I love Japanese tea and often serve it to my reiki clients before (and after) a treatment. While hojicha is my standard, with roasted rice, sencha is another green tea that I like and got a hold of lately. It’s a green whole leaf tea, and apparently makes up 80% of Japan’s tea exports. The other factoid for the day is that it is made of leaves grown under sunlight, which is different than other teas (uh, grown in the dark? Grown under moonlight?).
No matter. I brewed up some sencha and my client declined to drink any of it and this gave me the inspiration to look up whether I could make a cocktail with it, since I’ve been making daily COVID cocktails since the lockdown started in Sydney. Should I admit that? While I know that a cocktail today is not necessarily a good thing, I find such pleasure in it.
And I found a lot of pleasure in this drink.
TheGinQueen.com posted this recipe posted by Gazregan.com which came from Jason Walsh, a bartender in Brooklyn, New York, from CocktailLogic.com (which no longer seems to work). But you can see what Jason looks like here, where he’s spruiking some sort of tea drink as a mixer for cocktails!
Jason said: “This cocktail was inspired by my adoration of Sencha Japanese tea. Many people use Matcha; however, Sencha has more complexity and flavour so I prefer it over Matcha in certain cocktails.”
I’ve made the recipe for two (because cocktails like company) but halve it if you’re drinking solo.
🍸 4 oz gin of your preference
🍸 3 oz sencha green tea
🍸 1/2 oz (or a big squeeze) of honey
🍸 1.5 oz fresh lemon juice (one medium-large lemon)
🍸 1 egg white
Dry-shake, then add a few ice cubes (say 4 or 5) and shake again. Strain into a coupe glass and enjoy.
This gave me the opportunity to perfect my dry shaking technique, which I read should be done as long as you can (60 seconds?). It really does create a much more significant amount of pretty foam than when you shake an egg white (and other ingredients) with ice.
The original recipe called for sweetened sencha while Kindred Cocktails got confused and removed the reference to the sweet part. I considered using sugar syrup, but I think the honey is a nice match.
This drink reminded me a little of a pisco sour. Something about the tea mellows out both the gin and lemon and the end result tastes sophisticated and complex. And yummy. Tell me if you try it!