What temperature water for sencha?

80°C. Ippodo's method uses about 10 grams of sencha in 210 ml of water at 80°C for one minute.

How long do you steep sencha?

Sixty seconds for the first infusion, by Ippodo's method. The same leaves will give a second pot and even a third, brewed more briefly because the leaf has already opened.

How do I cool water for green tea without a thermometer?

Pour the boiling water into the empty teacups first, then from the cups onto the leaves. The two pours bring it down to roughly 80°C.

How to brew sencha green tea

Sencha is the green tea most of Japan drinks every day: leaves steamed soon after picking, rolled into fine dark-green needles and dried. It is brewed briefly, in a small pot, and it is one of the few teas where the method matters as much as the leaf.

The method

This is the method published by Ippodo, a Kyoto tea house that has sold tea since the eighteenth century.

Leaf: two tablespoons, about 10 grams, for a small Japanese teapot (a kyusu) of about 210 ml. For a Western teapot of around 500 ml, Ippodo suggests starting at three tablespoons, about 15 grams, and adjusting to taste.

Water: 80°C — hot, not boiling.

Time: one minute.

Pour: evenly between the cups, so each gets the same strength, and pour out every last drop. Tea left standing in the pot keeps brewing and spoils the next infusion.

That is a good deal more leaf than a Western cup would use, and a good deal less time. The result is a small, concentrated cup — sweet, grassy, a little savoury — rather than a mugful.

Cooling the water without a thermometer

Ippodo's own trick. Boil the kettle and pour the water into the empty teacups, then from the cups into the pot over the leaves. The two pours bring boiling water down to about the right temperature, and warm the cups while they are at it.

Second and third infusions

Ippodo's advice is that the same leaves will take a second pot, and even a third. The leaves are open after the first, so the second is brewed more briefly; taste and judge from there.

Shincha

The first sencha of the year is shincha, "new tea", picked in spring and sold fresh. Tradition marks its start at hachijū-hachiya, the 88th night after the first day of spring in the old calendar — about 2 May — and tea picked then is held to bring good health. It is in the tea calendar, counting down.