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I will freely admit to not being much of a green tea connoisseur. I like to drink it every so often, but I can’t really tell the difference between specific kinds of non-flavored green teas (at least not the way I would be able to with black tea). Still, this is a nice green, delicate, not too grassy. I don’t know that I’d be able to recognize it out of a line up, though.

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190 °F / 87 °C 4 min, 0 sec
Jim Marks

The trick to sorting out greens is to start broad, and then get more precise within each broad area. Start with Japanese and Chinese (ignoring anything else as “fringe” for the short term). By and large, the Japanese really only do green tea one way, with a huge spectrum of quality available within that style. It is shade grown and steamed, and thus vividly green both in the leaf and the cup, and tends to be very vegetal in flavor, but usually in a good way. It is also one of the highest caffeine content teas, because the stress of shade growing causes the plant to produce more caffeine (which the plant uses as a pesticide, actually). Chinese can then be divided into roasted and unroasted, etc.

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Jim Marks

The trick to sorting out greens is to start broad, and then get more precise within each broad area. Start with Japanese and Chinese (ignoring anything else as “fringe” for the short term). By and large, the Japanese really only do green tea one way, with a huge spectrum of quality available within that style. It is shade grown and steamed, and thus vividly green both in the leaf and the cup, and tends to be very vegetal in flavor, but usually in a good way. It is also one of the highest caffeine content teas, because the stress of shade growing causes the plant to produce more caffeine (which the plant uses as a pesticide, actually). Chinese can then be divided into roasted and unroasted, etc.

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Bio

I’m a Pole who grew up in Texas, is currently a graduate student in California studying Japan. How’s THAT for random?

Being Polish, my family has always drunk a lot of tea, and I am no different. I may drink more tea than water. On the other hand, I can’t say that I’m very particular about it; I’m generally pretty careless with steeping times and water temperature and I don’t even have a proper teapot (mostly because the lid broke during the move to California ;_;).

I always drink my tea unsweetened and I only add milk in the case of the most egregiously chai-ish of chais. (not really a big fan of milk in general)

Given that so many of my entries seem to be about my morning tea, I felt I should add something here about me and mornings: I fail at mornings. I fail at them a LOT. Therefore I often also fail at proper tea making in the mornings.

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Santa Barbara

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