 120 ml).
- Pour the water from the cups into the pot and steep for about 60 seconds. Don’t stir or swirl.
- Pour back and forth between the cups a little at a time, so each gets the same strength.
- Pour out every last drop. The last drops are the richest, and water left behind makes the next infusion bitter.
Second and third infusions
The leaves are open now. Use water a little hotter, around 80 °C, and pour it out after just 10 to 20 seconds. For the third, go hotter again and steep for about 30 seconds.
Other Japanese greens
| Tea | Leaf | Water | Time |
|---|---|---|---|
| Sencha (light steam) | 4–5 g / 120 ml | 70–80 °C | 60 s |
| Deep-steamed sencha | 4–5 g / 120 ml | 70–75 °C | 30–45 s |
| Gyokuro | 5 g / 60 ml | 50–60 °C | 2 min |
Try gyokuro cooler than you think. At 50 °C it tastes almost like a light broth, sweet and savoury at once.
On the road: Uji, near Kyoto.
