Iced Matcha au Lait

The warm weather continues......
No hot matcha today.  Instead, I had this delicious and refreshing cold drink: Iced Matcha au Lait. Yum.

Here is my method:
1. Pour 2 chasaku of sifted Matcha into a cold glass.
2. Add 100ml iced water, and whisk with chasen (bamboo whish) until the tea gets frothy.
3. Add soy milk and stir.  Then add ice cubes and enjoy!

Cold brew Teas

The weather has been hot lately as June Gloom is finally over.  The thought of having a cup of hot tea is not really appealing so I decided to cold brew my teas this week. After searching online for how to prepare cold brewed teas, I decided to try brewing my teas with iced water and left it overnight in the fridge. First try was saemidori shincha. Wow I really liked the taste!  It was sweet,no bitterness, less astringent and very refreshing. 

Then I tried other type of teas that I normally brew hot; oolong, darjeeling and matcha. I liked all of them too. I am very pleased to know that I can still enjoy my teas even in very hot days! Life is good.  

2010 Farmer's Choice Bao Zhong from Floating Tea Leaves

2010 Organic Honyama Tonkuju Shincha

This is one of my favorite shincha teas this year; it has a sweet and delicate taste which I really like for my green tea. Look at the beautiful leaves!

The spent leaves do not look bad either. 

Kenya Silverback Silver Needle - Green Tea Lovers

I participated in an online group tea tasting organized by Chip over at TeaChat. I signed up for Silver Needle round and received the following 5 samples, 8 gram each:

GreenTeaLovers Adam's Peak from Ceylon 

Kenya Silverback from Green Tea Loveres
Rishi Silver Needle Premium Organic (Bai Hao Yin Zhen) from Fujian
Adagio Silver Needle
Rishi Fuding Grand Cru

I tried Kenya Silverback today and used the group tasting discussion as the guidelines. I used 4 grams of tea and 4 ounces water, brewed at 170 for 2 minutes in a shiboridashi.  I found the dried leaves have an unpleasant smell. It smelled like an old tea to me or "bau apek" in Indonesian. (Couldn't find an English word to accurately describe the smell). The aroma of the brewed tea on the contrary, was sweet and had a nice fresh floral scent. I quite enjoyed the sweet flavors of this tea but had to stop after the first brew. Since I am very sensitive to caffeine, one session of white tea is enough to keep me awake all night especially if I drink it this late. So I will continue brewing this tea tomorrow.  

Edit: So  the next day after leaving the spent leaves in the fridge overnight, I had the second and third infusion before noon. The color of the brew as well as the aroma and flavor didn't change much. It's quite refreshing actually. The flavor from the fourth and fifth infusions  was less sweet but it was still enjoyable to drink. Overall I really like this tea. Hope I will like my other 4 samples of SN too.

Today's Matcha

Organic Marukyu-Koyamaen in Ericka O'Rourke's chawan