Re: Tea! I don't understand it! Please Help!

Vlad,

I'm sure others on the NG will add their input, but here are some starting-point suggestions:

  1. For green tea, keep the water temp below 180F/80C.
  2. Look at the dry tea leaves - if they appear to be smallish, use a rounded dessertspoonful of tea per 8oz/250ml of water. If the leaves are fairly large, start with 2 spoonfuls.
  3. Warm the pot, add the tea, pour in the hot water.
  4. Try brewing for 2 minutes. Immediately pour ALL of the tea out of the pot.
  5. Taste. If still too bitter, shorten the time. If you cannot shorten the time to the point where the tea still tastes good but is not too bitter, try another tea. Just between you and me, green tea is an acquired taste - I much prefer black teas, but I've had a few greens that don't taste to me like spinach water. Paradoxically, my favorite is gunpowder.

Keep experimenting!

Regards, Dean

Hey, hello! I've only recently started to prepare a green tea at home > and I came to I conclusion I may be doing something wrong... :-) I > bought about 4 different kinds of fresh medium price/quality tea > (Oolong,Gyokuro types), they look nice they smell nice, but when I try > to make a drink of them, I only get a coloured hot water without much > taste or aroma... I tried using a lot of tea leaves, I tried using > just a little but the best result I can get is more or less bitter hot > water without any special sensual amusement. :-) Now, while "why > should a tea bring you any special sensual amusement?" is surely a > question on itself I'm considered about the following ones: > > Where did I go wrong?! :-) > Is it the temperature of the water? Do I use too hot or too cold > water? > How about the amount of the tealeaves I should use? I am not looking > for an exact and ultimate amount as I am sure hardly any exists but > more for a little guidance, so how many, if it can be quantified? One, > two teaspoons per half litter of water? > Three, five seven?! > Should I remove the tea leaves after some time or leave where it is? > Or is it better to "remove" the liquids after a while? What's the > usual time of preparation? > > Now AGAIN! I am sure there's lots of you who'd say, "well, the tea is > ready when it is good, there are no rules to follow" and I generally > agree. But as I there's no person around that I can observe while > he/she prepares the tea and learn I would apreciate any little hint > from you to start with... > > Thank you thank you thank you! Ah, and I am sure it is me, not the tea > that is wrong! :-) Thanks and have a nice weekend! > > Vlad > -z3r0-
Reply to
Dean Macinskas
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Reply to
Matthias Scholz

Boiling water will not crack a teapot that has been prerinsed with hot water from the tap. That is the main reason this has become common practice in England; nothing to do with the tea. It is the temperature extremes that crack the pot. I've cracked my share! The last time was with a glass teapot that had been resting on a cold formica counter all night during a Polish winter. I had forgotten to rinse it with hot water first and it cracked as I poured water from the kettle.

And as for using boiling water with green tea, read through the archives. I don't think anyone here would advocate it, although we do disagree on whether it is even okay for black teas.

Bert

Reply to
Bert Fuller

There ought to be a law against boiling Gyokuro.

N.

Reply to
WNW

Which is precisely the case here. The poster can't taste the difference between boil and someone's optimum temperature. It's all the same to him and no matter what he does it still smells like day old cut grass. I've been to enough tea tastings in my lifetime and stated I made a tea with so and so temperature but used boiling and invariably most would agree the tea tasted better at my fictious temperature and so would you. There are a lot of things you can do to vary the taste in tea but temperature isn't one of them at least enough where you could beat the flip of a coin. All I can say about green tea it is the toughest place to start to develop a palette. When it comes to green tea think small as in quantity, pot, cup and don't worry about the temperature. The only concession I ever make to a green tea and boiling water is too rinse the leaves with cold water first. That is THE only way to make Gyokuro and in my case I need to hold it with two hands. Also since you didn't understand the essence of my no nonsense tea making methodology let me summarize it for you: The only time not to boil water for green tea is too conserve energy. Now before you parse my brilliant treatise to a single line you don't like try to put together something that doesn't look a quote from the me too bible.

Jim

Reply to
Space Cowboy

You're jumping to conclusions here. In fact, Mr. Zero's original post seems to be the cry of help from someone stewing in hot water. To Mr. Zero: Try making your tea with significantly cooler water, say 60-80 C.

Don't bet on it. On those occasions when I have my wife make tea for me, I can immediately tell when she's mistakenly used 170 F water for my

155 F tea. Or when she's correctly used 155 F water, but forgotten to pre-heat the kyuusu.

You could have a breakthrough on your hands. I'll pass on this "steamy mug o' gyokuro" style to a nation of backwards Japanese the first chance I get.

--crymad

Reply to
crymad

I've got to throw my support to the "lower temperature" group.

I have very little experience with greens (I would not even say that I have a "taste" for them), but I find that boiling water can ruin a tea. Even water at 125 degrees Farenheit can make a tea bitter, yellowish, and unsavory that at 110 degrees or less would be a beautiful, green, sweet, frangrant liquor.

This is true even with the $5 per 1/4 lb. Upton green I'm trying to acclimate myself to now.

Z
Reply to
Zephyrus

Hi Neal,

I get so exacerbated at the how come green tea taste bad posts followed by the obligatory reduce the temperature mantra instead of real advice like yours try something else. Here is a place to start. Forget the loose stuff and try teabags from China or Japan. I learned this a long time ago in restaurants that did the same. The taste was always marvelous and I could never replicate with my loose green at home. In fact so much so I now specifically shop green teabags as much as the loose stuff. Let me summarize green tea and teabags were made for each other. Green teabags isn't sexy so you can't impress your friends with words like sencha or gunpowder. The reason this works in general is the tea is small quantity and some with aluminum packaging (Yamamoto) definitely fresher. Real advice from a real world tea drinker.

Jim

Reply to
Space Cowboy

Hmm... well, I guess anyone could stuff those expensive, exotic teas into tea bags themselves and tell all the friends about it. ;) I started out with green teas, and in general, they are still my favorite type. I drink some kind of green tea nearly every day of the year. This year, the only days I didn't have green tea were the days I had the stomach flu.. but then I could hardly stand to drink plain water, either. Still, I've given very fine green tea to people who aren't familiar with anything but Lipton and have had them make awful faces. With me and green tea, it was love at first sip, and I can barely imagine that with all the types of green tea available, any person couldn't find at least _one_ green tea that was enjoyable, but everybody has different tastes. My parents for instance really only want generic tea-bag tea, brewed strong, iced, and loaded with sugar. You can give them fine leaf tea of any type... but if they have a choice, it'll be the iced sweet tea. Guess that's the way they were brought up, and they aren't going to change.

N.

Reply to
WNW

My two cents: I think you may be oversteeping your tea. Green teas should rarely steep for longer than 2 1/2 or 3 minutes. I don't have much experience with Japanese greens, but it's my impression that they should steep for an even shorter time, no longer than 1 or 2 minutes.

And by the way, I agree that the water temperature for greens should always be less than boiling. Sorry, Space Cowboy... :-)

Though I must add that it *might* be different with tea bag greens...

Jon

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Reply to
Jon Nossen

Neal, I really can't figure out whom you're addressing! :-) Maybe this thread has raged itself to death.

If you were talking to me, I've tried a sencha, some random cheap greens I really can't remember, several gunpowders, a tongyu mountain green, and one lung ching (& maybe more that I've forgot). While I do like them, I so prefer Oolongs and pu-erhs that I can never keep up a green habit long enough to develop a "taste".

Maybe someday.

Z
Reply to
Zephyrus

Teabag tea in Japan isn't bad at all. Not superlative, but not bad. The brand names have slipped my mind, but I think some goes by the lighthearted names "Oi! Ocha!" or "Ocha ga umai!". Let it be said, though, that these too recommend using water that's less than boiling. Ordinary Japanese teabag tea is just kona-cha, and it's fine for making a quick cup of something hot. But for tea so unspectacular, you'd be better off buying kona-cha loose, as it's a much better bargain that way.

Are you talking about Yamamotoyama teabags put out by Stash? I drink this occasionally when traveling or whatnot. Again, while this tea is not unpleasant, it's nothing special. While the parent company is indeed Japanese, this tea is grown in Brazil.

If you think appreciation for things above the dirt common is all just empty puffery, then you're the one living in the fantasyland.

--crymad

Reply to
crymad

Yes, this thread has gotten a little ragged. But I was addressing you. I'd say stick with the finer Japanese greens (sencha and gyokuro or even a good bancha); they have the purest 'green' tea flavor I've found in any tea so far. Many of the Chinese greens tend to have brothy or smoky or murky overtones -- many.. but not all, of course. But with a fine quality Japanese green tea, you just can't go wrong. I'm very biased, of course. ;)

N.

Reply to
WNW

Some will disagree with me, but my basic infusion times for preparing Japanese green teas (sencha, gyokuro, and sometimes bancha) are:

Infusion #1: just over one minute Infusion #2: pour on the water, and immediately pour it off Infusion #3: about 10 or 15 seconds Infusion #4: about 1.5 - 2 minutes

Each tea will be different of course, but you can work around those figures and get a very good cup. This is using water that is just approaching what you might call 'quite warm'... and with gyokuro, the water is nearly lukewarm.

N.

Reply to
WNW

I've found this to be the case as well. But I'm always open for experimentation. Any recommendations for a Chinese green that most closely approaches the live greeniness of a Japanese?

--crymad

Reply to
crymad

I've not found many Chinese green teas that closely approached the 'clean green-ness' of a Japanese green tea. At the moment I know of none for sale that I could claim are all that close; to my palate, even the Chinese sencha is distinctly different in flavor from any Japanese sencha I've tried.

N
Reply to
WNW

I've never bought kona-cha, but Sencha.com has sent me gratis packets of it with my orders before. I thought it tasted ok, but I doubt I would buy any of it. I have bought powdered sencha before.. and I agree, it's good for something warm and _very_ quick. Actually on a very cold day, mixed with (don't beat me) sugar and hot water, it makes quite a nice, dessert-like beverage, although I also drink it without the sugar.

N.

Reply to
WNW

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