New to chinese green - brewing advices needed

[exquisite]

Hello everybody,

I just got my first chinese green, and after first try I am already dissapointed but I am almost sure it is mainly my fault. I got 100 Grams from from a local shop of www.theodor.fr/, the tea is named and looks like exactly like this one :
http://www.urbantea.com/products/great-hunan

Anyway, I would really apreciate some advices about infusion time(s) and brewing temp.

I usually prepare sencha and sometimes gyokuro, but I guess the prep methods for japanese greens dont exactly fit this one.

Thanks!

[rabbit]

How did you prepare this one?

[JRS22]

What I've found to be a good starting point is 160 degrees for a minute or 90 seconds. Chinese greens shouldn't be bitter at that temperature, and you can experiment from there with higher temperature and/or longer times until you're happy with the results for the particular tea you're brewing.

[Chip]

Purchased from a shop, you never know whether the tea is any good really. Chinese greens are extremely variable in virtually every aspect.

[exquisite]

First try: 160 degrees for 90 seconds, 30 seconds and 60 seconds
Second try: 140 degrees for: 60 seconds, 20 seconds, 40 seconds
Used one big rounded teaspoon of tea in a 7.5 oz glazed kyusu, preheated
both teapot and teacup.

First time awfully bitter, the second time slightly less bitterness, but somehow there is something which I suspect as artificial in taste, like no matter how low the temp or brewing time , it is still there and I think is not related to tea. Maybe chemicals, or just bad processing, and the colour is a light brown, so, again, Chip may be right, I can never know if the tea was good from the beginning.

Back to my sencha, and nexgt time I will try a reliable vendor of chinese green.

[Gar23]

That sounds like my first bag of loose leaf tea I bought. I should have suspected something since for about $20 I got a bag of chinese green that was as big as a bag of wood chips used in gardening. I remember the contents actually having a ton of ground up stems that eventually destroyed the plastic bag it was in.

The color was a very cloudy brown and started making me a bit nauseous towards the end of the pot. Since I had no knowledge of tea at that time I figured thats what it was all about. Good news though, when I stopped buying crap and went to higher quality tea, I could appreciate it immediately.

[entropyembrace]

First try: 160 degrees for 90 seconds, 30 seconds and 60 seconds
Second try: 140 degrees for: 60 seconds, 20 seconds, 40 seconds
Used one big rounded teaspoon of tea in a 7.5 oz glazed kyusu, preheated
both teapot and teacup.

First time awfully bitter, the second time slightly less bitterness, but somehow there is something which I suspect as artificial in taste, like no matter how low the temp or brewing time , it is still there and I think is not related to tea. Maybe chemicals, or just bad processing, and the colour is a light brown, so, again, Chip may be right, I can never know if the tea was good from the beginning.

Back to my sencha, and nexgt time I will try a reliable vendor of chinese green.

sounds like it was just a bad tea you can check the teavendor guide for reputable Chinese green vendors

http://www.teachat.com/viewtopic.php?f=60&t=11931

Also even though they have just been nominated in the green tea category Jing Tea Shop and Hou De are very good vendors with lots of good feedback in the sections for other types of Chinese tea.

[exquisite]

Thanks for the suggestions, seems like I have no other choice but online shopping. It is somehow sad, but I am almost ready to conclude that , at least for this part of Europe there´s no way you can find a good tea, unless you have some underground connections , lol. So far I have identified 6 "serious" teashops in Madrid, 2 of them having a saloon also. Anyway, leaving aside the marketing and the design, I think there is no tea education among the public, otherwise I cannot understand how these shops survive. People are just buying crap and flavoured teas because they have no ideea how real tea should taste like. Until now, (in the last month) I bought more than 10 types of greens and I only found 2 decent ones, both from the (in)famous eastwest company, namely www.teashop.es and those were japanese:
Finest Sencha (23 euro /100 grams) and Gyokuro (39 euro/100 grams). I am not against overpricing as long as the quality is there, but mostly you find only crap at 6-8 euros per 100grams, 50 types of tea and all the same in all shops , just different labeling and packaging. I have to say I am really dissapointed. I might find some authentic stuff among the chinese community around, but usually they sell only what they wouldn´t drink, ha-ha.
Thanks everybody again for your suggestions, will let you know of any improvements in my pursuit.

[britt]

Hou De has a couple of Taiwanese green teas, of which I have tried this one and it was very good:

http://www.houdeasianart.com/index.php? ... ts_id=1265

Jing Tea Shop is where I buy my Chinese green teas, including Long Jing, Anji Bai Cha, and Tai Ping Hou Kai:

http://www.jingteashop.com/cat-jing-tea ... en-tea.cfm

[Herbal Tea Lover]

Take a look at this article to see if it can offer you any help.

Make and Drink Green Tea Properly
http://quazen.com/recreation/food/make- ... -properly/

[Oni]

Try the teavendors recomended by teachat forum, generally you need to pay for good green tea, try japanese greens too, I am venturing in the realm of chinese green tea, and there are many great teas out there, try Hojotea, Dragon teahouse, JIngteashop, Teaspring, o-cha, maiko, Horaido, there are many great tea vendors that sell super high quality tea that cannot be found on the local european market, not even in the exclusivist shops.