Does anyone here know anything useful about Chinese green tea?

[matt819]

I decided to splurge and buy 1 oz of expensive Chinese green tea and 1 oz of a more moderately priced green tea. Bought from a US website but tea shipped directly from China.

I receive the tea and decide to try the more expensive tea first - actually, it's the only one I've opened so far. The tea looks pretty good. Well, it looks like tea. It's green. That's about the extent of my expertise.

I take a pinch of the tea and put it in a mug. Pour hot water (yeah, I know, not boiling, etc.) And I let it steep for a while. Then I sip it. It tastes like hot water with a hint of some flavor, the tea, presumably. To call it mild would be accurate, I suppose. But somehow I expected something that would be more, I don't know, notable. I know it's not black tea, and I certainly know it's not coffee. But it tastes nothing like the commercial green tea (Yogi, Tazo, Bigelow).

On the one hand, I feel smug and self-righteous for cutting back on coffee and drinking green tea (again, yeah, I know, it still has some caffeine), but I'm half wondering if there's something of the emperor and his new clothes. Here I am praising myself for my exquisite good taste, but the kid who proclaimed that the emperor was naked is laughing his ass off because I'm drinking barely flavored hot water.

So -- am I brewing it right? Is the mild taste right? Don't refer me to websites. I've been to tons of them, and they all repeat the same guidance, and even the site where I bought the tea isn't much more helpful. So if anyone has experience with Chinese green tea, feel free to weigh in and set me straight.

[Kali]

1. a few years ago I found two 20 kilo boxes of the stuff

along the rail road. somebody must have thrown it off a train. Think I still have a big box of it somewhere. I prefer black.:rofl:

[theNotoriousP.I.G.]

2. If you are drinking green tea for health purposes

you want to drink the stuff that has not been fermented. Also, get a good tea pot and let the leaves remain in the pot and use a small strainer when you pour the tea.

I learned this from several Japanese friends.

[AsahinaKimi]

3. I prefer

Japanese green tea. I bought a small 25 dollar tin that comes from Japan. Its the same kind used in the tea ceremony. Its a bit bitter, but I really love it and its health benefits are enormous. I have never tried Chinese green tea, but Japanese green tea is wonderful!

[applegrove]

4. I just know you are supposed to not boil the water and steep it for only 2 minutes (much less than

you would regular tea). Oh and it is good for you. It stops the growth of new blood vessles so it stops the growth of tumours but is bad for you if you are pregnant.

[JCMach1]

5. Yeah, no matter what you do it still tastes YUCKY!

I drank it for years until I found that black tea does almost exactly the same things as the green!

[old mark]

6. If I'm drinking green tea, I prefer the cheap supermarket tea bag variety

over the "real" oriental stuff. I don't pretend to be a tea expert, but I have been drinking tea for about 50 years because I like it - I want some flavor and the type of caffeine lift I get from tea against the jangle I get from coffee.

Mostly I drink the fermented "black" teas, from cheap floor sweepings (teabags) to imported Scottish Breakfast.

Don't believe the advertising - go with what YOU LIKE.

mark