Bancha Green Tea Guide: 3 Tips for Brewing Bancha Tea

Bancha is a category of Japanese green tea also known as “common tea.” Bancha is made from the more mature lower leaves of the Camellia sinensis tea plant, harvested from the second flush of summer sencha in Japan.

Bancha tea has mild, earthy grassiness, with dry, toasty notes with less of a deeply vegetal, umami flavor than shade teas like gyokuro, matcha, tencha, or kabusecha.

Bancha tea leaves are also used to make Kyoto-style hojicha, a nutty roasted green tea, fermented to make goishicha, or incorporated into tea blends like genmaicha, a light, savory tea featuring roasted rice.

Here’s what you need to know about brewing bancha green tea:

1. 1. Water temperature. Water temperature is incredibly important for green tea: Boiling water will scorch the delicate leaves and result in a bitter flavor. The water should be just below boiling, at around 175°F.
   
2. 2. Tea bags versus loose leaves. Watch the clock when steeping tea bags or loose tea leaves of bancha. Just like any other green tea, they should only steep for a minute or two.
3. 3. Make it iced. To make bancha iced tea, or mizudashi, place a tea bag (or 4 teaspoons of loose-leaf tea) in an airtight jar of cool water and steep in the fridge overnight. Serve over ice.

Though they are both bancha and sencha are types of Japanese green tea, both are distinct in a few important ways:

• Harvest time. While sencha and bancha come from the same tea plant, bancha leaves are the result of the second harvest, or “flush,” of sencha. The young top leaves picked during the first flush (ichibancha) are known as shincha, or “new tea.” The lower shoots that grow into mature leaves become the basis for bancha tea, along with any top shoots from the following summer and autumn harvests.
• Nutrition and flavor. The top shoots of tea plants—especially the first to be picked in early spring after the plants have been dormant over winter—are especially nutrient-dense and sweet. The lower leaves and second round of top shoots that make up bancha are milder and contain less caffeine. They also have fewer catechins (phenolic compounds), which are responsible for the bitter astringency in higher-end green tea like sencha.
• Texture. While both sencha and bancha leaves are steamed and rolled immediately after harvest, bancha has a coarser texture thanks to the thickness of the more mature leaves.
• Price. Bancha, considered a lower grade, is always less expensive than sencha.

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