Green Tea on a Gray Day

A small herb garden.

I wondered if I should get hyped about the ending of winter and I guess the weather is getting back at me for my excitement. It is much colder and grayer today and we are supposed to have sleet to finish out the day. Well phoo to that, I am still going to live in hope! In fact I shall be so hopeful that I will have some green tea, which I usually think of as more a spring or summer tea, as it is “lighter” than black tea.

I have a whole box of "Uncle Feng's Jasmine Green Tea" This is one of my Asian market sweep- through teas. It was not very expensive. Upon opening the box, there is a delightful smell of Jasmine, almost of mock orange. The leaves are very green and fairly long and twisted. I brewed up about 2 teaspoons at 175 for about 2 minutes. Too long, so I threw it out and brewed the next cup for 1.5 minutes. Just right. Some greens are very fussy and get bitter very quickly. While this is not the best jasmine I have ever had, it is quite good for the exceedingly cheap price I paid. A fitting cup with which to look forward to Spring.

We are beginning the process of "down sizing" prior to our move this summer. Too many teapots, too many teas, too many books - quite literally a ton. So far, I only got rid of two tea books - they weren't very good, so I won't even offer them to my readers. At some point I will have a tea give away, but that's still down the road a piece. The books that really hurt to get rid of are the cook books, which I can read as happily as a mystery.

Olympic Tea

The fountain in the town square in Durlach, Germany. I think I was going to translate the inscription. Alas, that has not happened.


Winter really is losing its grip and signs of spring are showing. Yes, it is still cold and gray BUT the willows are yellow, the alders along the creeks have begun to turn brown, and the maple and oak covered hills are no longer a solid gray, but beginning to turn pinkish. These are all signs of the rising of sap, as the temperatures begin a slow creep upward. An acquaintance of ours, who has kept track of the weather for years says that around the 20th of February the air begins to steadily warm. I've already seen one collection barrel for maple sap along the road and I am sure more will follow. Hooray for the return of light and warmth! Hooray for blue skies! Hooray for Spring, the promise and reward for endurance!


Speaking of endurance, have you been watching the Olympics? They are the only sports I ever watch. I am filled with awe as the athletes makes something so incredibly difficult look so easy and graceful. I just glowed with pride watching that young Swiss soar off the ski jumps with such perfection and into 2 gold medals. Likewise, as our athletes won medal after medal, amazed as always, when mere hundredths of a second were the difference between gold and bronze! Hooray for all of them, as well.


I thought I would have a Chinese tea to celebrate and my eye fell on a gift from a tea friend. This is Lipton's Yellow Label tea bags, which are made for the Chinese market. My friend says this is not your usual Lipton's tea bags, that her family searches it out and hoards it. I can see why – it's very good, especially for teabag tea. I brewed it with boiling water for about 2 minutes and it looked like tea – just the usual dark amber. But there the similarities ended, as it smelled almost floral, almost fruity. The taste was definitely different as well, not nearly so harsh as many, with an almost sweet taste and a full body to it. It was both milder and more fully nuanced with the overtones of floral and fruit the smell promised. It was good with both milk and plain. No reports on sugar in it, as I didn't want to waste a cup. I will definitely search for this at Asian markets. It might even replace my beloved PG Tips teabags. Well, maybe not.

No Bed of Roses

This is another view of the German church, which some of my ancestors attended. Love the sun and blue sky!


Oh dear, this was not a good day for my tea tasting. We spent a lot of it getting our vacuum cleaner back - $50 to get a cat toy out of it!!!!!, although we did get the toy back. We then ate at a good Chinese buffet. Not so hot tea. Not that I expected much else. It did go with the food, but that's about all you could say for it.


When we got home I decided to try Kam Man Yunnan Rose Black Tea. I had never heard of this company, so I looked them up. They apparently are a huge Asian grocery in New Jersey, which my swap partner has been to. The dry tea was very black, small leaves with a faint scent of rose, less than I expected. I brewed it for 3 minutes with boiling water, which brought out the rose a bit more. It was a beautiful dark red amber. Sadly, the tea didn't taste like much. In fact, it was rather odd, almost like that white paste we had in kindergarten. I might have liked it then, but I prefer my tea to taste like tea. I think some of the problem may be that Yunnan tea has a particular scent and taste that is pretty distinctive and one that I would think would be difficult to combine with a floral. I could see spices melding with them better, maybe chocolate or nuts.

Oh well, tomorrow is another day and I just got some tea from The Tea Spot, so on to better things.

Golden Coconut, Sweet Coconut

That's the church yesterday's pulpit is in. And look - it's green there!


Hooray, another good day for tea! A while ago I bought the big sampler from Golden Moon Tea but I haven't tried many, as I got tea in 2 swaps and then I was ill. But today is a good day for a new tea and so I am trying their Coconut Pouchong.


Oh Wow! What a great smell – like the very best coconut macaroons. Yum. The dry tea is a mix of almost balls and crinkly leaves. It is a[unnamed] green tea with the essence of young coconut added. I am always leery of flavored teas, as they so often disappoint, but this just gets better. I brewed it per their instructions at about 175 for 1.5 minutes. While it was brewing, there was not only that luscious coconut smell, but there was also a floral scent, almost a jasmine. It was kind of a yellowy green in color.


Let us get to the taste. What a real pleasure it is to drink this tea – it tastes just like it smells, wonderfully coconut and sweet, but not sugary sweet, just a natural sweet. And yes, there is a definite touch of jasmine and you can indeed taste the fresh green tea under it. Well done. I do not have the palate to identify the green tea, perhaps one of you can. Golden Moon just identifies it as Imperial Green Pouchong. It won first prize at the World Tea Expo in 2007 for best flavored green tea. [Always nice to get your taste rubber stamped! LOL]

Rudyard Kipling's Oolong

An old church pulpit in Germany.

“We had a kettle; we let it leak:

Our not repairing made it worse.

We haven’t had any tea for a week…

The bottom is out of the Universe.”

Rudyard Kipling (author of The Jungle Book )
from The Voice of Tea Blog

I thought that was a neat quote, worth repeating for you.

Today is one of those wet, gray, chilly days that goes through all the layers of clothes to make your bones ache. A very good day for tea. I decided to try some of Aura Teas Formosa Muzha Tie Guan Yin. It comes in tightly rolled pretty brown balls, with the warning that they will greatly expand. I brewed it first for about a minute with water at about 190 degrees, 1 teaspoon per cup. Initially it smelled of that old-fashioned bush – mock orange and I was so pleased, as that is one of my favorite scents in the world. Sadly, it did not stay that way and became more heavily roasted tasting. When I looked it up on their site, I saw that it was an old style heavily roasted TGY. I really don't like that style of Oolong, so I didn't even finish the cup. I hope you all realize that is personal preference speaking and not a slam about the tea. I have had several Aura teas and they have all been of excellent quality. This is from samples they sent me to review.

To counterbalance it I brewed myself some Lady Londonderry, which is about as frou-frou floral as you can get.

Differnt Strokes for Tea and Folks

These 90 foot tall windows are in a church in Germany. During WWII they were buried, in order to save them. I am glad they did, as they are magnificent.

I came across two new-to-me teas recently. One is Indian, from Kashmir. It is a green tea flavored with saffron, cinnamon, cardamom and sometimes scented with Kashmiri roses. It is then sweetened with sugar or honey and served with crushed nuts. It is called Kah weh. It sounds wonderful, but I was unable to find a source for it. Guess I will have to go to Kashmir. I only mention it because most people feel it was the British who brought tea to India, but the Kashmiris say this has been traditional for hundreds of years.

While this tea sounds delightful, the other one I heard of did not. It is a blend by 52 Teas and is Chocolate Peanut Butter Cup black tea. Somehow, I just cannot wrap my head around that. I've had several chocolate teas, some of which have been excellent. For me this crosses a food line I don't want to cross. How about you? Would you want to try it?

I am disappointed by the Darjeelings I've had this year – with a few notable exceptions (see previous blogs). And I am again today. I am trying another of the Thunderbolt Teas I ordered – Second flush Goomtee FTGFOP1, Muscatel Valley. It is quite pretty, with a mix of black, brown, tan and gold leaves and buds. It smells very fresh and slightly of chocolate, green veggies and grass. As it brews at 205 degrees for about 3 minutes it continues to smell very fresh, with some nice earthiness. However, to me it just doesn't have anything like a characteristic Darjeeling taste and there is no grapiness to it. There is a bit of a hint of mint and fruit, however. And, as it cooled, a medium amount of a nice floral came to the fore. It is quite tannic, which leads me to believe that I overbrewed it Again! I think I have to take my own advice and play with all these Darjeelings until I do a better job of brewing them.

While there are "standards" for brewing tea, which I and many others have discussed, they really are only guidelines. We need to start there, such as boiling water, 3-5 minutes for black tea, but we need to adjust the time and temperature for the particular tea we are brewing. My experience with many of this year's second flush Darjeelings is they need to be treated more like a green, with a lower temp and shorter brew. I am going to start experimenting and I'll let you know the results.

From Nilgiri's Moutains to Darth Vader

This is Ernie, who is a very sweet kittie, but got caught in the act on this

one. No, he is not allowed on the table. Yet, there he is. He and yesterday's charmer had a cat fit today resulting in a huge mess and them being ousted from my very angry presence.

What to do? Have a cup of tea, calm down and clean it up. I selected some of Adagio's Decaf Orange. I had gotten it in a swap and I have to say I was unimpressed from start to finish. The tea was loose and had pieces of orange peel in it, but there was little smell of anything, much less orange. I brewed it up with a heaping measure at boiling for 3.5 minutes. The brewing tea smelled a little fresh, but there was no orange scent still. But, the proof is in the tasting. And there wasn't any! Just the very blandest of tea taste and the slightest whiff of orange. What a disappointment. Oh well, the compost pile will be enriched.

Speaking of which. We have the neatest compost bins. They look exactly like Darth Vader, complete with grill. We got them from our local Co-operative Extension for about $30. No muss, no fuss, no smell and you clean them out from the bottom once a year with wonderful black compost for your garden.

All is not lost. The sun is brilliantly out and I brewed myself a pot of Tea Spot's Blue Mountain Nilgiri Organic added some milk and felt consoled. (See previous review)