Green Tea

[vampyrewolf]

Just got back from costco...

Now as much as I like my coffee, I've been drinking tea longer. I'm one of those ppl that will make a 12cup pot of tea and cool it down for iced tea if I have time (ie the real way, not the powdered sugared beyond belief stuff).

Only been drinking green tea for a few years though. Found some tasty ready made stuff under the Pfanner label (green tea with prickly pear) that I had been taking for work. New one out there today, under Golden king (green tea with honey... ingredient list is simply: water, jasmine tea, honey) thats pretty close to fresh brewed unadulterated tea.

Half the problem up here though is trying to find quality green tea. I'd imagine I could go to a chinese grocer and get some good stuff, but the closest one for me is a 20min drive.

Anyone have a favorite green tea from the major companies, as in something that safeway or sobeys might have?

[bh49]

I am drinking black tea all my life. I started to drink green tea about 10 years ago. I like several flavors of Yogi Tea. Among black teas my favorite is Ahmad English Tea #1. I prefer to buy it loose and brew it in tea kettle, it is very good tea. Also I like some non-flavored black teas from India, they have enough of natural flavors.

[shu]

VW, I drink a fair bit of tea but don't have any decent retailers in my area. I have been ordering loose tea from Upton Tea Imports (http://www.uptontea.com) for about six years now. They have a great selection, excellent service, and shipping is fast and flat rate ($5.80 to Canada I believe). It may not be the answer for you, but its another option.

I drink a lot of darjeelings myself. I have tried a few greens but find most a bit too 'vegetal' for me (tastes like drinking lawn clippings). One I really like however is their Moroccan Green Mint--sip it on a hot day and you will feel like you are back in Tangier (would help if I'd been there, I suppose). It also makes a great iced tea, no sugar needed.

There are also some very flavorful white teas that won't break the bank. I find them a nice compromise between the blacks & greens.

[Dr. Snubnose]

I like a brand (Chinese) Called "Special GunPowder" (that's the name) made by Temple of Heaven, it is one of the best Green Teas I have ever had...I like other herbal teas (and I mostly make my own blending raw chinese herbs for diffferent medicinal purposes) but when it comes to green...I enjoy Gunpowder....Doc:D

[Vincent]

you guys should try OOlong tea, it tastes great and burns fat. This is how asians eat so horribly and stay slim.

Friend ron at school, eats this 7 days a week.

Breakfast: Burger King
Lunch : Burger King
Dinner: Young Chow Chinese place


He is really skinny also, but the drinks the tea. If he stops the tea he says he gets fatter, so I guess it works well.

[druid]

I was just thinking about, getting some good green tea. I also would have to drive about 20 minutes to get some, and 40 to get some really good stuff from a little Chinese ladies I used to buy to from. In my experience really good green tea is vastly different from anything you will get in the supermarket. Even a Chinese or Japanese supermarket. You have to go to small herbalists or specialty stores to get it. If I remember correctly it is also very expensive somewhere between $30 and $120 a pound but I usually just by a few ounces which goes a long way.

[dedguy]

I get all my tea from http://stashtea.com. I'm not that big a fan of green tea though. Especially hot. Tends to be more astringent than black, oolong, or white. I always brew loose leaves as well. Bagged tea to my taste tends to be too weak and flavor and heavy in bitterness.

[vampyrewolf]

comparing bag tea to loose leaf is no worse than comparing drip coffee to a french press.
the paper filters out all the oils, and you end up with an acidic bland cup.

I've got a couple cans of loose leaf on the go right now... Masala Chai & Rooibos Citrus Spice. Only 120g in a can and that goes for just under $10 at the grocery store. Out of both green and black right now.

[Joe Talmadge]

Green tea primer I wrote on Ross Enamait's forum:

Here's two tips before I point you at some teas.

1. For green tea, the water should be at 180 degrees or so. That's steaming hot, but well under boiling. The critical mistake people make is using water that's too hot. Green tea's flavor is reasonably delicate, and using water that's too hot makes it taste bitter and bad.

2. Buy quality tea. That doesn't necessarily mean expensive tea, but I guarantee if you're buying tea in bags from Lipton or (even worse) Bigelow, you're buying stale, off-taste leaves. Buy good loose leaves.

Many people drink green tea and wonder how anyone could stomach it. While it is somewhat of an acquired taste, the bitter crappy tea made from pouring boiling water over junk tea is undrinkable by anyone. People who love green tea use water that's the right temperature and buy tea that's good. The tea should be extremely enjoyable, not an endurance trial. You should brew it in a vessel where the tea leaves can spread out. If you feel like a geek using a real teapot, use one of these rather than a teaball: http://www.harney.com/permanentfilters.html The medium filter will fit in a standard mug.

One last note, for me the two major types of green teas are Chinese and Japanese. Generally, I'm not a big fan of Japanese, which to me tastes grassier. However, your taste may vary and obviously there are a lot of Japanese who like Japanese green tea better

Okay, some quick advice ... I'll include pointers to Harney and Sons, which is a bit higher quality and higher price, but you'll find plenty of other places that sell great tea at a lower price, such as www.adagio.com. In addition, I find that if I go to Chinatown or even to a local Asian mall, it's easy to find a tea shop with great teas at very low prices -- if you want great tea but at a much lower price than the expensive high-quality internet shops, go to a local Asian tea shop instead of the low-quality industrial tea companies.

First, despite what I said about preferring Chinese over Japanese, one of my favorite "starter" teas is Genmaicha. It's got rice kernels in it that give it a nice roasted flavor. I've heard that in Japan, this is what the kids start on, to develop the taste for green: http://www.harney.com/genmaicha.html

Keeping with Japanese, sencha is a top-quality Japanese style green. I personally find it too grassy, even the ultra-expensive super-quality sencha. But sencha is a great everyday drinking tea if you like it.

Moving to complex, delicious Chinese greens, I love lung ching: http://www.harney.com/lungching.html My favorite green tea of all time is super-fine lung ching, which is more expensive. This appears to be Harney's best lung ching at this time: http://www.harney.com/welaluch20.html

For another treat, try a white tea. The flavor is more subtle even than green. My favorite white is Silver Needle: http://www.harney.com/silverneedle.html White darjeeling will be interesting to anyone who likes darjeeling black tea -- you can definitely taste the darjeeling in this white, but it's subdued and delicious: http://www.adagio.com/white/wh.....bfd562b260

[tonydahose]

i have a quick newbie question for you guys. am i correct when i say that the only real difference between white, green and brown (what i think of regular tea) tea is that it is picked/harvested at different times? white being the least ripe.

[Joe Talmadge]

Nope, not a matter of when it's harvested, it's a matter of how much processing is done. White = dried then shipped off, oolong = partially oxidized, black = fully oxidized, green = (I think) steamed then dried. So least processed to most: white, green, oolong, black

[dedguy]

Kinda like Coffee.

[J Smith]

I hated it when I first tried it but I have really got a taste for the Sobe green tea now.
The steaming of the tea keeps it from oxidizing thus making green tea.I watched a show on it a while back.No matter what there is only one type tea leave,just a difference in how it is processed.IIRC White tea is from small leaves without much oil.About like a very week brew of green tea.

[tap]

Try it "Twisted".

[The Deacon]

Stash is quite good, even their bagged teas, buth their loose teas are even better. There's also a place called Teavana (http://www.teavana.com) which sells some excellent teas and a really great "gravity feed" device for brewing a mug of tea.

I don't think bag tea is necessarily bad, and they can be more convenient at times than the loose if you like hot tea, rather than iced. There are some excellent ones, including the above-mentioned Stash.

[dedguy]

Yeah, if you HAVE to buy bagged tea Stash's bagged ain't bad. Tazo is also pretty good for bagged tea.

[CopilotATS-55]

I like Arizona Green Tea and Nestea in a plastic bottle :)

[Joe Talmadge]

Basphemy! :) Seriously, those products are no better than soda. Drink 'em if you like 'em and don't care, just be aware that you're not getting the health benefits of green tea and that it's no better than drinking a coke or mountain dew or whatever

[dedguy]

Joe Talmadge: Thanks for the tips on water temperature. I have this bag of what was supposed to be really nice loose green tea from Stash. I tried it like twice and haven't touched it since because it came out tasting horrible. Bitter and flavorless. I tried some again last night making it with sub-boiling water and it came out great. Not bitter at all and had a wonderful rich earthy flavor.

It's amazing how much one detail can make or break the finished product when dealing with food prep.

[Joe Talmadge]

Cool! Water temp is an easy mistake to make

[dedguy]

The weird thing is I've never had any issue with brewing white tea at near boilding temperature.

[Joe Talmadge]

Weird, I find white tea even more delicate. Green tea I steep 180 degrees for 3 minutes, white tea I sometimes go 10-20 degrees lower and add an extra minute or two.

[Slick]

This thread is espicially interesting since I have a $50 gift certificate for Stash Tea I must use.

In my experience any 'gunpowder' green tea must be loose leaf since it expands like crazy. How do you control temps in the 180-210 F range? Water boils at 210 F here abouts.

I do like the Twinings "Gunpowder Green Tea" in the 100g tin.

As far as black teas go the darjelings are my favorite.

[Joe Talmadge]

Slick, to control the temp, if you don't know how to identify 180 degrees, then a thermometer is the easiest solution. After doing it a while, I can quickly dip my pinkie in and tell when the water has reached near 180. You're looking at 180 for most green teas, 195-200 for oolongs, and boiling for blacks.

[Slick]

Guess I'll have to buy another thermometer.

I'm just not as tough as Joe T.

[J Smith]

Basphemy! :) Seriously, those products are no better than soda. Drink 'em if you like 'em and don't care, just be aware that you're not getting the health benefits of green tea and that it's no better than drinking a coke or mountain dew or whatever
I think the higher end glass bottle teas are ok like Sobe but the ones in the PET bottle are not anything but a small amount of instant tea and corn syrup.I would think the cola would be better.

[Joe Talmadge]

I think the higher end glass bottle teas are ok like Sobe but the ones in the PET bottle are not anything but a small amount of instant tea and corn syrup.I would think the cola would be better.

I'd be careful even there -- even most Sobe products are loaded with HFCS. I couldn't find ingredients for their green tea specifically, but did see complaints that it's too sweet, and given the soda-level amounts of HFCS in Sobe's other products, I'm cautious. That would be bad enough if the sweetness came from processed sugar, but almost all sweetened beverages in this country use HFCS instead, horrid stuff that I wouldn't put in my body. So, do check the label. As you mention, there are good-quality bottled green teas. If you're going to buy in a bottle, I strongly recommend buying unsweetened, and if you prefer to sweeten it, use honey. Even processed sugar would be much better than HFCS.

[arnon]

Hi people
My wife own A tea house and she is the expert, not me. But you can check this out, will give you some info about Tea ...
http://infusionsteashop.com/Shop_infusions/Tea_menu/
I am having some nice tea now 5 a.m. the kids are sleeping and I am reading about spyderco knives:D , it is an Oolong on the green side and it is so nice and relaxing ....Knives and tea :cool: :)
Be well all Arnon:)

[Th232]

Just opened...

http://img392.imageshack.us/img392/9853/dsc02123ga2.jpg
http://img181.imageshack.us/img181/655/dsc02124ym3.jpg
http://img179.imageshack.us/img179/8136/dsc02126pu3.jpg

[ozspyder]

OMFG Th232 !!! :eek:

That is a truckload of tea mate. How do you expect to drink all of that. It'll take 1 year drinking with your family and friends to go thru all of that ! Looks great stuff though. Would be great with some Chinese banquet :D :p

[Th232]

Well, a relative in Malaysia always gives us a few blocks whenever we go back to visit, a year to get through it sounds about right, and that's with us drinking it every day.:D Great stuff, too!

[spydo]

Does someone know where I could buy high quality pure green tea extract (capsules) decaffeinated without all the unnecessary and harmful additives.