by Dewey Lightcap
I’ve been drinking tea my whole life and wanted to share a few of my favorite tea discoveries with you. Specifically, I wanted to share with you the many types of green tea that I never knew about! Now, I’m not your average tea drinker who sips on bags of Lipton; in fact, I’m pretty skeptical as to whether the average “tea” product on the grocery store shelf has actual tea in it. Please don’t misunderstand me; there’s nothing wrong with drinking what you like or liking what you grew up with. For example, I LOVE box stuffing mix. I cannot and would not consider my Thanksgiving holiday complete without it! Yes, I am fully aware it’s not “real” stuffing, but that doesn’t matter to me. So, if you’re a tea drinker and you love your Tetley tea bag, have at it! But for those of you who want to take the red pill and follow the white rabbit across the event horizon of the Stargate and come out the other side of a tea-variety galaxy far, far away, this article is intended precisely for you!
The structure of this article will be a bit “listy.” My purpose is to simply introduce you to several tea varieties and give you just enough reason to branch out and try one for yourself!
ROOTS
Legend has it that tea made its way to Japan during the 14th century. Some of the first tea ever grown in Japan was grown in a place called Shizuoka, which earned the moniker “Tea Town.” But Sencha wasn’t invented until the 18th century with the introduction of steaming and kneading to the processing of tea leaves. Sencha is both a well-known and widely consumed green tea around the world. It wouldn’t be a stretch to think of it as Japan’s flagship green tea as it accounts for over half of all tea consumed in Japan with some estimates as high as 80%. If the Japanese people drink sencha more than any other tea, it must be good, so let’s start our tea tour there!
SENCHA
You may have already heard of sencha. “Sen” is Japanese for infuse, while “cha” is Japanese for tea – remember that because you’ll be seeing it again – so sencha loosely translates to “infused with tea leaves” or, more simply, “infused tea.” It usually has hints of sweetness due to the steaming process, some bitterness from the antioxidants, and astringency from the tannins. Accompanying flavors, which can include everything from grassy notes and fresh spinach to floral notes, all shine through depending on what region the tea comes from and how it’s prepared. So, don’t think that just because you’ve tried one sencha, you’ve tried them all. Keep at it!
FUKAMUSHI
But before we depart the Sencha Express, let’s ride this “steam” engine a little “longer” until we reach our destination at Fukamushi Station! Now, to explain my lame joke (since, as we all know, explaining the joke is the best part of comedy), “mushi” is the Japanese word for steam, while “fuka” means deep or long, so fukamushi literally translates to deep-steam or long-steam. Like sencha, it is steamed and kneaded, but being “mushi’d” for a “fuka” amount of time, this tea loses a great deal of its bitterness, tastes just a little sweeter, and brews the most gorgeous, verdurous cup of tea you’ve ever seen. You’ll see why it’s called green tea for the first time in your life! This is my favorite tea, and I drink it every day.
Japan produces over 80,000 tonnes of tea yearly, not all of which is sencha. Now you, being the ever-inquisitive reader, are surely thinking, “So what about the other types of tea, Dewey”? Glad you asked my very intelligent reader! Let’s boldly go!
SHINCHA
“Shin” means new, so shincha means “new tea,” and it is named as such because it’s the first harvest of the year. It is claimed that shincha has an extra dose of nutrients like antioxidants and vitamins. This is because, during the winter months when the tea plant is dormant, it’s doing what all plants do in the winter: trying to survive. So come spring, the plants put their best foot forward (or in this case roots), and push to grow big and strong, packing extra nutrients into their leaves. And you can capitalize on the tea’s hard work by buying yourself what is known as first flush tea!
SAKURACHA
If you love springtime, tea, and cherry trees, boy, I have got a mash-up for you! It’s called Sakuracha or sakura tea. Just please don’t call it sakura cha tea. That’s like saying naan bread, ATM machine, or queso cheese! Anyway, in Japan, cherry blossom trees are everywhere and grow natively. Every spring, when the cherry blossom trees bloom, the Japanese tea farmers snag a few of those beautiful pink flowers and mix them with green tea to make a delicious cup of sakura cha tea – I mean sakuracha! Dang!… See how easy it is to do that!?
GYOKURO
Now, in much the same way that a first flush tea like shincha is more nutrient-dense (thanks nature), other teas have an extra dose of goodie-goods, too! The best example is gyokuro. Gyokuro is a high-quality tea that usually sells for a premium. It is a type of Sencha with one extra step in the preparation process: shade! We all have a rudimentary understanding of photosynthesis, right? What happens when you decrease the amount of light a plant gets for a few days? With no light to break it back down, the chlorophyll builds up in the leaves. This results in a leaf that is both visibly darker and packed with nutrients! It is said that this tea has less bitterness but a much more umami flavor. I’ve had it, and it’s quite good but very unique. If you like green tea, please give this one a try, but know that it’s vital to get the steeping temperature and duration precisely right as this tea, in my experience, is not forgiving of being over-steeped.
BANCHA
Want a bancha? Don’t cha want a? Unlike the soda that inspired that silly pun, bancha not only contains zero grams of sugar but also has particular polysaccharides like amylase and sucrase that may actually help lead to healthier blood sugar levels! This has been known in Japan for some time, and apparently, bancha is the leaf of choice for making sweetened tea in Japan precisely for this property. Sencha is usually made by picking the newest growth – the smaller, younger leaves at the very tip of the tea plant. Bancha, however, is made by harvesting the larger, more mature leaves underneath those. This results in bancha having less caffeine but more catechins, a type of polyphenol found in tea that, while increasing the bitterness of the tea, also increases its antioxidant capacity. So, if you want to improve your health or maybe just make sweet tea a little bit better for you, this is a tea you can’t miss!
HOJICHA
Hojicha is simply roasted tea. It is most often made from roasting bancha. If you enjoy roasted flavors and toasted notes in your foods, you should give this one a try. Bancha is a low-caffeine tea, but when you roast it, you decrease the caffeine content even more. This makes it an excellent choice to have with a late lunch or an early dinner. Also, the roasting process removes almost all the bitterness. Being high in flavor and low in bitterness and caffeine makes hojicha an excellent tea for those cold winter days when you just want something warm to sip. Add to that the typical low cost, and this is a tea experience that’s hard not to try!
KUKICHA
Hojicha is the perfect segway into our next tea because hojicha can be made by roasting either bancha or kukicha. “Kuki” is Japanese for stem or twig, so kukicha is a tea brewed from stems instead of leaves. Specifically, the leftover stems after the leaves were used to make sencha. I know what you’re thinking, “Dewey, why would I want to drink brewed stems? Wouldn’t that be worse than the leaves?” Well, curious reader, it all depends on what you want. Tea stems contain a high L-theanine concentration, making for a super calming cup of tea. So, if you’re looking for naturally sweet, beautifully green, easy-drinking tea that helps you manage stress and chill out, leave the leaves for another cup and get twiggy with it.
KARIGANE
So, if the leftover stems from sencha are used to make kukicha, what about the leftover stems from the production of gyokuro? Answer: they are used to make karigane. Karigane is essentially a higher-grade kukicha. As for taste, karigane has an umami flavor just like gyokuro but a sweetness just like kukicha, making a beautifully balanced cup suitable for any meal or just to sip. “Kari” is apparently the Japanese word for “wild goose”. There’s some disagreement on exactly how this tea came to be named after a wild goose. One version says it’s because when the stems float to the top of a cup of tea, they look like logs floating on a lake (which, as we all know, is the perfect spot for a goose to hang out). Another version of the origin story claims that the stems of the tea plant have just enough contrast with the leaves to make it look like there’s a wild goose. I’ve seen tea plants before and never thought I saw a goose, but maybe I’m the silly one!
HOW TO BREW
Most tea companies provide their own brewing instructions, so you can always try what the people who sell the tea think is best. However, brewing tea is all about preference. I have discovered through years of experimentation that, for green teas, I like to use one heaping teaspoon of tea per eight ounces of water, heated to 165°F and steeped for 45 seconds. I use this for each of the teas listed in this article and I find that each one comes out almost perfect. I highly recommend starting with my method and changing variables as you go to better suit your own palate. After all, the only proper way to brew a cup of tea is to make it the way you like it.
Now get out there and turn over a new leaf!
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