Tea Time with Tyas Sosen - Drink The Aroma

Hello beautiful tea minds! I'm just relaxing and I'm going to brew myself a delicious cup of tea and feel free to brew yourself a cup of tea as well and come and join me. It's tea time! Today I'm going to enjoy a bit of this delicious oolong by Etsuro Masui who has been featured in the most recent edition of the tea club and as with all the teas that I brew I like to brew it especially hot but first of all I am going to warm the teaware because very importantly what I like to do is to smell the aroma of the tea. You can smell the aroma of the tea of the dry leaf but it becomes more enhanced when you put the tea leaf inside a heated up teapot or a brewing vessel and today I'm just using my very simple outdoor portable and indestructible titanium set which I have come to appreciate very much and after having let this warm up a little this container now has become warmed and I'm just going to insert the tea leaf and as it sits in this warm vessel the tea is going to warm up and it's going to exert a much more delicious aroma. It becomes very much enhanced and strengthened and that is one of the aspects of tea that I like to enjoy very much. When I select tea I always look for teas that are interestingly fragrant. With Japanese tea in general what is more common is to look for a tea that is strong in flavor especially umami flavor and the majority of tea produced in Japan is basically focused and oriented in the direction of enhancing umami flavor but with the teas that I select for the tea crane most of the teas are interestingly fragrant and because they are organically and naturally grown not much fertilizer has been added to the tea so the umami flavor too has inevitably also not become as enhanced as with other teas. That is a trait that I recognize in many organic and naturally produced teas in Japan because in order to be able to grow a tea organically you can't use as much fertilizer. Fertilization can only be done to a certain extent where it does not become necessary to use pesticides. Pesticides are only being used because the tea is fed so much additional and perhaps unnecessary nourishment that then causes the tea tree to become vulnerable to bugs and pests and when the nourishment that the tea tree receives is oriented in one singular direction is focused on one specific aspect of nourishment such as the nitrates that are added in the soil to enhance that umami flavor also the tea tree becomes less healthy it becomes more vulnerable and its immune system gets lower. That is why when bugs and pests catch on the tea tree it does not protect itself anymore. When it has a diverse nourishment the tea tree can still fend off bugs and pests and that is what you see in a lot of organic tea gardens. An organic tea garden is not destroyed by bugs and you work with a lesser quality of leaf as is believed by a lot of conventional tea producers but it is quite the opposite. There are a lot of bugs, there are a lot of spiders, there are a lot of natural influences that work with and work against each other to maintain the natural environment and bugs and pests can come to the tea garden but these natural enemies of those bugs and pests will take care of them and should the tea tree get harmed or affected by any of these bugs or pests then it will have the immunity and the strength to fend off that disease just like with humans. I see that it is very similar with humans who have a compromised immune system they are more prone to getting sicker from certain bugs and viruses and become more requiring of medicine and in the agricultural world in tea production pesticides are basically medicine. It is to treat the tea tree so that their immune system although being comprised will not cause them to become more affected by diseases. So a naturally grown or a pesticide-free tea garden mainly retains a more healthy and a more natural way of growing and you get what is authentic from the tea tree. You don't get what is added to it like the singular umami flavor but you get a more diverse flavor and aroma and that is what is so important when putting the tea in a warmed up vessel gives you. You get this interesting aroma that you would usually not get and because what I'm brewing here now is also an oolong it is created in a way to produce more aroma because oolongs and black teas they are more aromatic. They have been through a withering process that causes certain components in the tea leaf to alter and produce more delicious fragrances and when brewing this kind of tea using a hotter water will allow you to extract more of those delicious fragrances. So for these kinds of teas also including green teas because some of the sencha or even gyokoro that I select are not as thick in flavor and you don't only want to extract flavor you want to extract the aroma as well. So I use right off the boil hot water and I brew it for only a brief moment. I don't let it steep for very long because it is not necessary to extract flavor what we want is to enjoy the aroma. So by only letting it steep for about 10 to 20 seconds that is sufficient to release those aromas and to already get a sufficiently delicious cup of tea. With sencha too what happens is usually with conventional teas if you brew it with water that is too hot it will extract too much of the bitterness but for a tea to become as bitter as with a conventional sencha that is not palatable anymore and it makes it not delicious and will cause you to think that you haven't brewed it properly that is only because it has been fertilized so heavily that the amount of amino acids has enhanced and also makes it possible to create too much catechin which produces bitterness. When a natural tea produces this amount of amino acids then it's only possible to produce this amount of catechins because amino acids are the source for catechins as they transition into catechins through photosynthesis and if there's only this much amino acids available in the tea leaf then the tea cannot become very bitter but if the amino acids are enhanced due to fertilization then when photosynthesis occurs the amount of catechin that can be produced is also this much it's not said that it is going to produce exactly this much or as much as there are amino acids because they are both balanced but if there are more amino acids available it means that there is more availability for catechin to be produced and for bitterness to be created. So with such a tea you will want to make sure that you don't extract those catechins and that is why you cool down your water to below 80 degrees as that will prevent catechins from releasing into the brew. But with teas that I select I look for teas that don't have that much amino acids and that much catechins and that are possible to be brewed with hot water and still provide a delicious experience. To me one parameter for selecting good tea is testing if it can be brewed with hot water if it can't be brewed with right of the boil hot water I am inclined to not select it because in a way a more natural tea should be delicious and enjoyable in whichever way you brew it. If you can brew it many different ways you will have much more joy from that tea and it will be more interesting you will have a much more interesting drinking experience. If a tea can be only brewed in one certain way and that specific way is very difficult for you to maintain and requires learning and practice to brew it correctly there might be the joy in doing that as well will likely not give you as much pleasure from one singular tea as a very versatile tea does. So I personally don't think that conventional teas are necessarily bad or that one is better than the other they both have their appeal and I look primarily for organic or natural teas because I enjoy them more and they are not as available on the market. So what you can expect from the tea crane is to find teas that are versatile that can be drunk in many different ways that can be enjoyed in many different settings and that will give you a very very unique experience. Now as I'm enjoying this oolong and I hope that you are brewing something yourself as well please do also go and take a look at the tea crane website and look at the many different varieties of tea that we offer and if you do like to enjoy a whole new variety of Japanese teas that you have not experienced before then I think that the tea crane tea club is the best option for you and I think you will enjoy being part of the tea crane tea club where you receive a selection of a variety of very rare and interesting Japanese teas every quarter and at the same time you get to interact with a lot of people who enjoy these kinds of teas and who continue to explore and discover new Japanese teas in our online tea crane tea club community. So this tea crane tea club is definitely something for you and I would like to invite you to become part of this community and I would love to see you there. If you are interested to join please check the link in the description. I hope you enjoy brewing your tea, make some time, think about what type of tea you're handling and how you want to brew it, try different brewing approaches. As I say there is not one singular right approach. Every tea should be possible to be brewed in different ways and I invite you to explore with different brewing methods with cooler water, hotter water, cold brewing even, taking longer infusions versus shorter infusions and to just play and enjoy and discover your tea in many different ways to discover all the different phases of the tea that you have at hand. If you enjoyed this video also like the video, subscribe to the channel for more tea content and tea ceremony content that will become available on the tea crane youtube channel and also click the notifications so that you will get notified when a new video comes out and if you're looking for more you're always welcome to come and select some teas at the tea crane. I will be looking forward to seeing you in the next video. Create your silence!