Onyx Coffee Lab Sedogawa Sencha Green Tea

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New Teas offerings have launched now in eco sachets. We've taken weighing to the tenth of a gram out of your hands so that each cup is perfect. We suggest trying Onyx Tealight which has organic oats and honey along with black tea and cinnamon to create a complex sweetness and silky mouthfeel tea experience.

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YOU'RE WELCOME:

FREE shipping for orders over $40

TRENDING COFFEE:

Peru La Margarita Gesha Rwanda Kanzu Natural El Salvador Santa Rosa The Duet Cold Brew

ONYX IS MY PAL

FREE shipping for orders over $40

TEA:

New Teas offerings have launched now in eco sachets. We've taken weighing to the tenth of a gram out of your hands so that each cup is perfect. We suggest trying Onyx Tealight which has organic oats and honey along with black tea and cinnamon to create a complex sweetness and silky mouthfeel tea experience.

JON'S WISDOM:

Twitter is the K-cup of Coffee....

Sedogawa Sencha | Green Tea

This certified organic green tea is an early spring, first flush production from Mukoujima tea cooperative, a fully-integrated producer that grows, processes and packs all their teas on-site. This tea lot is composed of 100% early-budding saemidori (“vivid green”) cultivar, and it undergoes an asamushi ("light steam") process. Great care is taken to produce unbroken leaves with low dust. The resulting brew yields a fluorescent yellow color with no astringency and a medium-light body. Enjoy a classic steamed green tea profile with notes of pure daikon radish and sea-breeze qualities.


60g 200g
$-.-

1
+

VERY LOW

Origin:
Setonoya, Shizuoka, Japan
Process:
Asamushi ("light steam") Sencha Process
Cup:
Daikon, Grilled Mackerel, Fresh
bag
Origin:
Setonoya, Shizuoka, Japan
Process:
Asamushi ("light steam") Sencha Process
Caffeine:
mg
Cup:
Daikon, Grilled Mackerel, Fresh

Story

This sencha tea is Mukoujima cooperative’s only asamushi production. They cultivate sturdy tea trees to withstand stress from winter frost. In spring, the early buds are hand-plucked, then fanned to prevent oxidation. The leaves are steamed for 15 seconds, cooled, pressed, tumble-rolled, bundle-twisted, rolled twice into its needle shape, and finally dried to a moisture content of 4%. The result is a fairly crude tea, and before it is imported, it undergoes a secondary process of pan-drying, shaping, and sorting. However you decide to brew this tea offering, remember to use cooler water temperatures around 170°F.

MUKOUJIMA TEA COOPERATIVE
North of the Seto River (hence the name, Sedogawa, or 瀬戸川 - "Sedo river"​​) in Shizuoka, Japan, the Mukoujima tea cooperative has been producing agrochemical-free, certified organic tea for twenty years and counting. Their planting approach is distinguished by their signature ippon-zitate method, or "one tree method," where the tea trees are planted farther apart to allow their roots to form deep and robust networks. Given the greater distance and the small cutting size, their tea plants take around 15 years to mature for harvest. The stems are much thicker and their roots are 8 times longer than normal. Mukoujima cooperative’s discipline in maintaining this planting method treats the land with reverence and presents a forward-thinking, ecology-focused mindset.

JAPANESE GREEN TEA
In Japan, green tea plants are generally harvested three-four times a year. The first flush harvest in early Spring (around late April to early May) is called ichibancha ("first tea"), and usually brings the best-quality leaves. After plucking, the tea leaves undergo a variety of green tea processes, distinct from the processing that oolong and black teas undergo. The common processing methods for Japanese green tea can include variable rounds of fanning, cooling, tumbling, shaping, roasting, and (most distinctly from Chinese green tea) steaming. Semi-processed green teas, also known as aracha ("crude tea"), are stored in low-humidity refrigeration until they are ordered and ready to be sorted and packaged, at which point the tea is re-fired and refined to increase its shelf life and flavor.

BREW RECIPE
HOT (12oz)
Tea: 4g
Water: 350g
Water Temp: 180°F
Total Brew Time: 2 mins

Farm Cost

The price here reflects not only the labor of growing and cultivating the tea, but also the respective farm’s years of skilled handling, quality of regional cultivars, and oftentimes processing work that may include milling, drying, steaming, oxidation process, and more. We partner with friends like Hugo Tea Company to identify quality teas, where within we seek to uphold transparency and quality. At this time, we are listing this cost for each pound of tea. This tea was purchased at $45 per kilogram.

$2.70

Transportation

This number represents the cost incurred while the tea was moved from the producing country to Onyx Coffee Lab in Arkansas. The price listed below is the cost we incurred per kilogram of tea via designated express micro-lot shipping by air transport. It varies for each tea based on the overall volume and density of the shipment.

$1.50

Production Cost

The following list includes many of the costs associated with producing this tea. We have always maintained transparency as a principle but have often lumped these things under the label of “production costs” in the past without going into detail.

There is an inherent difference in handling tea versus coffee, where most teas are fully processed at a processing facility in the region or at the tea farm itself. There is intensely skilled labor that comes with the drying, oxidation, rolling, steaming and packing processes. Tea is also physically very delicate, and extra care is taken in handling each dried leaf or bud to maintain the structural integrity of tea.

While the following list isn’t exhaustive, hopefully, it gives you a picture of the work, expense, and investment involved in executing tea at the level that we do. At this time we are listing our cost of production for each pound of tea at around $3.40. There are obviously many other aspects of running a business such as breakage, mistakes, new equipment and maintenance, but this works as an arbitrary cost associated with making one box of tea.

Fixed Costs
These are costs associated with simply having a business. Things like utilities of internet, natural gas, phones, rent, business licenses, fees, etc. These things increase every year. For example, most commercial leases increase by 2% every year. We periodically look at these costs and try to reduce expenses, but work in this area are small moves of the needle as these are mostly the same and usually increase every year.

Packaging
This is all the things that go into packaging the tea to get it safely to your home. There’s the biodegradable bag, the recyclable box, the compostable mailer, different boxes for bulk shipping, the paper that pads the tea, tape, and a few odds and ends. (Read about our new retail packaging HERE). These costs are separate from the tea, but a part of the cost of producing tea that is packed well and ready to ship and consume. We want our teas to arrive in a secure fashion, looking like it did when it left Onyx: with style and design but also keeping the environment in mind. Shipping packages inevitably have waste associated and we’re working towards sustainability at each step.

Labor
At Onyx, we work to make jobs both sustainable and celebrated, and we pay salaries, provide health insurance, and give regular raises to our staff. Often we have a handful of staff that get celebrated, but everyone on our team contributes and is valuable. Likewise, we wish to pay our tea partner, Hugo Tea Co, for all their skilled labor in tea handling (from hand massaging oils to create phenomenal Earl Grey or the careful packaging of each tea box). Onyx is not just a brand or a design or a café, we are truly made by every person we work with.

We all know it takes work to make anything. Hugo’s sourcing approach echoes our own, which has more labor involved than you may think. Because we visit every Relationship Coffee producer, that means our green buying team of Jon and Dakota typically spend a total of six months traveling. We’re committed to visiting and cupping on the ground, this inevitably is an investment of time, of money, of long layovers, of encountering government coupes and protests, and forging some of the greatest friendships and seeing some of the most beautiful landscapes imaginable. We appreciate that in working with the Hugo Tea team, Tyler and Logan, put equal dedication into sourcing these teas.

We have a creative team that helps create all things visible, digital, and print. These folks are very talented and have really helped push the dream of Onyx to the next level. We believe that tea can inherently be great, but having something that looks and feels good helps inform expectations, helps bring value, and tells the stories in this way has tangible and important value.

These are a few of the jobs we feel really have more involvement than might be imagined, but throughout Onyx there are touch points of intentionally positioned team members to help create the best possible beverage experiences.

Taxes
We all know what this is. We set aside and submit money every quarter for taxes along with paying all of the weekly and monthly taxes we are obligated to pay. This can be tough for a small business as there are ebbs and flows in cash flow, and taxes are often not paid in conjunction with the sales season.

$3.40

Fair Trade Min.

$0.00

C Market

$0.00

Cup Score

Lot Size

Lot size informs us of one thing: the size of that lot. Forming a single farm lot can often take just as much labor and experience as the large regional blends, depending on the level of labor or quality standards applied to each day or week’s pickings.

A great example of this would be matcha powder, which is often a carefully constructed sum of processed green teas that are often grown in different sections of a farm to create a balanced and intentional matcha experience. It may be built up on many different farms. This often signifies that the lot was built to reflect the flavor characteristics or unique cultivars of the region. Meanwhile, a larger lot size of a Yunnan black tea may end up being used in a variety of different teas, based on the final processing and any additional treatments before packaging.

200kg

Transparency Grade

Transparency

We as a company believe that transparency is unbelievably important. The point of listing things below is not to justify what we charge or what we profit, but to give a realistic snapshot of the industry and how Specialty Coffee can be different than other commodity industries.

$7.60
$2.70
$1.50
$3.40
$0.00
$0.00
200kg

Transparency

We as a company believe that transparency is unbelievably important. The point of listing things below is not to justify what we charge or what we profit, but to give a realistic snapshot of the industry and how Specialty Coffee can be different than other commodity industries.

$2.70
$1.50
$3.40
$7.60
200kg
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