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Matcha Sensory · Specialty Matcha Podcast

• 0:06
  Hello and welcome to the Specialty Matcha Podcast.
• 0:09
  My name is Ryan. This is Michael Hozenjun.
• 0:11
  Hello. Hello.
• 0:12
  Who also goes by Sam and we're the Co founders of Sanko Matcha
• 0:15
  products. Yeah, we launched this podcast
• 0:17
  to discuss our learning journey in matcha, show startup stories
• 0:19
  and interview experts. And today we're going to do a
• 0:23
  little bit of a sensory test of some interesting combination of
• 0:26
  matcha. But what is sensory?
• 0:28
  Yeah. What is sensory?
• 0:29
  So sensory is sort of the art and science of tasting, flavor
• 0:35
  and the experience, the primary experience, what we would call a
• 0:38
  primary sensory experience that we're all interacting with.
• 0:41
  Everyone says that taste is king, and it certainly really
• 0:44
  does matter, especially in like the current environment that we
• 0:48
  find ourselves in. There's a whole new generation
• 0:50
  of matcha consumers that are interacting with these products
• 0:53
  in a very different way. I'm learning about agricultural
• 0:56
  practices, learning about cultivars, learning about
• 0:58
  growing regions, but ultimately it's all about tying that stuff
• 1:02
  back to the flavor. Whereas, you know, the former
• 1:05
  generation of matcha consumers for the last few 100 years, it
• 1:08
  was all in a ceremonial context and the exact taste of the tea
• 1:12
  wasn't necessarily front and center.
• 1:14
  So the sensory part was very hidden away by skilled tea
• 1:18
  blenders and tea purveyors and people that owned these blend
• 1:22
  houses and their job was just to deliver a product that tasted
• 1:26
  the same year after year after year.
• 1:28
  And there's a lot of merit to that.
• 1:30
  But there's also a lot of merit in all of this natural diversity
• 1:34
  of flavors based on the cultivation methods called Vars,
• 1:37
  the growing regions, the fertilizer applied, and all of
• 1:40
  these things. And it makes sensory become much
• 1:44
  more important from like this back end quality control art and
• 1:48
  magic of blending to now it's something that we can all use
• 1:52
  and enjoy and it can enhance our experience and it allows us to
• 1:57
  justify paying more for a higher product because we're tasting
• 2:01
  things that we really enjoy. All of these founders that we've
• 2:04
  had on have these aha moments. They taste something and it just
• 2:08
  blows their mind. I think my first tea from Yame
• 2:12
  was like a really like transition was really a pivotal
• 2:17
  moment in my matcha learning journey of just expanding like,
• 2:21
  wow, matcha can taste like this. It's like holy crap.
• 2:25
  So we wanted to record an episode talking about how we
• 2:30
  view sensory, how we've seen other people do it, and a couple
• 2:33
  of frameworks that might be useful both for consumers
• 2:35
  listening as well as much of businesses that need to do some
• 2:38
  type of flavor measurement sensory tests to make sure that
• 2:42
  their products that they're getting are the same quality and
• 2:44
  how to communicate the flavor of these different things to their
• 2:48
  consumers. And so as long as you want to
• 2:49
  talk a little bit about our background in sensory in
• 2:52
  general, that kind of sets the stage for our perspective.
• 2:55
  Yeah. So in our last company, we used
• 2:57
  to work for these AI platforms that basically quantified and
• 3:02
  measures how people perceive flavor across different, you
• 3:06
  know, language, different dietary background, different
• 3:09
  culture, you know, scattering all continents.
• 3:12
  And we basically use this technology to kind of trying to
• 3:16
  understand from a very, you know, quantifiable way how
• 3:20
  exactly people perceive different flavor differently and
• 3:24
  how that difference led to different preference of
• 3:27
  different flavor and flavor combinations.
• 3:29
  So we used to work on very complicated projects with
• 3:33
  formulators to trying to turn that description, turn those
• 3:36
  figures into actual formulation, actual samples or products.
• 3:41
  And people can taste and try and like or dislike, usually dislike
• 3:44
  if, but it's something that people already like.
• 3:46
  They won't find us. Yeah, there's a We've tasted a
• 3:49
  lot of bad products in our time. It might sound cool, like being
• 3:53
  a professional caramel ice cream taster for a day, but not after
• 3:56
  you've tried like 20 of them. That's really not that cool if
• 4:00
  you're a professional. Instant ramen.
• 4:03
  But yeah, some, you know, traumatizing moment for, you
• 4:07
  know, doing that for a very long time.
• 4:10
  And we always get asked about sensory.
• 4:12
  So actually, for the last approximately the last decade of
• 4:15
  my life, I have been thinking about sensory and explaining it
• 4:19
  to other people, as well as criticizing traditional
• 4:22
  methodologies and how, you know, using more advanced methods can
• 4:26
  yield far superior results. So we're actually like, I, I
• 4:30
  don't like to tutor on whore. We're weirdly qualified to talk
• 4:32
  about this topic. And because we spent so much
• 4:34
  time, energy and effort and the hours that we used to work were
• 4:38
  insane because it was a really high, fast start, high paced
• 4:41
  startup. I remember I've done like so
• 4:43
  many like 1820 hour days, like many days in a row.
• 4:47
  It was very challenging, especially with our Japanese
• 4:51
  clients. I just remember all the time
• 4:53
  saying laid up into the night, making sure that they got the
• 4:56
  support that they needed. So it's brings back some good
• 4:59
  and bad memories. But we were in AI.
• 5:02
  Everyone likes to say in the current matcha landscape that
• 5:05
  they entered it before the matcha boom.
• 5:07
  And I'm very proud to say that we were working on that.
• 5:10
  I had started working on that 2014 way before this, like cha
• 5:13
  chi, TP moment and Sam. I think you joined in 20 2018
• 5:18
  2018. Yeah, it was a interesting time
• 5:22
  because this at the time, new technology really kind of
• 5:26
  revolutionized how people perceive and understand sensory
• 5:30
  from a traditional perspective. Like the the the art and science
• 5:33
  of sensory had exist for a long time.
• 5:36
  The whole modern sensory concept really started from 18 is
• 5:41
  developed to these days with very minimal changes on the
• 5:44
  understanding of how people perceive and understand and
• 5:48
  articulate flavors. So our technology really kind
• 5:52
  of, you know, solve the pinpoint of like if when you are coming
• 5:56
  from a different cultural background, different age,
• 5:59
  different socio economic status, different exposure to their own
• 6:02
  flavor. Like how do you make people
• 6:05
  essentially understand each other in terms of what are you
• 6:08
  tasting differently or what you're tasting?
• 6:11
  You are tasting something that's actually the same, but you're
• 6:13
  just using different ways to describe.
• 6:15
  So why is that important? Why do you need to know people's
• 6:18
  perceptual differences? That's super important.
• 6:20
  Like with this is actually you are trying to.
• 6:23
  What you are trying to do or what a lot of these people
• 6:26
  trying to do back in the days is just set up a language, a
• 6:29
  vocabulary set that people can essentially communicate with
• 6:32
  each other in terms of flavor. And without that vocabulary,
• 6:37
  like you you we are basically talking over each other and not
• 6:40
  nothing can essentially get done by the end of the day.
• 6:43
  Yeah, but if you're a food and beverage company, why does it
• 6:45
  matter so much? Why can't you just ask someone
• 6:48
  how much they like a particular product?
• 6:50
  Well, I mean like if you are a very tiny studio developing a
• 6:54
  lemonade for your local community, it's probably fine.
• 6:57
  But for a lot of these, like larger companies with the
• 7:00
  international audience, like sitting in the lab in New York
• 7:04
  City making a formulation of the new yoga, like you won't
• 7:07
  necessarily understand the preference of like some
• 7:12
  middle-aged female in Southeast Asia that you are speaking
• 7:15
  different language, you you like different things.
• 7:18
  And you're literally tasting different.
• 7:20
  Things literally tasting different things in the same
• 7:22
  product. So that's not going to work
• 7:26
  right? Like you are not going to create
• 7:28
  or like if you are insanely lucky, maybe you do, but
• 7:31
  frequently you run into situation that you are not going
• 7:35
  to create a product that it will be liked by that particular
• 7:38
  audience. So our AI at the time was
• 7:42
  basically like imagine like a Google Translate, but you know
• 7:46
  doing that in terms of flavor. So you perception and
• 7:49
  perception. So you can input your own
• 7:52
  perception into the platform and the AI understands both consumer
• 7:55
  cohorts in terms of their tasting habit, the language that
• 8:00
  they'd like to use and also like things that all the flavor
• 8:03
  combinations that they like. So they can translate what the
• 8:06
  New York formulators perception and preference into the target
• 8:11
  audience preference and perception.
• 8:13
  And using that layer of translation, we can tell the
• 8:17
  formulators to tweak the formulation ingredients to
• 8:20
  create something that people will like.
• 8:22
  Yeah. So setting a bit of context.
• 8:24
  So if any of the Machu founders or even like consumers out
• 8:27
  there, research sensory methodologies to bring into
• 8:30
  their own practice, either for product development or for
• 8:34
  sourcing or for even just enjoying matcha as a product and
• 8:37
  then taking really good notes. The most common analysis or the
• 8:42
  most common method for tasting that you'll probably come across
• 8:45
  is something called descriptive analysis.
• 8:47
  And descriptive analysis actually has a descriptive name.
• 8:50
  It's literally where you describe the flavors that you're
• 8:53
  tasting and you're not passing judgment on if it's good or if
• 8:56
  it's bad, and you're just quantifying it across some set
• 9:00
  of what are called attributes it.
• 9:03
  So they might be something like bitter or sweet or sour or umami
• 9:07
  or vegetal. All are potential attributes.
• 9:11
  But because different product categories are so diverse,
• 9:14
  right, like if you're tasting something like wine versus
• 9:17
  something like coffee versus something like matcha, the
• 9:19
  frequency of different flavors can be very different, right?
• 9:23
  To detect something like a seaweed note, it's probably
• 9:27
  pretty rare in a wine, but might be very common in something like
• 9:30
  a matcha. So this is where what we call
• 9:32
  lexicon development comes in. And lexicon is basically a
• 9:36
  predetermined set of words usually chosen by experts in a
• 9:40
  field that have they have decided that these attributes
• 9:44
  are important to the set. And there are always compromises
• 9:48
  when you're doing lexicon development.
• 9:51
  It is a form of reduction. It's a form of generalization.
• 9:55
  There's always some like compression data loss.
• 9:59
  So let's do let's invert this problem.
• 10:01
  Let's say you're tasting A matcha and I give you a single
• 10:04
  attribute, bitter. You can rank it on how bitter
• 10:07
  you find it, or I can give you 2 attributes, bitter and umami.
• 10:11
  Now we've added two dimensions and then you can keep adding and
• 10:15
  adding and adding and adding flavor, getting more and more
• 10:18
  and more dimensions. But still, let's say you taste a
• 10:21
  sweet scallop or oyster note. Or are you like these little
• 10:26
  tiny baby clams that they have in Japan?
• 10:28
  You have the very umami. She did me clam.
• 10:31
  Let's say you taste that. Let's say you're very lucky and
• 10:34
  you get to taste this in a matcha.
• 10:35
  There's probably not an attribute for that somewhere.
• 10:39
  So it's still a form of data reduction and what they do
• 10:42
  traditionally to get around the fact that, let's say for
• 10:45
  example, I'm half American, half Korean, ethnically speaking, Sam
• 10:50
  is 100% Chinese, ethnically speaking, because of genetic
• 10:54
  differences, because of the fact that Sam grew up in Guangzhou
• 10:56
  and I grew up in Pennsylvania. And our two year age difference,
• 11:00
  you know, all of these factors can contribute to the fact that
• 11:03
  we might literally might not be looking at the same painting, so
• 11:07
  to speak, when we're tasting matcha.
• 11:08
  So what you do historically is something called reference
• 11:12
  training or calibration. So for example, we would prepare
• 11:15
  a sucrose solution at some percentage sugar to water and we
• 11:19
  both taste it. We say, okay, we taste this, we
• 11:22
  agree it's a three out of five on sweetness, and this is going
• 11:25
  to be our anchor. And you can do this across many,
• 11:27
  many, many different flavors. And now what you've done is
• 11:30
  you've calibrated us so you're essentially treating a human
• 11:33
  like a dumb instrument. And that is, quite frankly, the
• 11:36
  only way descriptive analysis is going to work in a logically
• 11:40
  consistent way when you're doing any form of.
• 11:44
  Analytical tasting. Tasting or data collection for
• 11:48
  matcha I'm so say you get together a group of 10-15 people
• 11:52
  and you ask everyone to rank across some arbitrary set of
• 11:55
  attributes that you have determined are important.
• 11:57
  The variance that you see in that data or the different
• 12:00
  scores that you see for bitterness are not any form of
• 12:04
  right or wrong. They're just different because
• 12:07
  people literally might taste the sample or the matcha more
• 12:10
  bitter, and some people might take it taste it less bitter,
• 12:14
  which leads to some pretty challenging things in
• 12:16
  characterizing matcha. So like, what should matcha
• 12:19
  brands do? Like, should they be creating
• 12:22
  these little flavor charts to communicate the relative degrees
• 12:26
  of bitterness or umami or creaminess or vegetal?
• 12:29
  And if they do do that, how do they decide what attributes
• 12:33
  matter? Like the ones that I just talked
• 12:35
  about, you know, you hear them tossed around a lot, but like,
• 12:38
  what do you think the probability is that it's going
• 12:40
  to encompass the whole flavor profile and that someone looks
• 12:44
  at that and agrees that, yeah, it it's about right?
• 12:48
  Yeah. Yeah, I mean pretty low is what
• 12:50
  I'm thinking. Like like for a bitterness 5
• 12:53
  like first of all, like frequently like 5 out of what?
• 12:58
  Like what is the scale that they're using?
• 13:00
  Sometimes it's like very vague. That's the first way.
• 13:02
  Second, like even if you have a scale system to to inform people
• 13:07
  the measurement like you like people don't essentially you
• 13:10
  don't essentially know the sweetness or the bitterness
• 13:14
  tolerance of the audience that you're talking to.
• 13:17
  Like those data or those things are essentially meaningless.
• 13:21
  And what's probably only meaningful is that you have a
• 13:24
  portfolio of product and then you have a bitterness level 1,
• 13:28
  bitterness Level 3 and the bitterness level 5.
• 13:31
  And people can just locally compare those products and tell
• 13:35
  themselves, OK, this one is less bitter and this one is morbid.
• 13:38
  So you anchor them in your own references.
• 13:40
  Yeah, in that particular context.
• 13:43
  But what happens when next year's harvest comes around and
• 13:46
  bitter Level 3 changes? Well, it will still be bitter
• 13:49
  Level 3 and it will still be Hatsu Mukashi.
• 13:52
  You know, it's a different product.
• 13:53
  Yeah. So what should companies do?
• 13:55
  Should they just give a bunch of hasting notes?
• 13:58
  Should they try to be very specific like cuz ultimately
• 14:01
  what we're trying to do is market products to consumers,
• 14:05
  how do we get and let them know what to expect?
• 14:08
  So for example, I love hazelnut notes in matcha.
• 14:12
  When that hazelnut note shows up, I am like very primed to
• 14:15
  like it. And I actually really like
• 14:17
  seeing that in the description. But also if they're ranking the
• 14:20
  attributes of many different important flavors like
• 14:23
  bitterness or umami or creaminess and they're wrong, I
• 14:26
  feel lied to. And essentially, as a brand, you
• 14:29
  need to be extremely conservative in this because
• 14:32
  there is going to be natural variation in perception and you
• 14:35
  need to account for the lowest common denominator or risk a
• 14:39
  pretty large amount of cognitive dissonance in terms of
• 14:42
  expectation that's created by the label and the reality of
• 14:47
  their primary sensory experience.
• 14:49
  Because I personally have ordered matcha that was sort of
• 14:51
  a budget everyday matcha that was advertised as not bitter at
• 14:55
  all from a really, you know, prominent US brand.
• 14:59
  And like, it was horrid. I don't know how anyone in good
• 15:03
  conscience could call that not bitter.
• 15:05
  Maybe you're just different, Ryan.
• 15:07
  Maybe. But yeah, I agree, it's really,
• 15:11
  really difficult. Like honestly, I don't have a
• 15:14
  good answer of a solution to that because it's not even just
• 15:19
  about the measurements of these flavor intensities, but
• 15:23
  sometimes the flavor itself. Like when you are using some
• 15:26
  kind of a very local description, like certain type
• 15:29
  of like what would you say certain type of clam or certain
• 15:32
  type of Kwimbu or like even like hazelnuts.
• 15:36
  Like there are like some places or some area, regions in the
• 15:40
  world just not being, you know, that that's not really a common
• 15:43
  ingredient. Like they, they probably like
• 15:45
  that it's still meaningless to them.
• 15:47
  So yeah, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's an interesting question.
• 15:51
  I mean, like we kind of invented the solution to that, that we no
• 15:54
  longer have access to that technology.
• 15:56
  I wish we do. Yeah.
• 15:57
  But Even so, I mean, even if you're able to translate across
• 16:00
  languages, it's not like you have a digital product label
• 16:04
  where you can change it depending on, you know, where
• 16:07
  it's going. So it's actually a really tricky
• 16:09
  problem and. If you want to do it well.
• 16:12
  If you want to do it. If you want to take it seriously
• 16:15
  and as a very sensory science perspective.
• 16:18
  So there's a couple of frameworks that we've seen and
• 16:21
  that I've really liked over the years.
• 16:23
  One of them is from Johnny Macha and he describes like sort of
• 16:27
  the archetypal characteristics that other people like about
• 16:32
  certain cultivars. So he doesn't like give.
• 16:35
  At least he didn't. This was I guess about a year
• 16:38
  ago when I saw this. He doesn't say my Asahi tastes
• 16:42
  like this, this, this and this. He said Asahi generally tastes
• 16:46
  like this and these are flavors that people generally like about
• 16:50
  it. So it's not top down, it's
• 16:52
  bottom up. It's just giving someone
• 16:54
  knowledge and context enough to appreciate it and to and make a
• 16:57
  judgment for themselves. So I think this is really cool.
• 17:00
  Yeah, it's enough ambiguity for people to kind of leave
• 17:04
  imagination for people to explore themselves or disagree,
• 17:08
  disagree with. Yeah, a specific tasting notes.
• 17:12
  I've like all of the matcha that we've purchased recently and I
• 17:15
  taste it. I like to taste it before
• 17:17
  reading the tasting notes. And I'm like, I don't know if I
• 17:21
  agree, But of course you can incept people too.
• 17:25
  So that's the other piece of interesting magic that's done in
• 17:28
  the food and beverage industry in general is that you can cue
• 17:31
  people into certain flavors or different aspects and they're
• 17:34
  much, much, much more likely to, I first like, perceive and
• 17:38
  identify them and then say whether or not they like or
• 17:41
  dislike them. And so that's actually a huge
• 17:43
  risk when you're putting flavors on a label is say someone like
• 17:48
  me, I don't like grassiness and matcha.
• 17:50
  If anyone's putting that on the descriptor, I might have not.
• 17:53
  I've not tasted it. But now that I've read it, I'm
• 17:55
  primed. And now that I'm primed, the
• 17:57
  probability that I will taste it and that it will become my
• 18:01
  reality is much higher. Yeah, yeah.
• 18:04
  And one way to kind of navigate it and we kind of been seeing
• 18:09
  people doing in the world of Scotch tasting is we frequently
• 18:15
  called those people poets is to kind of bury that inception into
• 18:20
  some very poetic and, you know, descriptive like scene.
• 18:25
  Like this Scotch tastes like, you know, the ocean currents
• 18:28
  striking on the piece of rock covered with like seaweed or
• 18:33
  like this. This tastes like as if I'm
• 18:36
  walking in the pine forest after a rainy day.
• 18:40
  Like this kind of very descriptive, descriptive, yet
• 18:43
  kind of flavorful, animated, flavorful kind of scene
• 18:50
  description. It's it's a different way to
• 18:52
  kind of insect people, but leading towards a more positive
• 18:56
  outcome of that inception. It's not like a direct inception
• 18:59
  like people tend to think about, like something more beautiful
• 19:02
  when you articulate a beautiful scene.
• 19:05
  No, that's true. And it's a nice like honest way
• 19:08
  of incepting people too, because you see a lot of dishonesty in
• 19:11
  this type of marketing. Like it's not bitter at all or
• 19:14
  it's very umami or super creamy. And if it just doesn't translate
• 19:17
  in the cup and quite frankly for like, it might not be that much
• 19:20
  a brand owners fault. You know, maybe someone like
• 19:24
  bought it and waited two months and didn't get to it.
• 19:27
  Maybe it was given to them as a gift, but it was a re gift and
• 19:30
  it was sitting in someone's cabinet for, you know, who knows
• 19:33
  how long. Maybe it was like really hot
• 19:36
  summer day and it got stuck in some warehouse when it was being
• 19:39
  mailed to them and it degraded very quickly.
• 19:42
  Like, you know, you just don't know what's causing this type of
• 19:45
  variation, which, you know, leads to some potential risk.
• 19:49
  But I think it really comes down to just understanding your
• 19:51
  consumers and what they like and dislike, like what will prime
• 19:55
  them and be honest about it. If that flavor is not in the
• 19:57
  product, don't put it on. But you know if someone and you
• 20:00
  like know very clearly. A large part of my consumer base
• 20:05
  loves dark chocolate notes. Maybe that makes more sense to
• 20:08
  call it out because the reality is any one of these matchas
• 20:11
  probably has anywhere between 10 to 20.
• 20:14
  Some of the more complex ones, maybe even more identifiable
• 20:17
  flavors where someone could quite honestly say and they go
• 20:20
  through a list saying I, I taste some, some woodiness, some
• 20:23
  earthiness, A slight mushroom notes and dashi, some toasted
• 20:28
  nori notes. It's creamy, kind of like
• 20:30
  unsalted butter. There's a little bit of lemon
• 20:32
  zest has a nice after taste, almost reminds me of hot
• 20:35
  chocolate or something like that, right.
• 20:38
  Like it's there's a lot of different potential ways of
• 20:41
  describing this. So what do you think about
• 20:43
  flavor wheels, Sam? You see these all the all over,
• 20:46
  like specialty coffee and wine and all of and chocolate.
• 20:51
  A lot of people use flavor wheels, but what do we think
• 20:53
  about those? Good, bad, neutral.
• 20:55
  Yeah, I mean the wield itself and for most contacts when
• 20:59
  people using it, it's still a form of reduction, right?
• 21:02
  You like, you only will have a number of axes on the flavor
• 21:06
  bill for you to select and for you to to to interact with.
• 21:11
  So, So what we have done in the previous technology is that we
• 21:15
  introduce a secondary kind of description layer underneath the
• 21:19
  flavor. Well.
• 21:20
  So when you actually click into a certain axis and select the
• 21:23
  intensity of, for example, like fruity, you can actually input
• 21:27
  what kind of fruit are you actually tasting like do you
• 21:30
  like that flavor or you not, or it's a neutral flavor to you.
• 21:34
  So that's kind of difficult to to rendered when this wheel is
• 21:39
  printed on the sheet of paper or on your package.
• 21:42
  Like it's just not possible. One of the real weaknesses of
• 21:46
  these wheels, too, is they attempt to do some form of
• 21:49
  categorization. So the worst forms of
• 21:52
  categorization are color. Colors are not flavors.
• 21:55
  You cannot have a yellow section, a red section, a green
• 21:58
  section, A bronze section. I mean, you do hear sometimes
• 22:02
  like flavourists and people who work in the industry talk about
• 22:06
  the concept of a green flavor or a brown flavor, but like, what
• 22:11
  does that mean? And especially what does that
• 22:13
  mean to someone who's not in industry?
• 22:16
  Probably people have very different ideas in their mind.
• 22:19
  But also you don't want to pigeonhole yourself because
• 22:22
  there's a lot of flavor expressions that have really
• 22:26
  different tonalities. So something like what's a good
• 22:29
  example? Even something like caramel,
• 22:31
  right? Caramel can be very sweet
• 22:34
  expression. It can be an incredibly butter
• 22:36
  expression, even a very very dark caramels, almost burnt and
• 22:40
  have more roasted characteristics of caramel.
• 22:43
  You can have salted caramel, which have more mineral
• 22:47
  characteristics and coming from the salt, and you can have
• 22:50
  various forms of smoked caramel, perhaps depending on the
• 22:53
  ingredients that it's coming from and the sugar, the butter
• 22:56
  being used. And you can have like all of
• 22:59
  them above, just in different intensity.
• 23:01
  Yeah, absolutely. So like why does it just have to
• 23:04
  exist under one particular category, you know, when 1
• 23:08
  category could be something like roasted, but the other category
• 23:11
  could be a very like dairy forward expression of caramel?
• 23:15
  Yeah. And sometimes like flavors like
• 23:19
  egg, like really you, you it's kind of really hard to
• 23:23
  categorize that flavor, you know, based on a very
• 23:26
  generalized flavor category. Saltire or is it like meat?
• 23:30
  Is it like a pastry? It's.
• 23:34
  Like salted egg. Or salted egg, like salted egg.
• 23:37
  Or is it like a super soft like onsen egg that's still runny?
• 23:42
  Very different expressions, all the same word and all the same
• 23:46
  ingredient. Yeah, yeah.
• 23:47
  Like when people are using like a single flavor or like like egg
• 23:53
  or like caramel to describe a product or a flavor profile,
• 23:59
  people like sometimes don't understand the flavor itself is
• 24:02
  also a very complex flavor combination itself.
• 24:05
  So it's almost a little bit, how do I say that?
• 24:09
  It's almost like a tautology, like people using a complex
• 24:13
  system to describe another complex system, which is
• 24:16
  something that we frequently run into.
• 24:18
  It's like calling matcha tea like.
• 24:20
  Yeah. Actually.
• 24:21
  Or calling a tea matcha. There I actually call a lot of
• 24:25
  matcha tea like and what that means to.
• 24:28
  I know exactly what it means in my own head.
• 24:30
  I don't think it's anything close to what you might think,
• 24:33
  Sam, or what anyone else might. I kind of get what you mean,
• 24:37
  like, but well, I also don't actually know, yeah.
• 24:43
  So it's, it's it's very tricky. So I think these flavor wheels
• 24:47
  that are more consumer facing kind of like the specialty
• 24:49
  coffee association SCA flavor wheel for coffee, you know,
• 24:53
  there is their utility. Absolutely.
• 24:56
  Like if you want to prime consumers to notice subtlety and
• 25:01
  nuance in a product's flavor profile, you can read through
• 25:05
  that list and you it's much more likely that you'll identify a
• 25:08
  flavor if you read it. Oh, it's like, Oh yeah, exactly.
• 25:12
  It tastes just like this or Oh yeah, I definitely get that
• 25:15
  Raspberry note in it. And now I really like it even
• 25:17
  more. But I wouldn't have thought
• 25:19
  about it because tasting is work.
• 25:21
  Like the cognitive load on identifying and articulating
• 25:25
  your primary sensory perception with anything is a lot of work.
• 25:30
  We used to say there is no Zen in sensory.
• 25:33
  Really high like cognitive load. And if you do like tastings for
• 25:37
  a few hours, you leave like exhausted.
• 25:39
  And we used to do this all day with consumers.
• 25:42
  Like we've trained, I've trained probably close to 10,000
• 25:44
  consumers on how to articulate their perception and preference
• 25:48
  of, you know, all sorts of different food and beverage
• 25:50
  products and you leave at the end of the day so tired.
• 25:55
  I can't tell you how many like sensory reviews I've done and
• 25:58
  then have out of how many products.
• 26:00
  But you know, we really encourage everyone to be true to
• 26:03
  themselves and not try try to pick some reductionist
• 26:07
  methodology or necessarily even try to invent their own wheel
• 26:11
  beyond what how it's helpful for you.
• 26:13
  And you really have to think about the utility.
• 26:16
  Descriptive analysis has a very specific utility.
• 26:20
  It's to understand and to replicate data of different
• 26:24
  products so that anyone can taste it who's gone through that
• 26:28
  training. And if they tasted again
• 26:30
  blindly, they're going to give you the same results as if they
• 26:32
  tasted again blindly as the same results as someone else in
• 26:35
  another part of the world. And then you can start like, you
• 26:38
  know, changing the chemicals or the flavors in that in that
• 26:42
  sample. And then you can pretty reliably
• 26:45
  understand and see what the difference is.
• 26:47
  Scriptive analysis really is not necessary for most brands and it
• 26:53
  will take you so far away from your own perception because
• 26:57
  you'd have to go through that form of reference training and
• 27:00
  it will take you even further away from your consumers
• 27:03
  perception. And then you have things like
• 27:04
  deductive tasting, like you see the wine people do where they
• 27:07
  try to guess. They taste for information like,
• 27:09
  oh, this tastes like Pinot noir, this tastes like Burgundy, or
• 27:13
  this tastes like this or that, or this tastes like it went
• 27:16
  through this type of fermentation.
• 27:17
  And that's very useful if you're sourcing.
• 27:19
  It might be very useful if you're blending or involved in
• 27:22
  agriculture. But again, it has to have some
• 27:25
  end objective. So there is no such thing as
• 27:28
  sensory for the sake of sensory. You need to have some goal in
• 27:32
  mind, whether or not it's communicating that flavor to the
• 27:35
  consumer. In which case we think it might
• 27:37
  be even better just to learn what their preferences are,
• 27:40
  taste it, and make sure that you're highlighting the things
• 27:43
  that they will like. Can literally be that simple.
• 27:45
  Yeah, make it simple. Actually.
• 27:46
  The amount of time people will actually spend on reading the
• 27:50
  sensory attributes on the label and also all understand all the
• 27:54
  flavor bills that that that that people set up for their own
• 27:57
  product is probably very low. Yeah, and understanding their
• 28:00
  use cases as well, like there might be reason why someone
• 28:04
  wants bitterness or doesn't want bitterness or wants complexity
• 28:08
  or doesn't want complexity. Like you just don't know, like
• 28:12
  the decision matrix that's going on in someone's head and that
• 28:15
  matters like so much more than putting on some arbitrary flavor
• 28:20
  wheel where we don't know what you mean.
• 28:22
  Why bitterness is level 5, for example.
• 28:25
  Yeah, like it like it because like I think this whole
• 28:28
  discussion actually needs to be move around intensity, which put
• 28:32
  another way, will it still taste good if it's diluted, which is
• 28:36
  the case for most lattes Americanos using as ingredient?
• 28:40
  I think that's super interesting.
• 28:42
  I think some level of bitterness.
• 28:43
  Bitterness is a pretty strong dis preference.
• 28:45
  So some people might avoid it. And then at the high end, really
• 28:50
  articulating potential flavor notes that you think that they
• 28:52
  will like that they'll find in these cans that might highlight
• 28:55
  or be characteristic of those particular flavors.
• 28:59
  Honzu shaded or shaded for a really long period of time, like
• 29:03
  40 days. What about that specific can
• 29:07
  stood out to you when you decided to make it part of the
• 29:10
  selection? And it it's much more authentic
• 29:12
  to your own sourcing about that product to like deconstruct your
• 29:18
  decision to bring this to market and what you love about it.
• 29:22
  And if you frame it this way, not only is it more authentic to
• 29:25
  yourself, you're not telling anyone that this is the best and
• 29:29
  you should taste it. And it is the best version of
• 29:31
  umami and the best thing in the entire world in Japan, which is
• 29:35
  like what everyone else is saying at the moment, like it's
• 29:38
  a, it's a, it takes you further and further away.
• 29:42
  And it's also a bit more nuanced than saying this is specifically
• 29:45
  for latte. Why don't we say this is a high
• 29:47
  intensity matcha that can stand up to dilution both with milk
• 29:52
  and ice, or this was specifically formulated for
• 29:55
  milk. And this is what we did to get
• 29:58
  this outcome that we wanted. We wanted some bitterness, but
• 30:02
  we also didn't want it just to be bitter.
• 30:04
  We wanted it to express creamy flavors and give this real sense
• 30:08
  of verdant freshness. And that is characteristic of
• 30:10
  this uji matcha blend. And not only did we do this, we
• 30:13
  worked with the chashi to make sure that those notes really
• 30:16
  shine. Whether or not it's an oat milk,
• 30:18
  cow milk, almond milk, soy milk, doesn't matter.
• 30:21
  We've tasted it and we think that these this is what we did
• 30:24
  and why. And here's what we hope that you
• 30:26
  enjoy. It's something that I think
• 30:28
  would be be much better to see instead of saying, Yep, latte
• 30:31
  one, it's too reductionist. I think we're a lot of times
• 30:37
  underestimating, underestimating the interest or potential
• 30:41
  interest and intellectual capacity of the consumer and
• 30:45
  what they want and showing intention.
• 30:48
  Or, and like if you do have the opportunity, go talk to your
• 30:51
  consumers, go learn about their preference.
• 30:53
  One thing that we really kind of learned throughout the way after
• 30:57
  doing so many product testing across different countries is
• 31:01
  that people's difference, like taste difference is enormous.
• 31:05
  Like we used to kind of in order to calibrate the AI, we need to
• 31:09
  use a standard set of product with very similar formulations
• 31:13
  across different continents to have people taste that set of
• 31:17
  products so that you know, the AI can understand, can have the
• 31:19
  anchor to understand people's preference and their perception
• 31:23
  in different cohorts and. Results were wild.
• 31:26
  It was wild. Like one of the soda product
• 31:29
  that we use, like poke, like even some of the very basic
• 31:33
  flavors like if this is sweet or if you think this is bitter or
• 31:37
  not, can be widely different across different countries.
• 31:41
  You go to like Germany every The first word out of everyone's
• 31:45
  mouth is sweet, too sweet. I don't like it.
• 31:48
  And then you take it to a place like Philippines or Thailand.
• 31:51
  The first word that they say is bitter.
• 31:53
  Yeah. It's pretty interesting.
• 31:55
  It's very interesting, like people can be so different in a
• 31:59
  very fundamental way, which is something that we want to
• 32:02
  encourage you to actually go talk to your audience and just
• 32:05
  learn what they like or dislike. You might have some very
• 32:08
  interesting discovery. And This is why I think the
• 32:10
  specialty matcha movement should and will be a local movement.
• 32:15
  I believe that all of these traditional companies and blend
• 32:18
  houses in Japan do a very good job creating really well
• 32:21
  balanced products that are probably liked by most people
• 32:25
  and they have access to some of the highest quality matcha to
• 32:28
  create them. But they're still from a very
• 32:31
  narrow demographic profile with I would characterize very little
• 32:35
  curiosity or understanding of international consumers
• 32:39
  preferences beyond the fact that they like lattes and what they
• 32:42
  think, even what they think tastes good in a latte really
• 32:45
  just might not translate, which is why this really needs to be a
• 32:49
  local movement. Yeah, yeah.
• 32:50
  Like health, You know what, What, what people sometimes
• 32:53
  don't realize is that, you know, when you're tasting a latte,
• 32:56
  you're not actually, you know, just tasting, you know, the
• 32:59
  difference of the tea, the difference of milk really makes
• 33:03
  a humongous difference. You know, like the for, for the
• 33:06
  formulators in Japan, the type of milk that they're going to
• 33:09
  use is probably be very different from the milk that you
• 33:12
  can get access to locally. And that will really have, you
• 33:16
  know, a different flavor impact on the final product.
• 33:18
  So like, you might actually accidentally just end up buying
• 33:23
  a matcha that was made from matcha latte, but it's not
• 33:27
  suitable for your local milk, which is totally possible.
• 33:30
  Totally possible. So to end our sensory episode,
• 33:34
  we thought we would do some sensory.
• 33:35
  One of the first things is a recent discovery that I really
• 33:38
  wanted to share is that I We have been doing matcha sensory
• 33:43
  exclusively on Usucha and we were very quick to judge some
• 33:47
  matcha samples in the past and we have the same ones actually
• 33:51
  newer harvest now. I was doing some random
• 33:54
  experimentation at home. It was a really hot day.
• 33:57
  I was running out of the matcha that I liked, so I was low on
• 34:02
  stocks and I I found one that I had tasted.
• 34:05
  It had been open for a while and I really hated it as usuchai.
• 34:09
  I thought it was bitter ploying, super intense, very unpleasant
• 34:14
  in a lot of different ways. And I dumped it in a glass of
• 34:17
  ice water. The bitterness like almost
• 34:20
  evaporated, metaphorically speaking, and it was delicious.
• 34:24
  Like what temperature and dilution does to matcha is like
• 34:29
  really non linear in the flavor profile transformation.
• 34:33
  It was like literally a different tea.
• 34:35
  So we're going to do that actually with the exact same
• 34:37
  tea. And Sam, I'll get your
• 34:38
  impressions. We're going to prepare it as an
• 34:40
  usucha and then an iced americano and we'll get your
• 34:43
  impressions. All right.
• 34:45
  Maybe not quite right. All right, so I just prepared 2
• 34:47
  samples in front of you. One is Usucha, standard ratio, 2
• 34:51
  grams to 60 mils, normal temperature, water on 75°C, and
• 34:56
  I made a diluted version. This is an Oku Midori, no
• 35:00
  fertilizer, no pesticide, tea from earlier this spring from
• 35:03
  Mazuka. So Sam, why don't you try the
• 35:05
  Usucha first? All right, so this tea is very
• 35:10
  creamy, very, very floral, bitter, some stringency tastes,
• 35:14
  but it's kind of sharp, still has a lot of green, kind of a
• 35:18
  characteristic grassy, and the foam is even a little bit soapy,
• 35:22
  so. Yeah, I got a similar notes.
• 35:24
  It really has quite a bite. A bitter and astringent bite,
• 35:28
  but super creamy. I got a sweet pea note that it
• 35:31
  has a bitter after taste, but kind of in a pleasant way,
• 35:34
  similar to like an Amaro and kind of bitter after taste that
• 35:37
  kind of forms a sweetness, has nice body, but definitely has
• 35:42
  this tonic bite. I think the average matcha
• 35:45
  consumer who is used to umami bombs or used to no bitterness
• 35:49
  at all would probably not like this in the same way that a,
• 35:53
  let's say a normal latte drinker might not like a plain espresso.
• 35:57
  So let's try this diluted with ice and we're back.
• 36:00
  So did you taste them? Well, the bitterness certainly
• 36:04
  vanished. Very, very, very low bitterness
• 36:07
  got some hints of nuttiness and some very light creaminess and
• 36:11
  some hint of seaweed. But overall, the flavor profile
• 36:14
  is really kind of reduced into into a dilution I feel like.
• 36:21
  That the profile is just incredibly different.
• 36:24
  It's very, very different. Especially with the bitterness.
• 36:27
  Like I think everything that someone who would have hated
• 36:30
  this is usucha. Everything they disliked about
• 36:33
  it would have disappeared in dilution with ice.
• 36:36
  Certainly. Certainly.
• 36:37
  So I got a light cashew note, no bitterness at all.
• 36:41
  I got found it very creamy, very light, ephemeral and got a
• 36:44
  little bit of sort of the unsalted butter sweetness.
• 36:48
  Yeah, I can get a little bit of that too.
• 36:50
  But it was a very light drink. I mean, we, we're not using very
• 36:53
  big cups, we're not diluting it that much.
• 36:55
  And we use 2 grams of tea. So it's a pretty normal dilution
• 36:59
  ratio, but it just shows host the magic of this preparation
• 37:03
  method. And like if the majority of your
• 37:05
  drinks are being served iced or diluted, which is like a lot of
• 37:10
  cafes, we highly recommend expanding beyond Usucha as
• 37:14
  sensory unless you can build a very strong mental model
• 37:18
  personally about understanding what it tastes like undiluted
• 37:22
  versus diluted or hot or cold or water versus milk.
• 37:26
  So it's a pretty difficult. Very difficult.
• 37:28
  The transformation honestly is enormous.
• 37:30
  And it's not that like predictable, like I don't, I
• 37:34
  didn't taste anything related to the flavors that I got diluted
• 37:39
  with ice in the normal usicha. So actually, I think we need to
• 37:42
  embrace a little bit of a culture of waste.
• 37:44
  But I think matcha is so precious and so scarce that, you
• 37:48
  know, we don't want to taste a lot of samples back-to-back to
• 37:51
  back done in many different ways.
• 37:52
  And I'm not saying we should waste matcha, but just like the
• 37:55
  coffee people are not afraid to throw away samples after they're
• 38:00
  done, we should be the same. Like we're professionals in this
• 38:03
  industry. We should all treat ourselves as
• 38:05
  if we are professionals. And part of that is working
• 38:08
  through doing the sensory evaluations.
• 38:10
  And you cannot reasonably ask yourself to consume like 10 to
• 38:15
  15 grams of matcha in a setting that would be required to taste
• 38:19
  through everything, especially in very different form factors,
• 38:23
  in a genuine and honest way other than just taking usucha
• 38:27
  and dumping in a splash of milk. Like it can tell you some
• 38:30
  sensory information but it's really not the same than
• 38:33
  properly measuring it and understanding the actual drink
• 38:36
  that is getting created and delivered to the consumer.
• 38:39
  Absolutely. I mean, like just the sheer
• 38:42
  amount of caffeine that you are going to intake by consuming so
• 38:45
  many samples at once, it's not necessarily very healthy.
• 38:48
  And there's also this idea of taste fatigue, like after
• 38:53
  tasting too many samples at once in a very short period of time,
• 38:57
  you are actually not going to be able to taste the difference
• 39:00
  and. Yeah, Typically we recommend it
• 39:02
  caps out at around 6:00 to 8:00 samples.
• 39:05
  You don't want to do that many more because distinguishing them
• 39:09
  becomes more and more and more difficult.
• 39:11
  Obviously it really depends on how experienced you are and how
• 39:14
  good you are picking up subtlety and differences between samples.
• 39:17
  So, but even across 6 to 8, it's a lot of matcha and you cannot
• 39:21
  drink all of it, reasonably speaking.
• 39:25
  So I think it's totally fair that as this profession grows of
• 39:29
  sourcing and blending and creating specialty matcha
• 39:32
  products, figuring out the the sensory for sourcing, figuring
• 39:36
  out the sensory for quality control and consistency,
• 39:39
  figuring out the sensory for how we describe these products to
• 39:43
  consumers. It's a really, really important
• 39:46
  work. And we should not be too afraid
• 39:49
  to to pour a little bit of matcha down the drain in service
• 39:53
  of this greater mission, I think.
• 39:55
  Or just invite one of your friends to come over.
• 39:58
  Indeed, yes, If you can get a large enough group, even better.
• 40:01
  Or. We're going to do a fun
• 40:02
  exercise. I have been really obsessed with
• 40:05
  blending recently personally in my own practice, and we're going
• 40:08
  to do some eventual episodes about matcha blending, but I'm
• 40:12
  giving myself a personal challenge.
• 40:13
  I've got a decent amount of matcha to work with here where
• 40:16
  we're doing this tasting, and I'm going to have Sam tasted
• 40:20
  blind as Usucha, my blend against tenju.
• 40:23
  My favorite blend used to be. From Maruku Koya man and see if
• 40:29
  he can identify which is which and which one he likes more.
• 40:34
  And I fully expect to lose. Please don't view this as me
• 40:39
  challenging someone who's been doing this for probably twice
• 40:43
  the amount of time that I've been alive.
• 40:45
  Well, and also, who am I to, you know, judge the outcome?
• 40:49
  It's really my preference. So actually I have a lot of
• 40:52
  advantages. So I'm going to try to blend in
• 40:54
  the same style to achieve the same flavor profile outcome as
• 40:58
  what this product has to offer and what we've tasted.
• 41:01
  But I have have a huge advantage in that I know Sam's preferences
• 41:04
  so. That's interesting point.
• 41:06
  Oh, it's almost a personalized land.
• 41:08
  Versus some 80 year old chashi grandpa.
• 41:11
  So let's see how I do. I'm going to ask Sam to go into
• 41:14
  the other room and I'm going to prepare this and we'll see how I
• 41:16
  do. All right, fun.
• 41:18
  All right, and we're back. So I've prepared two cups for
• 41:22
  you here, Sam, and I'm going to start you off with cup #1.
• 41:28
  There you go. All right, I'm actually quite
• 41:29
  excited about this. So I believe we're using the
• 41:32
  same Tenju that we have opened about a week ago in Japan.
• 41:36
  Indeed, at the time I remember I was very disappointed about this
• 41:40
  particular Tenju from this batch.
• 41:42
  Tenju has ever been occupied a very special place of in my
• 41:46
  heart of my macho tasting journey because it was really my
• 41:49
  conversion. Blended product from Maruku
• 41:52
  Koyaman. Yeah, about a year ago, like I
• 41:55
  remember how the really fresh kind of like a olive oil note
• 42:00
  when we freshly opened that can back, you know, when this
• 42:03
  product was half about the price.
• 42:05
  Half the price. Less than half, actually.
• 42:07
  Yeah, yeah, yeah. Now like I, like we, we, we
• 42:10
  bought this 20 grand can for 12,000 year.
• 42:13
  Yep. So about 90.
• 42:14
  Bucks, OK. And it tastes like a different
• 42:17
  product when we opened it in Buji.
• 42:20
  So I'm going to try to find which one is which.
• 42:23
  So just by judging the color, one matcha is certainly like
• 42:29
  brighter green than the other, but the greener matcha has a
• 42:35
  slightly larger bubble than the other one, larger and thinner
• 42:39
  bubble. So that's all very interesting.
• 42:40
  So I'm going to try the first one, which is greener and the
• 42:44
  bubble is larger. You mean more fine as I'm
• 42:46
  staring at it The First off, what do you taste?
• 42:49
  The Mystery cup #1 What do you taste?
• 42:51
  It's definitely not super umami driven.
• 42:54
  A little bit more structure and nice bitterness.
• 42:57
  Interesting floral notes. It's almost like walking in, you
• 43:02
  know, a flower field, like a lot of white flower honeysuckle,
• 43:06
  some hint of like woody notes. It's leaning on the green end of
• 43:11
  the spectrum, but definitely not grassy, so pretty good.
• 43:14
  How would you describe like the umami or the creaminess and the
• 43:17
  depth? Umami I gifted A2.
• 43:23
  It's definitely like less umami than some of the, you know,
• 43:27
  umami bombs that what we will call and creaminess.
• 43:32
  It's pretty creamy. OK.
• 43:33
  And after taste and like. Pretty long lasting after taste
• 43:38
  and there's definitely kind of like a bite into it.
• 43:40
  It's, you know, not as like, I guess like very soft, very
• 43:45
  rounded, very oily compared to some of the other Wuji tea that
• 43:49
  we have tried. And on the balance scale, would
• 43:51
  you describe it as balanced or imbalance?
• 43:53
  Yeah, I would say this is balanced, very balanced product.
• 43:56
  Like a more harmonious combination of flavors.
• 43:59
  Yeah, and definitely more structured.
• 44:01
  OK, so number two, number two and I'll ask you the same
• 44:05
  question. Some immediate flush of umami
• 44:09
  and nori. The texture is super fine, very
• 44:12
  creamy like it's so like soft and juicy.
• 44:16
  It's almost chewy. Like, I think this is tangent,
• 44:20
  but it's also tastes different than the tangent that I had
• 44:24
  about a week ago when we opened the can.
• 44:26
  When we freshly opened the can. I think this actually improved,
• 44:30
  at least to my preference. I can get a hint of like the
• 44:33
  olive notes. It's more of a kind of like a
• 44:36
  meaty pickled or preserved olive versus a olive oil, which is
• 44:41
  what I loved a year ago. But this is.
• 44:44
  Yeah, yeah, Yeah. Well now I feel less regret
• 44:47
  paying 90 bucks for this for this can of matcha.
• 44:51
  So you I guessed them properly. Actually just staring at them
• 44:55
  it's pretty obvious. But how about how it compares to
• 44:58
  your preference? For my own preference, wow, now
• 45:01
  it's kind of hard to say. I will certainly pick your
• 45:04
  blend. If we're comparing to the Tenchu
• 45:07
  about a week ago, OK, But now I will say it's close to 5050.
• 45:11
  But in terms of you know, how interesting or how
• 45:16
  characteristic these Marchas are, I would pick your blend.
• 45:20
  But in terms, but in terms of like an objective like quality
• 45:25
  assessment, you know, kind of perspective, you know, tend to
• 45:28
  definitely taste more expensive and higher quality.
• 45:31
  Yeah, when we talk about quality, quality really is a
• 45:33
  social construct, and the best people at evaluating anything
• 45:39
  and when it comes to a quality perspective are really good at
• 45:42
  separating preferences from quality.
• 45:44
  So what does that mean? A Brewer for example, who makes
• 45:47
  beer might hate IP AS or stout beers, but they definitely can
• 45:51
  taste the difference between a high and low quality 1.
• 45:54
  So what is going on in their minds if they can make the
• 45:57
  quality assessment even if they don't like it?
• 45:59
  But really what it is, it's a guess about what other people
• 46:03
  would consider high or low quality.
• 46:06
  Sometimes it could mean balance, sometimes it could mean the
• 46:09
  present or absent of certain flavors.
• 46:11
  But it is a socially, it is a social construct.
• 46:15
  Very much so. And especially in the case of
• 46:18
  tea, not just Japanese tea, but also Chinese tea, like people
• 46:21
  always talk about, I can taste this processing into certainty.
• 46:25
  Like the processing is often the indicator of the quality or the
• 46:30
  intervention of human, you know, craftsmanship in a certainty.
• 46:36
  And that's oftentimes the indicator of the price or the
• 46:39
  value of that tea. Indeed.
• 46:40
  And actually when matcha first got introduced to Japan, you
• 46:44
  know, Japan was looking a lot to China and particularly looking a
• 46:47
  lot to TCM, our traditional Chinese medicine for different
• 46:51
  herbs and plants have different medical remedies and effects,
• 46:54
  etcetera. And it was actually tea was
• 46:57
  considered highly prized because it was bitter.
• 47:00
  Like preferences in Japan have literally changed away from
• 47:04
  bitterness in this very tea CM idea of this herbal health like
• 47:10
  random leaf into something that is much more umami driven that
• 47:14
  you know, it's gone along with other parts of Japanese culture
• 47:16
  as well with all the dashi and the nori and the kombu and all
• 47:20
  these various things that are really heavily have strong umami
• 47:25
  presence. Yeah, it's a very interesting
• 47:28
  and perfect reflection of general or average Japanese
• 47:32
  dietary preference. So I totally agree actually that
• 47:35
  the tanju tastes higher quality as we're sitting here tasting
• 47:38
  this. But I actually think when it
• 47:40
  comes to preference, it's probably a flip of the coin for
• 47:43
  a lot of people, which one they would end up preferring more.
• 47:47
  Actually, the umaminess might be a little too strange, a little
• 47:50
  too foreign for a lot of people who have less familiarity with
• 47:54
  Japanese cuisine and these these types of flavors, I think.
• 47:57
  Yes, indeed. I mean we're talking about
• 47:59
  higher quality from the lens of the evaluating Japanese matcha
• 48:04
  with the Japanese standard. But if we're talking about, you
• 48:07
  know, from a different perspective or from the consumer
• 48:10
  preference wise, you know, it's almost a meaningless to talk
• 48:13
  about the quality. Yeah, absolutely.
• 48:15
  So I'm going to share my blend components that I used.
• 48:18
  I did a 2G dose. I did half a gram of hanzu Sahi
• 48:22
  from Uji proper. I did half a gram of samidori to
• 48:25
  from hanzu samidori also from Uji proper.
• 48:29
  I did .7g so even more Oku midori standard conventional
• 48:35
  agriculture. That's where the green color is.
• 48:38
  The deep green, yeah, less of a, more of a deep green, less of a
• 48:41
  brilliant green. And I did .3G of a Yabukita that
• 48:46
  we have sourced from Hubei in mainland China.
• 48:50
  China. But this Yabukita was overseen
• 48:54
  and is basically produced by a Japanese company in China.
• 48:57
  And this is extremely expensive by wholesale standards.
• 49:02
  It costs over 350 U.S. dollars a kilo, which is madness for.
• 49:08
  Chinese matcha by Japanese wholesale standard, even like
• 49:11
  very expensive material. So it's but it's indeed, it's
• 49:15
  very good. You know on its own it lacks
• 49:18
  some umami, but actually it's a pretty good tasting creamy,
• 49:23
  interesting, not very bitter like probably blend component
• 49:27
  and it's approximately 15% of this blend which brings the cost
• 49:32
  down. So we're comparing a $90.00
• 49:34
  retail product and every component of this one that I
• 49:38
  blended is use the retail price other than that 15% of this
• 49:44
  Chinese matcha and it would cost about 20 four U.S. dollars.
• 49:47
  Retail is what the is inside this.
• 49:50
  Oh my God. So it's a little less than a
• 49:53
  four times price difference. That's what we call a business
• 49:57
  opportunity. Indeed.
• 50:00
  Wow, that's very surprising. Well, the Hubei Yabukita is on
• 50:05
  its own, like the color was impeccable, like really, really
• 50:10
  shiny bright green color. And the foam was also
• 50:14
  impeccable, like very velvety smooth foam.
• 50:17
  It's just lacks some complexity. I mean like the probably the
• 50:21
  intention of the purpose of the creation of this tea was to be
• 50:26
  used as a blend component. Almost certainly, and apparently
• 50:29
  a lot of this goes back to Japan.
• 50:31
  Yeah, they really view it much more of a high quality raw
• 50:35
  material perspective. But wow, this is actually it
• 50:39
  gives us a lot of hope. There's certainly a potential of
• 50:43
  interesting and high quality tea being created in China.
• 50:45
  Yeah, really big time. I think this is actually
• 50:47
  probably the best Chinese grown matcha that we produced and it's
• 50:52
  impeccably milled. It must be issue soon milled
• 50:54
  because the texture is either that or whoever is operating
• 50:58
  this ball mill or jet mill really knows what they're doing.
• 51:01
  Or maybe it's issue yusu, we don't know.
• 51:04
  Well, actually we've seen footage of that issue used to
• 51:06
  being used in. China and apparently we've heard
• 51:08
  complaints from Chinese producers that they can't get
• 51:11
  issue Usus as well. Same issue for the Japanese
• 51:14
  people, but I think it's this is definitely, we actually know for
• 51:17
  a fact that this is grown and overseen by a Japanese company
• 51:22
  that's outsourcing production to China and importing a lot back.
• 51:26
  So who knows, this might be a part of your blends that you
• 51:28
  enjoy when you go buy tea retail in Japan.
• 51:33
  Yeah. I don't think we should call
• 51:35
  stuff when it's not, but this on its own is really interesting
• 51:40
  and delicious, especially from a price to quality perspective and
• 51:43
  when you consider other people's preferences and you really have
• 51:46
  to think about what you're paying for.
• 51:48
  No, I mean, 10 Jews, still objectively higher quality.
• 51:51
  So we're going to do one last very interesting sample.
• 51:54
  It is Asahi from Uji proper, grown by Taishi San and his
• 51:59
  family and one is Honzu Asahi. That's conventional agriculture.
• 52:03
  So there's some use of pesticides and fertilizer.
• 52:06
  And then there's organic Asahi from same region, processed at
• 52:11
  the same factory, probably in a different batch or actually
• 52:14
  definitely in a different batch. And it is organic.
• 52:17
  So limited use of pesticides and organic fertilizer.
• 52:22
  So Kanesha. Kanesha, so different type of
• 52:24
  shading. So the Honju Asahi is like the
• 52:27
  Super traditional with the rice straw on top.
• 52:30
  And the other one is these black synthetic cloth canopies clothes
• 52:34
  and that cover it. So we're going to see if we can
• 52:36
  taste the difference and you know, use this sensory to
• 52:39
  describe it. All right, and we're back.
• 52:41
  So we just prepared 2 samples. Standard usage, 2 grams to 60
• 52:46
  mils of water. One.
• 52:48
  They're both from the same farmer, same season, mostly all
• 52:51
  controlled variables as far as we know.
• 52:53
  The difference is that one of them is organic and Kanesha, the
• 52:57
  other is conventional Hanzu Isaki.
• 53:00
  The color is already kind of a giveaway 1 is very, very like
• 53:05
  bright green and the other one, you know, it has a slight
• 53:08
  yellowish hue on the phone. So you know, my first gasp will
• 53:12
  be that one is the organic. Yeah.
• 53:14
  And also we know that the difference between Khande sha
• 53:17
  and Hanzu shading. Hanzu shading typically yields a
• 53:20
  lighter tensha in color, and then the Khande sha which is
• 53:24
  typically quite a bit more dark. Yeah, there are a couple of
• 53:27
  theories that goes into why you know these two methods resulting
• 53:31
  to different very different color of the tea bushes.
• 53:34
  Some people will argue that, you know, the Khande Sha is
• 53:37
  absorbing a certain, you know, a different spectrum of light
• 53:42
  versus Hong Zhu. And some other people would say
• 53:45
  that the way that Hong Zu scattered light on, you know,
• 53:48
  onto these tea bushes is inherently different than
• 53:51
  Khandlatia. So we we don't know.
• 53:53
  It's scientifically, scientifically for sure that you
• 53:57
  know, these are the reasons why, you know, all these tea bushes
• 54:01
  look different, but they certainly do look different, and
• 54:03
  the tea certainly do look and smell different.
• 54:06
  Yeah, indeed. So I guess we'll start with
• 54:07
  sample one. We set this up blind, so we
• 54:10
  don't know which is which. Sample one is the darker 1.
• 54:13
  Sample 2 is the lighter 1, so we'll start with the darker 1.
• 54:16
  Sample one. Oh wow.
• 54:17
  I'm almost certain that this is the organic.
• 54:20
  The initial punch of bitterness kind of just, you know, very
• 54:25
  obvious. I mean, we're using very high
• 54:27
  quality water, controlling for many variables, but there is
• 54:30
  definitely a noticeable bitterness.
• 54:33
  It's also very creamy as a nice after taste.
• 54:36
  Right after the Binaness, you have this burst of floral notes,
• 54:40
  very, very nice kind of white flowers and a little bit hint of
• 54:45
  like honey notes. Something that I do notice
• 54:48
  though, is that the texture of the matcha itself is a little
• 54:51
  bit grainy, and something that we've heard is that when you're
• 54:54
  doing ishusu milling, organic tanja tends to not quite mill as
• 55:00
  well as conventionally grown tanja.
• 55:03
  Yeah, the production yield between organic and convention
• 55:07
  is quite enormous. For with milling efficiency
• 55:10
  with. Milling.
• 55:11
  We've heard that some stones are like half as fast.
• 55:15
  So that's very interesting like that.
• 55:17
  So what what happens that you end up having these matcha
• 55:20
  powder getting stuck in the melt surface for longer period of
• 55:23
  time than conventional tensor. So I wagered that is probably
• 55:28
  the reason why this this matcha looks a little bit yellow or
• 55:32
  yellower than the conventional. One, some more heat in the mill
• 55:35
  longer potentially. I mean, we don't know.
• 55:38
  And it also could be too that this, the tension processing and
• 55:40
  steaming times might be slightly different because certainly the
• 55:43
  organic, from my understanding, when you do organic agriculture,
• 55:48
  you'll get slightly thicker leaves.
• 55:50
  The plant needs to be just a little more strong, resilient
• 55:53
  and robust because you're not spraying pesticides onto it.
• 55:56
  So it's got to build up its natural defenses and which
• 55:59
  naturally makes it a more robust plant versus the really soft,
• 56:03
  young tender leaves that, you know, don't have to worry about
• 56:07
  pesticides because you're doing conventional agriculture.
• 56:10
  Yeah. So people, so people probably
• 56:13
  end up, you know, steaming the leaf a little bit longer than
• 56:16
  conventional thinner leaves. Yeah, which supposedly also
• 56:19
  actually not supposedly it does deteriorate the color a bit less
• 56:22
  composed to very light steamed tea typically also makes it less
• 56:26
  terroir expressive and the cultivar you taste less the
• 56:29
  longer that you steam. It's like roasting.
• 56:32
  Roasting coffee exactly. Like if you roast coffee really
• 56:35
  darkly, it just starts tasting like roasted coffee.
• 56:38
  Similar thing for Japanese steamed tea.
• 56:40
  The longer you steam, the more it tastes like steamed tea.
• 56:43
  It's a homogenizer. Yeah.
• 56:45
  All right, let's try the next. Which we believe to be the Hansu
• 56:50
  Asahi. Conventional agriculture, which
• 56:53
  it is almost certainly is. The defining characteristic of
• 56:56
  the sea, is definitely umami and creaminess.
• 56:58
  I had almost described this as an umami bomb.
• 57:01
  Actually, it's a pretty intense umami.
• 57:03
  Yeah, like it's this very, very like upfront, like Nori and
• 57:09
  almost like clam juice kind of. Oh.
• 57:11
  Clam juice is a great reference. Yeah, it's very, very, very
• 57:15
  pronounced. And you know, the powder is
• 57:17
  certainly finer then they will get it.
• 57:19
  Yeah, it's buttery smooth. It has a really nice after
• 57:23
  taste. Not only does it have intensity
• 57:25
  and body that's coming from that umami, much higher body like
• 57:29
  less like structured matcha doesn't have the bitterness that
• 57:32
  the organic one does, but the after taste is very interesting
• 57:36
  and intense. Absolutely.
• 57:39
  But for all of the flavor notes and also the mouthfeel, you do
• 57:43
  like kind of still getting the very like overall soft kind of
• 57:48
  structure versus a organic 1, you do end up getting like a
• 57:52
  much more structured flavor profile.
• 57:54
  Indeed, indeed. But we keep hearing from many
• 57:58
  different people all across the industry about Japanese people
• 58:02
  and foreigners who who study this.
• 58:04
  Is that the single greatest, the single most important thing that
• 58:08
  determine much equality is fertilizer.
• 58:10
  But I think you really taste it in these samples.
• 58:13
  The conventional agriculture, by our understanding of Japanese
• 58:17
  quality standard, is just objectively better.
• 58:20
  Yeah. Like if you really internalize
• 58:23
  this kind of a reality, you know, you you almost need to
• 58:27
  treat fertilizer as part of the recipe of creating matcha.
• 58:30
  It is, you know, a very, very influential part of creating a
• 58:35
  flavor profile of a certain matcha.
• 58:38
  Like when we think about a fertilizer intuitively, we think
• 58:41
  about, you know, like in other crops, it's used to increase the
• 58:45
  yield. It's used to kind of make the
• 58:47
  plant more resilient to the climate.
• 58:50
  But in this particular case, when we are looking at matcha,
• 58:53
  it really has a tremendous impact on the flavor profile
• 58:57
  itself. So you almost need to treat it
• 59:00
  as part of the recipe, like as part of the ingredient that you
• 59:04
  know that creates a matcha. Yeah, and there's a cycle too.
• 59:07
  So the more fertilizer you add, the more pests that it attracts.
• 59:11
  So if you want a lot very nitrogen rich soil, everything
• 59:14
  loves nitrogen, you attract a lot of pests and therefore you
• 59:18
  need to spray and there's a cycle.
• 59:19
  So not only when you're doing organic agriculture, you're
• 59:23
  typically applying less and different types of fertilizer.
• 59:26
  Oftentimes they're less nitrogen rich, but you're also not
• 59:29
  spraying, which means that the plant has to adapt in various
• 59:32
  ways, which shows up in the even the look.
• 59:35
  If you look at organic tensha versus conventional tensha, it
• 59:38
  looks like more rigid, more brittle, less tender and soft.
• 59:44
  And you can tell not only when you look at the matcha, but you
• 59:47
  can tell when you look at the tensha.
• 59:48
  And it's pretty obvious. And it mills quite differently.
• 59:51
  And it ends up also probably creating more defense mechanisms
• 59:55
  that taste bitter, whether or not be caffeine or other
• 59:57
  compounds that really change the taste.
• 1:00:00
  And you know, I would wager that you know this organic Asahi.
• 1:00:04
  From Uji proper, if you put this in a blind tasting next to
• 1:00:08
  conventionally grown Oku Midori from Mazuka, for example, for a
• 1:00:12
  standard preference test in the United States or you know, most
• 1:00:15
  countries outside of Japan, I think the conventional
• 1:00:18
  agriculture from Mazuka would win that blind preference test
• 1:00:22
  simply because this organic product is just too bitter for
• 1:00:25
  those people's preferences, I would wager.
• 1:00:27
  Yeah, but if you dump them both into, you know, a cup of milk,
• 1:00:31
  it will not be, it will not be the same story.
• 1:00:34
  Yeah, probably the stronger one would come through, but there's
• 1:00:37
  a lot of interesting flavor interaction going on between
• 1:00:40
  these two samples too, because the presence of that fertilizer
• 1:00:43
  and whatever it's doing to the flavor profile outcome of the
• 1:00:45
  conventionally grown tea, it's a lot more subtle than nuance.
• 1:00:49
  When you don't have that dominant bitter note, I think
• 1:00:52
  you pick up quite a bit more subtlety and nuance that can get
• 1:00:56
  lost or masked by the presence of really high degrees of
• 1:00:59
  bitterness, which can end up being a pretty distracting
• 1:01:03
  element for some people, I think.
• 1:01:04
  Yeah. Certainly.
• 1:01:05
  And I mean, after all, like we we're talking about all these,
• 1:01:09
  you know, cultivation methods, all these cultivars, all of
• 1:01:12
  these interesting stories or even like gossips behind all of
• 1:01:16
  these, you know, production maneuvers of different types of
• 1:01:20
  matcha. But it all comes back to
• 1:01:22
  sensory. It all comes back to their
• 1:01:25
  impacts on the flavor profile. Like all comes back to like if
• 1:01:28
  you can taste it or if you find it to be pleasant or unpleasant
• 1:01:32
  or if you find it to be interesting.
• 1:01:34
  So I think this is like a very important part of this whole,
• 1:01:39
  you know, this whole specialty matcha movement is that we are
• 1:01:43
  trying to access this whole matcha industry, this whole
• 1:01:47
  matcha product from a very unique perspective, which is the
• 1:01:52
  flavor itself versus some other angles that has been
• 1:01:55
  historically taken by for example, Chano.
• 1:01:58
  Yu 100% because I mean, it's our primary perception with the
• 1:02:02
  product. That's what every time you have
• 1:02:04
  a sip of matcha, you're not just taking a simple of matcha.
• 1:02:07
  You are literally creating memory, memories and deep
• 1:02:10
  preferences. So it's a hedonic pleasure.
• 1:02:13
  But when you start layering on all of this other stuff, it
• 1:02:16
  turns into a very interesting story.
• 1:02:18
  You know, some some people would call that like connoisseurship,
• 1:02:20
  for example. But when it comes to sensory, I
• 1:02:23
  mean, there's so many reasons to do it.
• 1:02:26
  One is the sheer pleasure of enjoying the subtlety and nuance
• 1:02:30
  and different flavors of a product just for your own raw
• 1:02:34
  appreciation. Regardless of context.
• 1:02:36
  You're just enjoying this thing that's in front of you and
• 1:02:39
  appreciating its beauty. Not its visual beauty or the
• 1:02:44
  beauty from like, music or the beauty of touching something.
• 1:02:49
  The beauty of its taste in its pure, most primal and elemental
• 1:02:53
  form. But sensory can also be used to
• 1:02:56
  do sourcing or quality control. Did Dispatch taste the same as
• 1:03:00
  it did last time and did all the attributes that I care about?
• 1:03:04
  Is it approximately the same bitterness, Approximately the
• 1:03:06
  same umami, Approximately the same creaminess?
• 1:03:09
  So it's a very different type of sensory, which is a very
• 1:03:12
  different type of sensory than, let's say, for blending what's
• 1:03:14
  going on in Achashi's mind as they try to replicate blends
• 1:03:18
  from year to year to year? Pure descriptive analysis is not
• 1:03:21
  going to work. You need a very different
• 1:03:23
  methodology. As a consumer, I can taste like
• 1:03:26
  a certain cultivar from this tea.
• 1:03:28
  I can taste a certain processing method from this tea.
• 1:03:31
  There's is this intellectual level of hedonic pressure.
• 1:03:35
  And deductive tasting. Yeah, the which is very
• 1:03:37
  interesting and which is what I enjoyed quite a bit from tasting
• 1:03:41
  other, you know, specialty products like wine, like Scotch,
• 1:03:45
  like chocolate, like coffee. This is something that people
• 1:03:47
  take great pleasure and take Gray.
• 1:03:50
  I would say time and effort to explore all of these, you know,
• 1:03:54
  interesting landscapes beyond just the pure like animal
• 1:03:59
  hedonic pressure that we can get from a a product.
• 1:04:02
  Yeah, absolutely. And like even what we were doing
• 1:04:05
  here between these two Asahi samples, trying to taste the
• 1:04:08
  difference between Hanzu versus Khalesha or different fertilizer
• 1:04:12
  regiments or pesticides, no pesticides.
• 1:04:15
  Like it's very interesting. And I think the reason that it's
• 1:04:18
  important in general is that if you are able to acquire these
• 1:04:22
  references, you can learn and then you can start understanding
• 1:04:25
  your own preferences at a deeper level.
• 1:04:27
  The problem with just enjoying things in the primal, hedonic
• 1:04:31
  way where you taste it and you like it is you're not doing any
• 1:04:34
  learning. How can you replicate that
• 1:04:37
  experience of what you like or explore your own preferences?
• 1:04:41
  It's kind of like wandering around in the dark, but by
• 1:04:45
  tasting fertilizer, by tasting growing region, by tasting
• 1:04:49
  milling method, by tasting how old the trees are, You can start
• 1:04:53
  developing a much more complex like waypoints to build your own
• 1:04:58
  mental map of what you like and how to find it versus just being
• 1:05:02
  told it's ceremonial grain, just being told it's Fuji matcha.
• 1:05:06
  We're just being told it's top grade Hatsumukashi, very rare,
• 1:05:10
  very expensive. Some June.
• 1:05:13
  Yeah. I mean, basically you're
• 1:05:14
  learning like the possibility of what AT can be like all these
• 1:05:18
  parameters that ultimately will have an impact on the taste of
• 1:05:22
  the matcha. I think that's what's the most
• 1:05:25
  interesting and valuable part of all these deductive tasting is
• 1:05:29
  that you're learning like, where are the white space?
• 1:05:32
  What are the possible combinations that I can layer on
• 1:05:36
  to create something that I probably haven't, you know,
• 1:05:39
  never tasted before or maybe you'll never been created
• 1:05:42
  before. Like this is something that can
• 1:05:45
  really unleash a lot of imaginations for people to do
• 1:05:49
  innovations upon. So for anyone out there who's a
• 1:05:51
  little frustrated by the end of this episode by the fact that we
• 1:05:55
  didn't give an exact solution for how you should do much a
• 1:05:58
  sensory, we feel you. And to be honest, we're still
• 1:06:02
  actively figuring it out. Because if there is no one size
• 1:06:05
  fit tool, it really depends on what it is you're trying to do,
• 1:06:09
  whether or not you're trying to call out the flavors that
• 1:06:12
  consumers are going to like most on a packaging.
• 1:06:14
  Trying to understand what flavors a consumer may or may
• 1:06:17
  not take. At least trying to have your own
• 1:06:19
  mental model for with these different cultivars, region
• 1:06:22
  processing styles, shading durations, harvest methods, what
• 1:06:27
  they taste like, like it's a really depend or trying to make
• 1:06:30
  your own blend and you need different tools for different
• 1:06:33
  objectives. And there actually is no one
• 1:06:36
  good way of doing anything. Like you need to find a system
• 1:06:40
  that works for you. And it's very possible that the
• 1:06:42
  chashi system might not be that adaptable for you because you
• 1:06:47
  don't have all those, those references, because Sam and I
• 1:06:49
  could sit here and describe these as all different types of
• 1:06:52
  Chinese tea. Like we can say, oh, this one
• 1:06:54
  has a very baojong note. It has a, a sweetness very
• 1:06:58
  similar to a, a Jing Mai sample. Poor song poor that I tasted 3
• 1:07:03
  years ago and you would have no idea what we're talking about.
• 1:07:06
  Yeah. If you don't know those other
• 1:07:07
  teas. Again, it's tautology, right?
• 1:07:10
  Like you're using one complex flavor profile to describe
• 1:07:13
  another, which is really like that doesn't translate to other
• 1:07:17
  people. But if it works for me and
• 1:07:20
  identifying every time I taste this Baojong note in a
• 1:07:24
  particular sample that has these characteristics, it helps me
• 1:07:27
  build my own framework for understanding what it is and I'm
• 1:07:31
  tasting or not tasting. It doesn't benefit me because I
• 1:07:34
  have no idea what you're talking about, right?
• 1:07:36
  So it's pretty complicated and I think, you know, the Chashi's
• 1:07:39
  have done a pretty good job basically forming their own
• 1:07:41
  culture, their own subculture in a way they can understand each
• 1:07:45
  other similar to the wine people and the vocabulary, the shared
• 1:07:49
  references, the shared everything.
• 1:07:51
  And you build up the shared language and understanding
• 1:07:54
  connecting process to some flavor sensory outcome where
• 1:07:59
  there's some type of, let's say, cultural calibration going on.
• 1:08:02
  So this movement is way too new for us to have any definitive
• 1:08:06
  ideas. If anyone has a particularly
• 1:08:08
  good method for deductive tasting matcha to accurately
• 1:08:12
  predict things like shading style or cultivar, we would love
• 1:08:15
  to hear from you. But I think this is going to be
• 1:08:18
  something we're all going to have to build together and form
• 1:08:20
  our own culture around. And because even at the moment,
• 1:08:23
  the hardest problem is actually just finding these references
• 1:08:26
  OK, anything labeled Ujicha is like basically telling you
• 1:08:30
  nothing about the product when it comes to these types of
• 1:08:34
  things, even though it's labeled a single origin.
• 1:08:36
  Yeah, absolutely. But you know, we just did a
• 1:08:40
  round of sourcing in Japan, and the good news is, you know,
• 1:08:44
  there are still a lot of untouched Torah out there for us
• 1:08:47
  to explore. Maybe the uncle doesn't speak a
• 1:08:49
  word of English, but the rest are ease.
• 1:08:51
  You know he would greet you with some delicious cup of gilcolo
• 1:08:55
  and sit you down. And then you can start using in
• 1:08:57
  Google Translate. So, you know, a lot of
• 1:08:59
  opportunity here and pretty interesting, but you know,
• 1:09:02
  sensory is really, really, really important and we.
• 1:09:05
  And us coming from a quite experienced, I would say sensory
• 1:09:12
  professional, professional or analysis background, we are
• 1:09:15
  actually not better than anyone else in this realm because this
• 1:09:19
  is really experienced based kind of industry or landscape.
• 1:09:25
  We're no more experienced than others.
• 1:09:28
  It's quite exciting, actually quite interesting.
• 1:09:31
  It's finally something new. We have some experience with
• 1:09:33
  descriptive analysis, like we're pretty good at like listing off
• 1:09:36
  a bunch of notes that we taste, but then like linking them back
• 1:09:39
  to things like, you know, it's an active learning process.
• 1:09:43
  So, but I think really the most important thing is to understand
• 1:09:46
  what your consumers like and then, you know, use sensory as a
• 1:09:49
  tool to make better things for that.
• 1:09:51
  That should be the ultimate metric that we're all creating
• 1:09:54
  feedback loops to improve upon, is to create things that people
• 1:09:57
  actually want to drink and like, and nothing else literally
• 1:10:00
  matters. Or creating anything that's
• 1:10:03
  interesting. You know, it doesn't have to be
• 1:10:05
  like, wow, like amazing, tasty, delicious, but you know, on a
• 1:10:11
  sheer intellectual level, like there are a lot of these new
• 1:10:14
  combinations that just yet to be discovered because like from,
• 1:10:18
  you know, a sheer, I would say like quality or like, I don't
• 1:10:22
  know, like hedonic pleasure. Like there are some very clear
• 1:10:26
  peaks out there, like for you to climb, right?
• 1:10:29
  Like a Narino Rd. in Okanoyama tea garden, like that's priced
• 1:10:34
  and famous and it's like so well known like and it's right there.
• 1:10:39
  Like if you have enough access, enough guanxi, enough money,
• 1:10:42
  like you can taste it. It already exists.
• 1:10:45
  You can just walk up to their shop in RE Shishiman shops in
• 1:10:49
  Uchi for for like actually not very much money, yeah.
• 1:10:54
  Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, it's already there.
• 1:10:56
  But what's interesting, at least to me, is those unknown peaks,
• 1:11:01
  unknown to high grounds for people to climb, for people to
• 1:11:05
  climb, for people to explore. And I think that's really the
• 1:11:08
  core value of a specialty product movement is to explore
• 1:11:13
  the unknown. Peaks defined by other people
• 1:11:16
  like that's the consensus within Japan, mostly controlled by old
• 1:11:19
  Japanese men. But what about all the teenagers
• 1:11:23
  in California? Or what about the incredibly
• 1:11:26
  rich and sophisticated culture of appreciating matcha and
• 1:11:29
  Thailand or in other countries like preferences are very
• 1:11:32
  different. What are their peak of the
• 1:11:35
  mountains? What have they not tried that
• 1:11:37
  they would find incredible and that can be unlocked by
• 1:11:40
  blending, can be unlocked by much of being grown in new in
• 1:11:43
  different places, people trying shaded cultivation with new and
• 1:11:47
  interesting cultivars, different types of processing machinery,
• 1:11:51
  all sorts of things that kind of get vanished away when they
• 1:11:54
  disappear into these blended products.
• 1:11:56
  Not that we have any problem with blended products, but to
• 1:11:58
  learn and to do sensory properly, you have to be able to
• 1:12:02
  go back to these references. Absolutely.
• 1:12:04
  To learn the taste. So anyway, our call to action is
• 1:12:07
  taste more matcha. Take great notes, try to develop
• 1:12:11
  methodologies that work. If you find a really good one,
• 1:12:13
  please reach out, Yeah. Share Share your experience.
• 1:12:16
  Share your enjoyment. We'd love to have do an episode
• 1:12:19
  on like different people's methodologies for how they
• 1:12:22
  approach doing this type of their own sensory analysis and
• 1:12:25
  the outcomes that they've gotten.
• 1:12:27
  And so if you enjoyed this, please consider sharing with
• 1:12:29
  friend and we'll see you on the next one.
• 1:12:31
  See you in the future. Thanks.
• 1:12:33
  See you in the next peek. Yeah.