Newbie to green tea, need help

That's probably irrelevant. Different manufacturing methods yield leaves with different hues, but I haven't heard anything convincing about health differences along these lines.

If you have a grocery store handy that sells to Japanese people, try any brand of green tea you can afford. In my experience, in these shops quality varies directly with price.

I'm sure you sincerely believe this, but please consider: cultivating a taste for what you're drinking will fortify your resolve to continue with it.

/Lew

If you're just drinking for the health benifits, and not for it's lovely flavor, relaxing qualitys, afternoon ritual, and all around beauty, I suggest you take green tea caplets. All the (questionable) health benifits, without any of those actual spirtual benifit nuisances. Marlene

Your best bet for green tea, is called "Sen-Cha" it is thin and almost looks like blades of grass in loose form. You can get sencha in tea bag form very inexpensively from asian markets or even speacialty tea/coffee shops.

My personal favorite is a loose form of Jasmine Green tea "pearls" they are small little balls that unfurl in your cup and make an amazing cup of tea.

Great easy to find green teas are the Tazo brand. "China Green Tips" "Zen" "Lotus Root Green Tea" and I think they have a ginger green tea too.

Many "green" teas will actually produce brown tea, but Sen-Cha will produce a bright green cup that is unmatched. A highly prized form of green tea called "Ma-Cha" which is a powdered green tea is considered one of the best and is the central part of the tea ceremony.

Hope that helps! Enjoy

Welcome to the group. I notice you are using Google. Might I suggest you review the following link to assist you in providing context for your posts.

(Thanks, Mike Petro)

Generally, folks try to form a brief snippet of what they are replying to in order to clarify the context of their message. This becomes more important in more complicated threads which may carry multiple subjects.

Regards, Steve Context Nazi

I have reviewed the link, and will be happy to comply... I didn't consider it a "context nazi" request, just a simple one that I knew better of anyhow :) I just happened to stumble across this group while trying to solve a tea mystery that has been driving me nuts for years... but am very glad I did! Thanks for the welcome, and I'm glad to be here.

Also, to the OP. I misspelled Matcha as "ma-cha" in my previous reply. The correct spelling is Matcha. And also, we all started somewhere in our tea lives and most just as you are. Keep at it, tea is an amazing thing that can be deep and rewarding in amazing ways. There is a great book called "The Book of Tea" that I highly reccomend. It starts with inexpensive tea bags and then pretty soon you'll progress on to loose teas that cost $40+/lb. (which isn't as expensive as it sounds at first). Good luck!

Nope. $40/lb. is only $2.50/oz., less than 10 cents a gram. Much cheaper than marijuana or even "Luwak" coffee. (but still an "indulgence" to people like Space Cowboy :-P )

stePH in cup: nothing yet. Now to make some Ahmad earl grey.

That stuff is a lot more expensive than the typical gunpowder teas. But the brown liquor is fine.

I think you're out of your mind. Tea should be a calming and pleasant thing... I will bet most of the health benefits come from that anyway.

But go to a local Asian grocery and look for Temple of Heaven brand. You should be able to get a months's supply for a couple bucks. It's not bad, but it will get bitter if your water is too hot.

--scott

Don't you really mean dark amber, not brown?

According to my observations the difference in hues is related to the degree of fermentation.You can produce the different hues yourself using just one brand of the same variety tea as follows: Brew one cup of plain green tea in a glass cup at a starting temp 180F (82C). Then set that cup aside for 5 days. On days 2 thru 5 you will notice progressive darkening of the beverage from pale yellow to dark amber. That is the result of fermentation.

There are also differences in the partially fermented green tea leaves (between brands) before you even steep them. That accounts for the different hues of the beverage.

I recently purchased some Pinhead gunpowder and Decaf organic green tea from Coffee Bean Direct (heh) Their prices are amazing, they're the cheapest I could find. It makes me wonder if I'm not going to get a box of dog poop or something. (I haven't received it yet, they ship from the east coast) They have an excellent BizRate rating, or I wouldn't have purchased for this price.

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I'm a newbie to tea in general also, I find I don't like the brewing methods a lot of people mention online and here. I like my green tea brewed for about 3 minutes so it's very dark and tastes 'green'. Maybe I'm just strange. None of the green tea I've tried gets astringent or bitter after this much brewing though, as some claim.

If you're worried about your health make sure you're eating plenty of Brussels sprouts and broccoli! :)

-S.

It's not fermentation, it's due to oxidation of the chlorophyl. I brew a pot of green tea with a automatic drip brewer at work occasionally. Depending on the tea it will be light green to start with and get progressively darker throughout the day until i've drank it all :) The flavor becomes less 'green' as it gets darker. I have two types of gunpowder tea right now and the stuff that was only 30 cents an once starts out almost brown to begin with. I think this is due to the delay between picking and steaming/rolling the tea.

-S.

Chlorophyl may in fact be the phytochemical that the color of green tea leaves may be most attributed to.

Technically your explanation (oxidation) is "closer" than mine (fermentation).

However for some reason that oxidation must be the result of or supported by fermentation

Consider the following evidence:

1) Cold filtered tap water contains more oxygen than heated water. 2) The coldness inside of a fridge inhibits spoilage due to bacteria, molds, and yeast.

So if the darker hues of the beverage are due only to greater degrees of oxidation, then one could deduce the fallacy that a refrigerator brewed green tea should be darker than any hot brewed green tea. But that is not the case unless one puts that pitcher of cold brew on the kitchen counter for several days, which warms it to room temperature, thus favoring fermentation ;-)

BTW, I'm not suggesting that anyone should drink any tea that's been sitting at room temperature for more than a day. My remarks are only for making experimental observations. Personally I try to consume all hot brewed tea in one sitting, and all cold brewed tea (while still cold) by the 3rd day after it began steeping.

S.C. these are very interesting observations. I've read about some tea brews having green colored hues and have seen some photos of them. Ever since I began drinking tea I've always wanted to be able to make a tea that appears as in the photo at

That would be so impressive to serve when entertaining!

Try Sencha. Serve it in cups with a slightly bluish interior.

--crymad

I never get an stringent flavor either, and I always steep for 10 minutes in a covered mug at initial temp 180F (82C). I've tried a dozen different green teas including Numi gunpowder and one Japanse green tea but they've all been slightly different shades of pale yellow and all with a similarly thin flavor. I'd like to get a bolder yellow color and a more robust flavor. Perhaps I'll next try simply quadrupling the amount of tea leaves in the brew...

While discoloration in some tea may be due to fermentation, the amount of time my tea changes colors is far too little to be due to true fermentation. Bacteria just doesn't work that quickly. It is true that there is more oxygen in cold water, but it's not as reactive without a catalyst. To give you an example, at my work, we process quartz air filters for the EAP to determine carbon content in ambient air for regulatory purposes. We do this by counting the carbon which is converted to methane by oxidation. In order to convert the carbon to methane, not only do we have to add oxygen to the environment the filters are in, but we also have to heat it up to around 800 Celsius to get all the carbon to oxidize. We are not fermenting the carbon, we're increasing the chemical volatility of the oxygen and carbon to get them to react. The same thing is true if you keep your tea hot for too long.

I think we're arguing about nothing though. The website you cited about tea fermentation says this:

"The term fermentation when applied to tea is something of a misnomer, as the term actually refers to how much a tea is allowed to undergo enzymatic oxidation by allowing the freshly picked tea leaves to dry. This enzymatic oxidation process may be stopped by either pan frying or steaming the leaves before they are completely dried out. One method of classifying teas are is based on the degree of fermentation" As you can see, this isn't a bacterial or yeast fermentation, but rather an enzymatic oxidation of the tea leaves. The enzymes are denatured in green tea by steaming or pan-firing so that they won't function as catalysts anymore. However, oxygen can still darken the leaves over time naturally, and this can even happen rapidly without enzymes provided the temperature is hot enough. (Such as leaving it on a warmer like I was doing.)

If you leave it sitting out for THREE days you'll probably have REAL fermentation and then you get kombucha tea or somesuch :P You need to add sugar to it to get much going though. :)

My tea does not brew quite that green, and some of it brews quite brown. The first loose green tea I bought and tried was Stash loose leaf. I bought it after trying some kind of loose green my boss gave to a coworker (who shared it with me a few weeks ago.) I promptly ran out of it and purchased two types of gunpowder, which I have a post about here. If you can identify the tea on the left in the tall yellow container you should get a green fruity tasting tea from it.

-S.