The Kukicha visually is a lot different from the other Japanese tea and that is because of the picked material. Here we have stems, stalks and twigs coming from another harvest from the tea plants which were already involved in the production of sencha or another Japanese green tea. We can obtain this kind of tea only from really cured tea plants otherwise the we will obtain from it a too bitter liquor after the infusion. In Japan used to roast this tea to sharp the bitterness and make it more pleasant but our version it’s a really valuable production so it doesn’t need that processing. The liquor of this tea shows a tannic and young wood flavor at first (due to the material is made of) and then it leaves a fresh grass taste like the senchas one.
Place of origin
Kagoshima, Japan.
Production
This tea is produced in the classic Japanese style. The stems, stalks and twigs after the picking phase pass through a brief withering phase and then they are steamed at a very high temperature for 15/20 seconds. This practice provides the “killing of the green” which stands for the deactivation of the enzymes responsible of the oxidation process. The leaves are now rolled for released all their flavors and then they are dried with hot air to be ready to infuse.
Ingredients: organic green tea.
Preparation
Put 4 grams of leaves (about two teaspoon) in the Japanese teapot called kyusu or if you don’t have one you could use another teapot preferably with a wide flat bottom.
Pour 100 ml of water at 75°C temperature on the leaves and after 40 seconds start pouring the tea into the cups. For a better tasting experience we recommend to do two more infusions of the leaves with the same values of temperature and quantity but using different infusion time. We suggest 50 seconds for the second infusion and 1 minute for the third.
The tea could be filtered if you want to avoid some little piece of the leaves during the tasting time and also the steeping time we recommend here could be modify on your personal preferences.
Storage: we recommended you to store this tea in a dry and cool place avoiding the direct sun light on the leaves.
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