In celebration of my new seal. Nothing goes better with tea than calligraphy.
My new love is matcha. I bought a Chinese chawan for 8 USD, but didn't like Chinese matcha, and had to get some from Japan. The dried tea leaves in the photo were collected in Wenzhou, Zhenghe and Wuyi.
9 comments:
Is that a tin of Hibiki-an Matcha?
Yes, it is the super premium. I thought it was quite good, but don't know any better as it was the first matcha I have had, besides Chinese matcha which was probably cooking grade or worse.
I am going to try to order from Marukyu-Koyamaen next.
Thats a really good Matcha. Ive been buying from Hibiki-an for a long time and I think they have some of the best quality Japanese Tea,s available. (And Ive tried most of the brands) Another thing I like about them is every year when the new tea,s are ready for sell the previous years tea,s are destroyed. Quality control. I,m sure you,ll experiment w/other Matcha,s but you,ll soon realize that what you started out with is by far the best quality and the best value out there.
I ordered from Hibiki-an after I became aware of them trough a number of web logs (yours included) and their tea is very good. Even though I have not had much (high quality) Japanese tea, I drink enough tea that as soon as I had one sip of Hibiki-an's tea I could tell it was good.
If you haven't ordered from Marukyu-Koyamaen and/or Ippodo, I would suggest you try them. I am sure the quality is in no way inferior to Hibiki-an.
It would be fun to compare Marukyu-Koyamaen's Tenju with Hibiki-an's pinnacle matcha.
Ive bought Koyamaens Matchas before and liked them quite a bit although comparing by price I prefer Hibiki,s and as for Ippodo I think of them as being the Starbucks of Japanese Tea,s. I think the tea,s are good but including shipping costs it,s just to expensive. I think that dollar for dollar you cant beat Hibiki the tea,s are high quality, fresh and with free shipping you cant beat em.
Bret, does my chawan look big to you in this picture? It seems really big to me, but then I have been drinking out of tiny little cups.
No, not really. I have bigger Chawan,s than that. I know what you mean, going from Chinese size teacup to a Chawan seems strange. Two extremes. I remember feeling selfconcious when drinking from a Matcha bowl for the first few times. Your Chawan looks nice though, looks like something I would buy.
P.S. constructive critisism. I noticed the large sized bubbles on the surface of your Matcha, you can avoid that by raising the whisk to where it is barely touching the surface of the tea and slowly whisking back and forth the large bubbles will break leaving a dense, rich and creamy foam. Although I have to admit that sometimes when making Matcha I dont care enough to bother with it. With high grade Matcha like you have one of it,s attributes is the ability to make a really dense layer of foam.
I had read somewhere that breaking up small bubbles was mostly aesthetic, but I can see how it would feel thicker in the mouth with no large bubbles.
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