Lipton

[beforewisdom]

I just finished reading "The Green Tea User's Manual" by Helen Gustafson.

It is a very small, artfully done book that was not worth the $17.50 cover price, but luckily I read it through my library and I see that it can be purchased used for under $1 on amazon ( minus shipping costs ). It is a very nice book.

Helen Gustafson was a restaurant connoisseur who became a tea connoisseur. I googled on her and found a New York Times article about her. She passed away at the age of 74 from cancer ( maybe the green tea gave her a few more years ). One of her colleagues offered an interesting quote about her accomplishments. He said that before her work with tea it was impossible to find a great cup of tea in the United States, now it is just highly unlikely.

The book gives a brief introduction to about 2 dozen different types of green tea, giving her customized brewing instructions for each. Her methods rely on using a sauce pan and gauging temperature by the bubbles. The recipes call for steeping the leaves about 2 min. Some teas a bit longer. Some, especially the high quality teas a bit less.

She blames cheaply and widely available gunpowder and sencha tea for giving Americans a bad impression of green tea. She advises beginners to start off with genmaicha , kukicha and bancha. According to her they have more pronounced tastes and harder to ruin during preparation. After those teas she recommends higher quality gunpowder and sencha for the beginner before moving on to high grade green teas.


I found what she had to say about Lipton green tea interesting. Like their regular tea, it is tea dust. She advises to when using Lipton ( i.e. when there is nothing else around ) to heat the water up until tiny bubbles form on the bottom of the pan. Then steep the tea bag in a cup for 30 seconds, remove the bag and let the tea stand for 1 minute. For taller mugs of tea steep 1 minute and let it stand for 3 minutes.

While I was in the supermarket I noticed that Lipton tea was about $4 for a box of 40 teabags ( more than black tea ). I decided to pass as that would get me a nice amount of bulk tea from the local co-op. I did notice that their instructions for their tea called for steeping the tea bag for 1 and half minutes.

I can't wait until I come across some Lipton green tea to try her instructions out.

Anyway, I thought people here might find this information useful. You never know where you will end up when you are in the mood for green tea.

[tortoise]

Thanks for posting this. I would recommend people looking to try green tea to spring for 50 or 100g from a japanese vendor. With 30-45 second brew times on fukamushi, it's hard to mess up and the taste is in technicolor...literally. I find that some people (such as myself) will go ahead and commit to bad green tea if there is nothing else to compare to. This is almost worse than giving up on it completely.

I'll leave the sampling of lipton green tea with new instructions to you. I'm spoiled now. Good luck.

[Chip]

"Pity the fool who buys Lipton Green teabags!!!"

It would be amazing if anyone would go out and buy green tea online after buying Lipton green. Seriously.

Many more peeps have tried $$$ mediocre Teavana tea as their gateway tea. Yet of the likely bajillion people who have tried Lipton green, maybe 3 of them went and bought more expensive green. The stuff must be really vile.

I would bet 99.9% of people who tried it, tried it once and then stuck it in their cabinet, never more to see the light of day until their passing and the children come to find 20+ year old vintage green tea in the back of a kitchen cabinet above the oven where it has baked over and over.

One of their children tries it, and the curse is passed on from generation to generation.

[britt]

Very good and very interesting book review.

A co-worker told me they bought some Lipton green tea in an Asian market because they didn't have much of a selection and they weren't sure what to buy. They said it was much better than the Lipton green tea available in normal supermarkets. They showed me the bag but I couldn't read it because it was in one of the Asian languages. This person has had some very good green tea so although I didn't try it, I do believe that it was probably better than the standard Lipton.

I've tried Western brands of other food items that were manufactured in Japan for that market and those were also, in my opinion, much better than what these same companies give us here in the US.

The scariest thing is I worked with a couple of people who actually liked the standard Lipton green tea and didn't care much for high quality sencha.

[Cyphre]

Lipton was my first green tea. It was horrible. No matter how long I seeped it it was bitter and brown. Luckily that just made me want to find better tasting tea.

I do know a lot of people that judge greens based on cheap store bought teabags. It is a shame really.

[TwoPynts]

...The scariest thing is I worked with a couple of people who actually liked the standard Lipton green tea and didn't care much for high quality sencha.

More for us!

[Oni]

I had good teabags green tea from Margarets Hope Ceylon. If customers were tea cunossiers Lipton would go bancrupt with that crap they are selling, they are really making a bad name for tea.

[beforewisdom]

Thanks for posting this. I would recommend people looking to try green tea to spring for 50 or 100g from a japanese vendor. With 30-45 second brew times on fukamushi, it's hard to mess up and the taste is in technicolor...literally. I find that some people (such as myself) will go ahead and commit to bad green tea if there is nothing else

There are a blizzard of choices.

Would you care to recommend both a good "every day tea" that is still good green tea and a more expensive great green tea that everyone should try to see how good it can be?

Money is tight for a few more weeks but I wouldn't mind trying things out.

[beforewisdom]

I had good teabags green tea from Margarets Hope Ceylon. If customers were tea cunossiers Lipton would go bancrupt with that crap they are selling, they are really making a bad name for tea.

Amazingly, they have been getting away with it for a long time.

Even with the current "tea renaissance" going on in the U.S. you can still walk into any supermarket and find several brands of tea dust.

I think we can partially blame it on the British for teaching us to drink tea with sugar and/or milk to cover up the taste.

[britt]

Hibiki-an has excellent teabags, especially the gyokuro, but the genmaicha, houjicha, and sencha teabags are also very good. You can get three good cups out of them if you remove the bag from the glass each time you make a cup.

There are many good green teas available from quite a few vendors in Japan; O-Cha, Yuuki-cha, and Zencha are three very good ones. Yutaka Midori from either O-Cha or Yuuki-cha is a good place to start with loose leaf sencha.

[Oni]

Some Japanese vendors put very good quality tealeaves in their teabags, not dust, and they make decent cups of green tea, so that it is in everybodys price range.

[hyakuraiju]

I can't drink Lipton green. It has a slight citrus taste that ruins it. Besides, with all of the higher quality stuff I have, it would be like going to Italy with a can of spaghettios.

[Chip]

I can't drink Lipton green. It has a slight citrus taste that ruins it. Besides, with all of the higher quality stuff I have, it would be like going to Italy with a can of spaghettios.

Usually if I have to use a bag, I make my own in advance and carry it in a "travel tin."

[skilfautdire]

Money is tight for a few more weeks but I wouldn't mind trying things out.

Yamamotoyama and Maeda-en are two Japanese brands that are available in (Asian) supermarkets that offers loose tea which is much better than any Lipton. If the shelf action is good at the supermarket then you might even find some good daily sencha (even fukamishi) at a reasonable price. Do not expect to steep the leaves many times, but they give a good cup. Likewise both also offer genmai and hoji teas.

[Herbal Tea Lover]

At work, I am always a little bit rush in making a cup of green tea. So, I use Lipton Tea bag. Don't throw away the tea bags. Use them to clear black eyes.