Green Tea Forum

cgyh · Posted: Aug 06, 2007 1:49 pm Post subject: Kukicha

I have never heard of kukicha before, but someone told me of it today. I learnt that it is an aged green tea that includes the twigs and stems.

A couple of questions:
1. why isn't this tea being sold on o-cha? Is it because it is not generally seen as a very good tea?

2. I have never heard of an aged green tea. That seems to be simply out of the definition of what Japanese green tea is! Any comments?

Chip · Posted: Aug 06, 2007 2:13 pm Post subject:

I have never heard of kukicha being aged. It is usually either green or roasted. They are very different from each other. Kukicha is a byproduct tea. I actually like it a lot. It seems that kukicha is offered mainly from Shizuoka. More times than not, it is made from lower grade leaf, but first flush versions are available.

A close relative is Karigani, which is mostly offered from Uji. Karigani may consist of both sencha and gyokuro leaf stems and veins. O-Cha offers a Karigani called Otsuusan.

I recently tried an all sencha version of karigani from Uji. It consisted of 90% uniformly trimmed veins and stems with the balance made of high grade sencha leaf. I think I favor this blend over the more readily available versions containing part gyokuro. But then again, I favor sencha over gyokuro.

Perhaps Kevin could be persuaded to carry an all sencha version if the demand was high enough.

spacesamurai · 2nd Degree Black Belt Joined: 02 Feb 2007 Posts: 204

I drink a lot of kukicha, but this is the first I've heard of it being aged. What I have certainly doesn't taste aged.

cgyh · Posted: Aug 06, 2007 3:11 pm Post subject:

cgyh · Posted: Aug 06, 2007 3:13 pm Post subject:

Hmm...am I violating rules again by posting an external link?

I have 5 more days left before I am at the status of having registered for one month. The rule, however, seems unnecessarily harsh to me.

If I don't post the link, how are others going to get to the page that has the full description of what I'm talking about? I guess I could ask them to do a google search for "eden organic kukicha" but that seems like another step for people to do and often they aren't going to do it so then the thread ends up going nowhere.

Gassho.

spacesamurai · 2nd Degree Black Belt Joined: 02 Feb 2007 Posts: 204

cgyh · Posted: Aug 06, 2007 4:14 pm Post subject:

cgyh · Posted: Aug 06, 2007 4:17 pm Post subject:

cgyh · Posted: Aug 06, 2007 4:21 pm Post subject:

syntheticpanda · 2nd Degree Black Belt Joined: 07 Nov 2006 Posts: 198

I think link-posting is also discouraged out of courtesy for O-cha's sponsorship of the forum, but I doubt the company you linked is a threat to O-cha. Smile

I was under the impression that kukicha is made from bancha stems and twigs, but I could be wrong.

Kevangogh · Forum God Joined: 19 Jul 2005 Posts: 916 Location: Japan

I wish I could claim credit for the rule, it was actually suggested to me by one of the forum participants; I thought it was a brilliant idea.

I have measures in place to protect the forum against automatic spambots, etc. That's why when you register you have to answer a question that no computer can figure out, like "the capitol of France is what city?", etc. If I didn't have that in place, it would be flooded with spam.

That still doesn't stop human spam. I get many, usually new, tea companies that come in and act like they are an end user so they can push their own companies on my forum. Let's see, there was the dude who was pushing the "tea sticks" - I traced his IP address and it matched the companies address. I mean, we've busted a few of them here out in the open, look around.

Then I get the ones who just want a link to drain off some link PR to make their sites rank higher. Any link posted on here to another site has the "rel=nofollow" tag automatically posted in it's code. Even though I tell people that when they register, they still think the link is going to help them when it won't.

Then, there are Chinese companies selling tea. We have had this happen quite often. In your case, one of your very first posts included a link to another site and since I don't know you it looked rather suspicious. Now that you've been here awhile, I'll let you post other links, no problem. We just need some time to make sure you are real.

Basically, any link has to be "real" and related to the post. Vendors or shills for them cannot post links. If it's for informational purposes, or you want to describe your experience, etc, fine. If you think a tea sucked, you can post that too, but out of fairness I will let said vendor rebut that if they contact me first. I reserve the right to remove anything that I think is pushing the limits however. It's kind of like art - I can't always define what it is but I know it when I see it.

Kevangogh · Forum God Joined: 19 Jul 2005 Posts: 916 Location: Japan

By the way, the main reason I don't carry kukicha because I don't think it's that great, there may be exceptions though. If you drink Uji Sencha Otsuusan, you won't want to mess with kukicha anymore I think. This is actually Tsuen's most popular green tea in Japan.

Chip · Posted: Aug 06, 2007 8:46 pm Post subject:

Chip · Posted: Aug 06, 2007 8:49 pm Post subject:

[quote="admin"]I wish I could claim credit for the rule, it was actually suggested to me by one of the forum participants; I thought it was a brilliant idea.

I think I am to blame for this brilliant rule. The wording is 5 posts and/or one month. This way admin and I can use some descretion.

Chip · Posted: Aug 06, 2007 8:53 pm Post subject: