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

"Vlad Zero" schrieb im Newsbeitrag news: snipped-for-privacy@posting.google.com...

Hi, Vlad!

For a green tea beginner, that´s ok with Gyokuro. To develop a taste for it, takes some time. But with Oolong this seems to be a bit strange. Mybe your water is much to hard (to much calcuim).

It is absolutely ok to use hot boiling water. This "for a good green tea, use only water with 60-80°C"-thing is a myth. It derives from the fact, that in asia better tea is served in better and thinner porcelain, so hot water could damage it. So, the better and thinner the procelain, the the water has to be less hot, but it has nothing to do with the tea quality.

It depends on the tea, on the quality of your water and your taste; you have to prove for yourself.

Two minutes will do.

In asia the tea leaves aren´t removed, instead the pot is permanently refilled with fresh hot water (three or four times, while the second re-infusion is the best). Don´t remove the leaves (e.g. whith using a tea egg or s.th.) to use them later for a second infusion. A Chinese friend told me, that the oxidation produces poisioning substances!

Maybe the tea isn´t really good at all. Esp. green teas of lower quality are really bitter and first with less aroma. The trick there is, to brew them with some boiling water for ca. 10 seonds. Give this water away then and do now the "normal" infusion.

But as I said, esp. Japanese teas are not for the green tea beginner. Start with Gunpowder and / or Jasmine Tea.

How to prepere it properly? Well, the Chinese friend told me: "We Chinese don´t make a fuss about it. We just grab with the fingers some tea leaves, put them into a mug, pour hot water over them and drink it."

Matthias

Sorry, it isn't a myth in my opinion. I've tasted green tea prepared with boiling water and it's been bitter and astringent, missing most of the enjoyable flavors and aromas a good green can provide. While no expert on Asian pottery, I rather doubt the fine-porcelain explanation; I've noticed excellent porcelain - at least it seemed good to me - used for oolongs brewed at high temperatures.

Note to Vlad: If you keep reading this newsgroup you'll notice some, uh, *vigorous* disagreements. Some of these arguments are conducted politely, some even with a sense of humor.

/Lew

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

You are very mistaken. Using boiling water for brewing fine grade green tea is most definitely not "ok". Flavor, aroma, color -- these all are easily destroyed when green tea is subjected to the punishment of water too hot. And "too hot" can be well below boiling.

--crymad

I boil everything green,black,oolong. I can't taste the differences everybody else claims and if I do it much to do about nothing. When I say that I mean the people in the group whose opinions I respect and not the ones jumping on the me too bangwagon. I don't fiddle faddle around with multiple infusions. I use the leaves once and they're lawn manure. I don't worry about the price of tea telling me to watch the water temperature. To me a good cuppa is down the hatch but more as savoring the moment than taste. I could perfectly sun brew my teas but I want a hot cup now. I never think any cup could be better. I do enjoying varying the accoutrements of making tea such as kettle,cup,pot but never with idea I'll expect to a/b the difference in taste. The only way I vary my taste in tea is drinking different teas. Everything else I keep as a constant including boiling temperature and gasp even brewing times. It's my nonsuch approach to making tea. Your mileage will vary but save me the sophistry of why it does. It's possible this person will never like the taste of green tea no matter what he does. I think any tea is an acquired taste as an adult.

Jim

There ought to be a law against boiling Gyokuro.

N.

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

"Zephyrus" skrev i melding news: snipped-for-privacy@posting.google.com...

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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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.