Gunpowder Green

The mid-morning cuppa. This is a very mild gunpowder green tea, a bit light on the flavor but still mostly enjoyable…

Saying goodbye to this out of my bagged starter teas today. It was a good one, but I have since had better gunpowder and I expect there are even better ones out there than I have had. That said I wouldn’t be disappointed (at least for now, early in my gunpowder drinking career) drinking this if I found myself needing a quick, convenient gunpowder.

It does better steeped for 2 minutes at 175 rather than the shorter steeping time I usually use for bagged greens (1:30). It doesn’t turn bitter, but it does gain a deeper and sweeter flavor.

Thank you so much Madeline for all of the samples! They honestly lifted my spirits and helped me get through writing my 40 page law paper.

I love green tea, so much. However, am I the only one who thinks that chinese gunpowder teas taste like cigarette smoke?!?! I can’t get past it…

This is a surprisingly good-quality green for a bagged tea, but then Numi is generally a cut above the normal teabag manufacturers. The tea has a green, grassy flavour with some interestingly savory, almost smokey notes on the end of each sip. I’m not picking up any bitterness though I did steep this pretty conservatively. Not bad at all.

Decent smoky gunpowder for bagged. My expectation for " whole leaf Gunpowder Green Tea pearls" are exactly that but Numi’s or bagged tea industry mean that the broken tea leaf size is about a 1/4 in. length and 1/8 width. I assume tea in a typical tea sachet needs to be not whole to brew in the volume restriction. And this “pearl” tea is large in broken leaf size compared to other Numi tea which is about 1/10 this size. My emailed response from them did not address that issue but offered this: Please return the items and write the reason for your return on the back of your packing slip. For your protection, please use FedEx or Insured Parcel Post for shipment.
Shipping return I estimate several hundred dollars so this seems a template response and is flippant to my concerns. Oh well, I will try to enjoy what I have and have learned to be more cautious with bulk buying. (I know companies dump returned tea so either have non-refundable policies or don’t require return shipping if they OK a refund. Just know Numi Teas have neither.)

I was a bit skeptical of this being a tea bag, but the taste was fresh, and the leaves, after brewing, appeared to be quality, whole green leaves.

It was the first Gunpowder Green I’ve tried, and I enjoyed it. Though I didn’t find the vegetal and sweet balance to be much different than other greens I’ve tried.

I steeped two bags in a 16 oz. tumbler w/infuser for 5 minutes, and I enjoyed a morning’s worth of nice green tea. A definite improvement over other grocery aisle tea bag greens, though next time I might open the bag and infuse the pearls as loose tea. Seems a little counter-intuitive to offer a whole-leaf in a traditional bag instead of a sachet.

This tea is another from a sampler pack of bagged tea on my quest to reduced some of the nearly finished boxes of bagged tea in my tea cupboard. I brewed a cup of Gunpowder Green Tea earlier while waiting for dinner to cook at the same time I made the husband the Vanilla Bean. It tasted lightly of green tea with no bitterness. I saved the bag, in case the re-steeping the Vanilla Bean experiment went well, to try re-steeping. Since it did, I’m glad I did. I’m surprised I never tried to re-steep bagged tea before.

I picked up a box of this when I had a coupon, but it’s worth the six bucks or so that they normally charge if you want quick and convenient green tea that actually tastes… dare I say it? Good!

Sometimes I just want a quick cup of green tea without any fruit or jasmine flavors. This tea gives me exactly that. The flavor is very nice, clear and strong without being overpowering and not at all bitter. And it doesn’t taste artificial at all! This is especially impressive for a bagged tea!

If I had any complaints, it’s that the tea bags seem a little skimpily filled. While it flavored my little teapot’s worth of water well enough, I doubt it would stand up to a larger teapot or any re-steeping.

But overall, this is a worthy tea.

My favorite gunpowder green is from Mountain Rose Herbs. I usually fill half of a large tea-ball for steeping in my 32-oz pot.

These Numi teabags just don’t contain enough tea. I can see a single bag working for a single cup, but with all other teas, I can usually get a tasty pot-full from a single bag.

I like my gunpowder green to be intense and smoky. I’m just not getting that out of this bag. I need to try a single cup and see how that differs.

NOTE: I always manually decaf green tea before steeping the pot. I soak the bag for 30 seconds, then dump the water, then fill the pot. This obviously removes a bit of kick from each pot.

In general, I like Numi Tea. I think they have decent quality, that tastes good, and their packaging is appealing (yes, I do judge books by their covers).

This tea is average. But I can’t say for sure, because my water is very metallic right now, and everything tastes like a hose. That doesn’t help delicate flavors one bit. I’m going to give this tea the benefit of doubt and give it a halfway decent review.