Ryuouen

The instructions called for 30g per liter (or six heaping teaspoons) cold brewed for 12+ hours. I found that I like it brewed a bit weaker at six actual teaspoons per liter. I’ve been making a batch almost every other day this summer.

(I’m bad at describing flavors but it’s quite tasty)

Nice tea. Not crazy about it. Maybe I need to experiment more with brewing it, since I don’t even really know what it is. (Anyone read Japanese?) It’s not very sweet, but also doesn’t have a strong umami flavor either. It’s a nice, mellow, vegetal green tea.

I was so pleased that I was able to google-sleuth this and the name of this tea and a picture! I was really intimidated by the smell of the dry leaves. They smelled very nutty, almost chocolatey, and very umami, almost like seaweed praline- a very strange combination. Thankfully, when this tea is brewed, those notes mellow out and come together in a really nice way. The sweet nuttiness becomes more of a roasted grain flavor, and the umami is toned way down. It has a nice sweetness to the aftertaste, but this tea is still pretty foreign to my palate. I’d bet this would be a wonderful tea to have with a meal.

ETA: The tin has a really odd design on it…It’s an open-mouthed frog, chasing a rabbit (who’s wielding a branch over its head), chasing a monkey?

The picture on the tin is this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chōjū-jinbutsu-giga Known as the first Manga.

1500yen/100g

Actually it’s a karigane(?) of Garyu-Horie which is a company seeming to be related to Ryu-Oh-En, and maybe famous for its package picture using Cho-Ju-Giga.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ch%C5%8Dj%C5%AB-jinbutsu-giga