Kimberley's Kyusu

Happy Matcha Monday! For a while, I have been wanting to try a wider selection of the matchas that Obubu Tea Farms currently stocks. So when I came across a sampler set featuring five of their matchas when browsing the Yunomi website and putting together my most recent order, I jumped at the chance to be able to try all of the matchas included without having to commit to 20g tins of all of them.

I had considered the possibility of covering them all in one post given that they are all single serving samples, but as I am sure you all know by now I like having the option to be as descriptive as possible with my tasting notes, and I knew I would have to limit myself if I tried to cover five of them in one post, so I’m hoping I’ll be able them all in separate posts over the next few Matcha Mondays either here on the blog or over on my Instagram.

For this first post I’ve chosen to focus on their Gokou matcha, as I have discovered that over the last few months that Gokou cultivar matchas are the ones I reach for the most over all others, so I wanted to try this one first to see how it compared to the other Gokou matchas, that I love.

When dry, this matcha is a mid-dark shade of green, its aroma is sweet and creamy with notes of banana milk and a hint of toasted rice; there is almost no vegetal aspect to the dry aroma of this matcha. Upon adding in water, it transformed into a much darker emerald green and the aroma transformed alongside that with notes of freshly made creamy porridge, bananas and tender stem broccoli coming to the forefront. 

In terms of its overall flavour, the standout notes previously mentioned in both the dry and wet aroma of this matcha are present, especially the notes of not yet perfectly ripe banana, tender stem broccoli and porridge made with oat milk. This matcha has everything I love about matcha made using leaves of the gokou cultivar. It has the trademark umami vegetal notes, but it is also beautifully sweet and quite possibly one of the creamiest matchas I have ever had. I would have loved to have been able to pick out the notes of peaches that Obubu mention in the description of this matcha on their website, but for me they were just not there. Personally, I would liken the fruity notes within this matcha to a mix of banana and golden kiwi.

In the mouth, the texture of this matcha when prepared as usucha is very interesting because it starts off sharp and coasts the mouth but quickly becomes slightly sweet, creamy and a little starchy, again very similar to the way that a slightly green not quite yet ripe banana tastes. The lingering taste notes are without a doubt the steamed tender stem broccoli notes and the porridge notes, both of which stuck around for a long time after I finished sipping.

This time around I didn’t have enough of this matcha to experiment with, so I’ll definitely be adding this to my list of teas to purchase more of in the future, not only because I enjoyed what it had to offer during this session, but also because I would love to see if anything about it changes significantly when it is fresher than the sample I had. I would also love to prepare this in different ways, as other Gokou matcha I have had has performed excellently when iced, so I can only assume that this one would do the same, especially given it fruity and creamy notes.

I am yet to have a tea from Obubu that I haven’t loved and lucky this matcha did not change that. I would say that it falls just under my favourite Gokou matcha currently but part of me assumes that is simply just because I need to try a fresher batch of it. If this is what it has to offer not at it’s freshest, I just know I am in for a treat when I try it in the future. I thoroughly enjoyed trying it and I am interested to see how the other matcha samples within the sample pack that, this was a part of compare to it.

If you want to try the sample pack of Obubu Matcha I have you can find that here, if you want to purchase their a tin of Gokou on it’s own you can find that here. As always if you have any questions at all, stick them in the comments and I’ll answer them all as soon as I can.

Don’t forgot that if you are ordering from Yunomi that my discount code INFKKYU will get you 1000yen off an order of 5000yen or more.

Until next time, Happy Steeping – Kimberley