12.08.04
Posted in Green Tea in General, Brewing Green Tea at 2:36 am by site admin
A lot of these postings will come from questions I receive, so here’s one for you. The customer wanted to know what kind of water he should use to brew his green tea. Tap water, mineral water, etc. Basically, you want good water but that doesn’t necessarily mean absolutely pure, distilled water. In Japan, water was and sometimes still is heated in iron kettles known as “kama.” Some of the iron from the kettle makes it’s way into the water and it is said that it makes an excellent tasting green tea brew. If you look around, you will find quite a few tea connoisseurs out there who actually prefer to brew with mineral water (the uncarbonated kind, of course.) One can even use tap water, depending on where you live. In Phoenix, Arizona where I originate from, the water is so horrible one would never consider brewing green tea from the tap. Many people have a reverse osmosis unit as we did, and that is very good water for brewing green tea.
This leads me to something that most people never consider. Believe it or not, how you heat the water makes a difference in the taste of your green tea. If you boil your water in a microwave, it will release more oxygen from the water than if you boil in a kettle, and this tends to make the tea taste flat. I noticed when brewing with a kettle that the tea would get a real nice green aromatic foam on top, yet this never would occur with water heated in a microwave. Also, if you cool your water ( you know it can’t be too hot, right?!) using the traditional Japanese method of pouring the water back and forth between teacups, more oxygen is added to the water. So, although I resisted doing all of this for quite some time, there is logic to it. Something to consider.
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11.24.04
Posted in Green Tea in General, Brewing Green Tea at 10:51 pm by site admin
Recently I received a question regarding teapots for green tea, so I thought this might be a good time to explain why it’s a good idea to have one that’s made for green tea. It seems that a lot of people are not quite sure how to brew green tea correctly, I understand why. It’s not that it’s hard to brew green tea, you just have to put a little more thought into it than you would with those Lipton teabags. This thread will focus on the teapots.
The first thing to consider is that Japanese green tea tends to have a much finer consistency than other types of teas. For that reason, it’s best to have a teapot with a fine mesh screen built into the side. The standard teapots with small holes inside of the spout really don’t cut it, although you can get by with it if you have to. In Japan you will often find teapots that have a little infusor basket that sits down into the teapot, but the trend these days is towards the type that have the screen built into the side. There’s a good reason for this - Japanese green tea is tightly compacted. The leaves are dried and rolled into needle-like splinters. Once heated, they really expand. Because of this expansion, it’s better to have a lot of room in there. Like, you really want those leaves to float around inside of the teapot freely. This rules out tea balls and the like. It also pretty much rules out those Yixing teapots made in China. In case you haven’t seen one, they’re tiny, maybe the size of a tangerine. They’re made for oolong teas, of which the leaves are larger when they expand.
Another thing that doesn’t work too well is your standard English teapot. First, it’s huge. Well, at least by Japanese standards. They typical Japanese teapot holds about 10 to 12 ounces of water. They’re just the right size for 2 small cups of tea. As in, you make it, and then drain it completely between infusions - another very important thing to do when you brew green tea.
All that being said, I would say that it’s still possible to make a good cup of green tea in a regular ol’ teapot, or perhaps a cup and strainer, provided that you know exactly what your doing. We haven’t gone into brewing temperatures or times, so that will be next. I’ll just say that a good teapot designed especially for green tea will only set you back about $30 or so, and will make your life much easier in the long run.
As I said earlier, brewing green tea is not hard, it just takes more consideration and a bit of practice. Once you get the hang of it, the ritual becomes almost as fun as drinking it!
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