Luthien Send Message

Just trying this one out in the kyuusu, water at 70C and steeping for two and a half minutes. This is such a lovely, smooth tea, one of my very favourite greens and incrediblly easy to drink – and with that lovely honey scent. It’s worked out very well in the kyuusu, but I think I’ll play around with it a bit more and maybe use just slightly hotter water next time.

When I was growing up, my family drank tea and coffee, both with milk, about 50-50, but I only ever drank coffee. A few years ago, I gave up coffee almost completely and found white tea, and then green tea. I still don’t go in for black teas all that much, and I hardly ever drink tea with milk.

This tea is an exception. Steep in boiling water for at least five minutes, add milk and honey, and on days like today when the cold fingers of winter first reach out to touch us I don’t miss the flavoured lattes that used to be my favourite during the colder months.

Very delicate, very subtle green tea with the instantly recognisable flat green leaves and pale yellow brew. This one is lighter in taste than the Dragonwell from Teas & Tisanes that I had the other day. Water at 70C and steeped for two minutes.

I first had Genmaicha years ago when I was very new to green tea. The person who introduced me to it didn’t brew it properly and, of course, I didn’t like it. This time I’ve used water at 77C and steeped it for two and a half minutes, and it’s much, much better. It produces the typical light yellow brew of a Japanese green, and I really like the slightly nutty taste. I’m not so crazy about the smell, which reminds me of slightly burnt toasted breakfast cereal.

I’ve been drinking so much sencha lately that I took the plunge and bought a kyuusu. It’s taken me a couple of goes to get the brew exactly as I like it but I think I’m going to love using it for this tea. A special tea pot for a favourite tea.

The leaves are distinctively flat and green, and make a pale yellow-green brew. This is a very delicate green tea with a mild malty taste to it, and a sweeter aftertaste than any other green tea I’ve tried. I like this one a lot.

I keep trying, but I don’t think I’ll ever really get the appeal of rooibos. I like this one slightly better than the Rooibos Peach Cream I tried recently, but it still seems very lacking in flavour to me.

The leaves are silvery and possess the distinctive curly shape, and they brew up into a yellow-brown liquid that reminds me a lot of white peony/pai mu tan. The taste also reminds me a lot of a good loose-leaf pai mu tan. The aftertaste gets progressively more bitter as you get to the end of the pot; I found the second steeping a lot more gentle. This is a green tea that will definitely appeal to lovers of white tea.

Having another pot of old faithful to help with a headache. Have I mentioned that this is a really forgiving white tea? Even if the water temperature’s not quite right and you forget to take the leaves out for a while, it’s still incredibly easy to drink.

I’m really addicted to sencha at the moment so when I somehow happened to be going past the local tea shop this morning – no idea how that happened g – I ended up with a packet of this. This makes a typical sencha yellow-coloured brew, and you can really smell the strawberry and raspberry in it. The fruit taste isn’t overpowering, but somehow it does leave a fairly bitter aftertaste, even when making sure that the water is the right temperature for green tea.

This is my least favourite of the sencha blends I’ve tried recently. It’s not awful, but I’d much rather have a cup of Sencha Honey or Lime and Coconut than revisit this one.