Prices collected 26 August 2026 from six sellers’ own listings.
Sencha is the everyday green tea of Japan — about three-quarters of everything grown there. It is steamed, rolled and dried, and it is the tea most people mean when they say “Japanese green tea.”
A 100 g bag makes about thirty-three cups. Here is what those cups cost.
What to buy
| Shop | Typical price | Per cup | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Best value | Mizuba | $0.30 a gram | $0.90 |
| Also good | Kettl, Ippodo (US) | $0.32 a gram | $0.96 |
| Premium | Tezumi | $0.44 a gram | $1.32 |
| Rishi | $0.53 a gram | $1.58 |
Buying a big bag is where the real saving is. Bags over 200 g work out at about $0.27 a gram against $0.36 for small retail bags — roughly 25% off, and sencha keeps well in a sealed bag in a cool cupboard.
How to brew it — this matters more than which bag you buy
Sencha is the tea most people get wrong, and the mistake is always the same: water that is too hot.
- Water: 70°C. Not boiling. Sellers here recommend anywhere from 50 to 90°C, and 70 is the middle.
- Leaf: about 3 g per cup.
- First steep: 60 seconds.
- Then steep it again, twice more, each a little hotter and shorter.
If your sencha is bitter and drying, the water was too hot. If it tastes of nothing, use more leaf — not a longer steep.
The second and third steeps are not a consolation prize. Many people prefer the second.
What it tastes like
We counted the words sellers use across 299 listings:
- sweet — a third of listings
- umami, brothy, savoury — just under a third
- fresh, crisp — about a quarter
- astringent, brisk — a fifth
- bitter — a sixth
Sencha sits between the two things people expect from green tea. It is grassier and brisker than gyokuro, greener and sharper than hojicha. If you have only had bagged supermarket green tea, a good sencha tastes considerably sweeter than you expect.
Sencha, matcha or hojicha?
| Sencha | Hojicha | Matcha | |
|---|---|---|---|
| What it is | Steamed leaf, rolled | Steamed leaf, then roasted | Shaded leaf, ground to powder |
| How you drink it | Steeped, leaf discarded | Steeped, leaf discarded | Whisked, you drink the leaf |
| Water | 70°C | 90°C | 75°C |
| Cost per cup | $0.90–$1.58 | About the same | Around $2.30 |
Hojicha costs about the same as sencha and is much more forgiving — it is roasted, so hot water does not ruin it. Matcha costs roughly two to three times more per serving, because you are consuming the whole leaf.
Deep-steamed, light-steamed: does it matter?
You will see three words on Japanese tea labels, and they describe how long the leaf was steamed before rolling:
- Asamushi — light. Clearer liquor, more delicate, more of the leaf’s original character.
- Chuumushi — medium. The default.
- Fukamushi — deep. Cloudier, greener, thicker, less astringent. The leaf breaks up more.
Only three listings in ten name any of them. Deep-steamed is the one you will see most; light-steamed is rarer, and medium is almost never printed at all.
Two things worth knowing before you use these words to shop.
First, sellers do not agree on what they mean. One Japanese producer calls 40–50 seconds “deep-steamed”; another calls 20 seconds “light.” A specialist retailer says deep-steamed starts at 60 seconds. Wikipedia puts it at one to two minutes. The same tea could be labelled differently by two honest sellers.
Second, light-steamed costs more. Listings that say asamushi run well above the ones that name no grade at all. Deep-steamed does not come with a discount — it is priced about the same as unlabelled tea.
So the practical answer: fukamushi is a reasonable default if you like a thicker, less astringent cup, and it will not cost you extra. Do not pay a premium for asamushi unless you have tried both and prefer it.
What else the label tells you
Across all 299 listings:
| The listing names | Share |
|---|---|
| A growing region | 87% |
| A cultivar | 43% |
| A steaming grade | 29% |
| First flush or shincha | 28% |
American shops tell you considerably less. Among US listings only 59% name a region, 31% name a cultivar, and just 6% say the tea is first flush — against 28% overall.
If you want to know where your tea grew and what variety it is, the Japanese sellers are more likely to say. If you want it to arrive next week, that is what you are trading.
Does naming the cultivar mean better tea? Not by price. Listings that name a cultivar cost almost exactly the same as ones that don’t. Treat it as information, not as a quality signal.
Questions people ask
What temperature should I brew sencha at?
70°C. If you don’t have a thermometer, boil the kettle and let it stand for three or four minutes, or pour the water between two cups to cool it.
How much sencha per cup?
About 3 g — a heaped teaspoon — per 200 ml cup.
Can I re-steep sencha?
Yes, two or three more times. Make the later steeps shorter, not longer.
Why is my sencha bitter?
Almost always the water temperature. The second most common cause is steeping too long.
Is sencha high in caffeine?
It has caffeine, though less than coffee. Almost no seller publishes a figure — one listing in 299 gives a number in milligrams.
Sencha or shincha?
Shincha is the first sencha of the year, sold in late spring. It is fresher and sweeter, and it costs more. Only about one American listing in twenty says whether the tea is first flush at all.
Is expensive sencha better?
Within a shop, usually. Across shops, not reliably — the cheapest seller here is $0.30 a gram and the dearest $0.53, and that gap is mostly about which shop you are standing in.
The six sellers: Ippodo (US), Kettl, Mizuba, Rishi, Tezumi and Yunomi. 299 sencha listings in all. Per-cup figures assume 3 g a cup — about thirty-three cups from a 100 g bag.
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