Sencha is a type of tea made from the new shoots of the tea plant, which are steamed, rolled, and then dried.
Sencha can be categorized based on the steaming process, such as regular sencha or deep-steamed sencha.
How long do you think sencha is typically steamed during production?
About 30 seconds? 1 minute? 30 minutes? 1 hour?

When steaming vegetables in a steamer, it typically takes about 4-5 minutes, so you might think the same applies to tea. However, the actual steaming time for sencha is between 30 seconds to 120 seconds. For standard sencha, it’s about 30 to 60 seconds, while for deep-steamed sencha, it’s roughly twice that duration.
Generally, the deeper the steaming, the finer the tea leaves become, so you can often determine the level of steaming just by looking at the leaves. Even if only « sencha » is mentioned on the label, you can judge the steaming level by examining the appearance of the leaves.
Lastly, just a bit more: « Standard sencha » refers to tea with a standard level of steaming, not to the quality of the leaves. On the other hand, « premium sencha » refers to the quality of the leaves and is unrelated to the steaming level, which can be a bit confusing. I’ll explain this further in another discussion.