Tea Review: Kuromame Cha - Takeya

Tea Info
Type: Black soybean tea (Herbal/Tisane)
Producer: Takeya Japan
Brewing Parameters: 3 grams, 100°C, 5 minutes
Appearance: Chopped black soybeans; primarily shells
Rating: B | 86
# of Brews: 6

Tasting Notes and Thoughts
Hey there! I'll be writing this quick review tonight just to warm up for an application essay and get my weekly review done. I'll be using a standard tasting set for this, without adjusting time; water temperature, however, may change as brews go on. I'm doing this because 1. I can't read the recommended parameters, because they're in Japanese, and 2. I don't want to drink a lot of tea, since I had some Ta Jin Xuan earlier. Today's album is the Django Unchained Original Soundtrack.

Just as a note, I've tried this tea only once, when my sister came back from Japan. Before even brewing, it has a very strong smell– it's essentially very smoky miso soup. On the first brew, the liquid was a dark amber, with very little particulate. As I poured out the tea, the soybean smell overpowered my nose. The flavor was mainly savory, with a little bit of bitterness. It was like a broth, with soybean as the primary flavor and possibly some chocolate and mushroom. The second brew was much less strong, as the color was more of a very light dull brown. It had lost the bitterness, and in its place, had gained a bit of an ephemeral sweet aftertaste. The soybean notes were definitely still there, and the tea was moving towards more of a caramel-like houjicha flavor. It was surprisingly smooth, going down my throat like water; I found myself gulping down the tea quite fast. I did notice, though, that I became a bit thirsty while drinking, despite the texture of the tea. On the third brew, the tea began to lose even more color, but retained a bit of its flavor– it became a bit sour, which was interesting. I stopped at the 6th brew, where the tea had lost almost all color– it was a very light, cream yellow, almost the color of water– and had somewhat of a brothy taste. Overall, a pretty interesting tea which I enjoyed quite a bit; you could also eat the beans after, but they're a bit tough and bitter. If you cooked or microwaved them to make them softer, I imagine they'd taste pretty good.

Other Notes
One week until finals and the SAT! They start next Wednesday and end on Saturday with the SAT. I'm trying to study one class a day this week for maybe an hour until the three day weekend this weekend, when I'll be doing two classes a day for a couple of hours. Today, though, I worked a bit on the science fair project, (made the BART maps based off of the slime mold pictures), drank some tea, and studied the SAT. I'll be writing and revising some of the my application essays, and then ending the day with studying AP US History.

As for my applications, they're for the most part done; I just have one large essay to write for Stanford, and then I'll need to check the Arthritis Foundation and other Stanford essay. I have most of the letters of recommendation, bar one– I'll be asking my AP Statistics teacher for that. Other than that, I just have simple stuff like filling in test scores and GPA, which I can do after finals are done. Hopefully it all goes well!

Mock Trial competition (well, technically a practice round) starts this week too, so I'm a bit worried, since it's going to take up quite a bit of time and I don't really think I'm ready. We had a scrimmage on saturday, which went pretty well, but I'm not really happy with the article I wrote on it (which falls back on my notetaking; it has gotten better, but isn't as good as I'd hoped). Tuesday will be a struggle, though, since I'm going to go to school, and then immediately to BART and the courthouse, and I'll be getting home late (maybe 9?). Wednesday, too, since I get home anywhere from 6 to 8 because of team meetings at school. To add on, I'll have work right after school and then piano class on Monday. Here's to hoping I'm going to be good with managing my time!

See you guys next week. I think I'll be reviewing some corn tea as the next part of these Japanese tea reviews.