Upton Tea Imports Silver Sprout Green tea

As noted before, when the great folks at Upton teas sent over a Ceylon for me to sample and review, they also included a "bonus" 0.5 oz. sample bag of another tea. But not just any tea - this is pretty high quality green tea - Silver Sprout Pre Chingming Chinese green tea.

Chingming (or Qingming) is...well, let's not pretend I know anything about traditional Chinese culture, let's just let Wikipedia do the talking:

The Qingming or Ching Ming festival, also known as Tomb-Sweeping Day in English (sometimes also called Chinese Memorial Day or Ancestors' Day),^[2][3] is a traditional Chinese festival. It falls on the first day of the fifth solar term of the traditional Chinese lunisolar calendar. This makes it the 15th day after the Spring Equinox, either 4 or 5 April in a given year.^[4][5][6] During Qingming, Chinese families visit the tombs of their ancestors to clean the grave sites, pray to their ancestors, and make ritual offerings. Offerings would typically include traditional food dishes, and the burning of joss sticks and joss paper.

The Qingming Festival has been observed by the Chinese for over 2,500 years. It became a public holiday in mainland China in 2008...

Thanks, Wikipedia. So, a traditional spring festival, but more pertinent here, of some importance in the tea world. "Pre Qingming" teas are those green teas picked before this date, and are considered higher quality or prestige teas, commanding a higher price on the market. So, this stuff is a pretty nice free sample. I've always had pretty good luck with Chinese green (and white) tea. Brewing seems more forgiving than my few experience with Japanese greens, and the flavor profiles seem to have a wide and pleasing variety. This is full leaf stuff, that has the distinctive look of "almost a pine needle" that serves to remind tea is also in the evergreen family:

Brewing is very straightforward. 1 teaspoon of tea per 6 ounces of water, water at 180 deg F, steep for 3 minutes, with a pale yellow cup.

The flavor profile is bigger than I expected, starting with a taste of toasted grain that rounds out to some mild fruit flavors and natural sweetness. The aftertaste is of roasted green vegetables, and lingers pretty nicely.

Stands up reasonably well to a second infusion with a slightly longer steep time - toasted note increases, while sweetness and fruit decreases, but still a pleasant cup. I sometimes add citrus to greens depending on the type (lemon juice usually), but I didn't have any on hand, and I don't know that it would work well for this tea.

Overall, a great cup of tea, very pleasant, and with the toasted grain and vegetable notes, seems a great choice for late Fall and Winter time. I may try one last cup as iced, though I'm not sure if it will add anything.

Bigelow Pomegranate Green Tea

Huh. Didn't I already review this, way back when?

Quick check says I reviewed Bentley Pomegranate Green Tea many years ago. The other major grocery store brand of fruit infused green tea. Bigelow is that tea that is used to stock every workplace ever, since it's cheap and office/workplace distributors will ship it in bulk. Some of it is pretty grim. I'd stay well away from their black teas.

But this stuff isn't that bad, for a fruit infused green tea. It tastes more of fake fruit than tea, but I like that it's fruit-ish yet not sweet. The green tea provides a bitter undercut to what would otherwise be a cloying, nasty drink. It's not the best cup of hot tea, by a long stretch. But I like it a lot as a refreshing iced drink. Is pomegranate trendy bandwagon fruit with vague and certainly exaggerated health claims? Yeah, but who cares?

Brew is easy enough, I put 1 tea bag to six ounces of water, so two for a standard office issue hot cup. Add hot water out of the Keurig. Not in my office, though. For unknown reasons, we don't have a Keurig, we have the "other brand" with the flat pods. Oh well, coffee is coffee, I've had workplaces provide worse, or no coffee at all. We have dark roast most days, and it beats waiting in line at Starbucks or Dunkies to overpay for a burnt or sour low quality cup.

Where was I? Oh yeah, the hot water out of the "coffee machine" is hot enough for a middling quality cup of green tea. I only steep it for about two minutes, cheap green can get over bitter and astringent fast. If making iced, I reduce the water by half (two bags to six ounces of water), and fill the cup with ice once steeped.

So, is it iced tea? Maybe just barely, but it is a refreshing and sugar free cold drink. I'm not a big tea snob (anymore), most days that's good enough.

Celestial Seasonings Keurig Tea Double Feature

My wife and I bought my parents a Keurig coffee machine for Christmas last year, and that thing is awesome.  You put one of the little K-cups in, press the button, and within seconds, fairly high quality coffee is shooting out.  I don't know exactly how they work; I assume high pressure water like an espresso machine, but Keurig's website is not exactly forthcoming.  It tastes too good to be instant coffee, and magic coffee elves seems probably a bit too far fetched.

We also have two of these machines in our breakroom at work, since a highly caffeinated employee is a productive one.  We have quite a large selection of K-cups, including English Breakfast tea and generic green tea from Celestial Seasonings.  Now, Celestial Seasonings, available in every grocery store I've ever been in, actually makes some nice herbal teas.  Their Sleepytime blend, with spearmint and chamomile, may not actually induce sleep, but is a pretty pleasant and relaxing cup.  I don't exactly hold their tea in high esteem though, and I had doubts at the very concept of tea in K-cups.  I mean, you can quick-brew coffee pretty effectively by raising the water pressure and forcing it through the grounds...as I noted above, this is how espresso machines work, and I'm pretty sure this is the principal at work in the Keurig, too, but I can't really see how this would work with tea.  Tea requires a long steep for the cup to fully brew, unless the tea K-cups are simply packets of instant tea (a strong possibility, as we'll see).  Why try something I strongly suspect will be terrible?  I get bored at work...

So, prep couldn't be easier.  Take K-Cup, place into Keurig machine, select cup size, and press button.  Within seconds, "tea" begins pouring out.  I can't help but be reminded of the scene in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, when Arthur Dent tries to get the food replicator to produce a cup of tea, and ends up with a cup of brown liquid, "almost, but not entirely unlike a cup of tea."

Up first, English Breakfast tea!  The liquid comes out a normal reddish brown color, but smells rather off.  Sort of faintly tea-like, like a cup that had been in the same cupboard as proper tea for a few weeks.  After letting it cool for a few minutes and adding a splash of milk and sugar, I took my first, bold sip.  This is quite possibly the worst tea I've ever had.  It's weak, very nearly tasteless, and what taste is there is unpleasant...bitter, but not in nice "cup of tea" way, more like in a bad "scary and unnatural chemical" way.  Is this just instant tea?  Survey says "probably"...in fact, I sort of hope so, since I'd feel bad if real tea tasted this abysmal.  Score:  F

Because I sacrifice my own safety and taste buds in the name of tea writing and science (and I get bored at work) I went ahead and tried the K-cup green tea as well.  The label shouts "blended with white tea for smoothness!" and I'm trying to imagine hand picked and sun dried white tea being ground up and put in this K-cup.  I guess white tea has dust leftover from sorting too.  Surprisingly, though, the green tea isn't quite as bad as the English Breakfast.  While it's nowhere near a good cup of green tea, it at least tastes somewhat like the stuff.  There are really no nuances of flavor, but I'd say it's no worse a cup than the generic green teabags you might find in the grocery store.  Still, I'd only make a cup of this if all other options were exhausted and I really wanted a cup of tea.  Score:  D-

Matcha Green Tea

The folks over at Culinary Teas, whom I may have mentioned a time or two, have a nice blog, where one of the owners of the company writes about teas she is enjoying and current specials.  They also sometimes do a sort of hat raffle give-away, where if you're interested, you post on the blog entry, then she puts all the names in a hat and picks a winner.  Some months back, the give-away was Matcha green tea, something I've always wanted to try, and to my surprise, I won!

So, then Matcha is a finely milled green tea.  The leaves are essentially ground into a fine powder, which is then whisked into hot water to create a unique cup of tea.  The fact that you're consuming the tea leaf itself puts Matcha pretty high up there in the good-for-you scale, but sadly makes it pretty difficult to make.  I don't own a "tea whisk" and don't have current plans to shell out money for an apparatus that's really only useful for a small bag of one type of tea.  My attempts at Matcha without a whisk were...well, hot water with clumps of tea in it.  Not exactly appetizing.  So the tea sat in the cupboard for a few months, while I wondered what, exactly, I would do with it.

As one of my other selves, when I'm not being a highly renowned tea expert and writer*, I spend a good chunk of time running.  I run more days than not, and sometimes for very long distances.  I find running enjoyable for a lot of reasons, but a downside is that it can leave your legs pretty sore, especially if you've spent two or three hours pounding away at rocky trails.  A while back, I read a suggestion that protein, consumed as quickly as possible after exercise, can ease some of the muscle aches, since the muscles repair themselves more quickly with ample protein.  So, like a ridiculous body builder, I buy and consume whey protein.  And it works...really well.  Unless I actually damage myself, I'm rarely sore, even the day after a rather punishing run.

I write this not to brag about my running "prowess" **, but because one morning, looking for my big canister of powder, I noticed the Matcha sitting in the cupboard, looking all lonely and forlorn.  I then looked at my vanilla flavored whey protein and the milk, and thought, hmm, why not?  Vanilla green tea protein smoothie is pretty good, it turns out.***  I'm sure it's kind of a waste of quality green tea, but it was just sitting on my shelf otherwise, and Matcha is used to flavor ice cream and other foods.  The tea itself has what I consider a typical Japanese green flavor profile, mild natural sweetness, and a fair bit of vegetal plant flavor, but not nearly as much as some teas I've had.  The vegetal notes are pretty washed out when mixed with vanilla protein powder and milk or water, leaving a more run-of-the-mill green tea flavor.  Overall, though, a great use of an otherwise wasted tea.  I don't think I'll grade the tea, this seems a bit outside the box for a tea review.


*In my own special fantasy world, I get paid to write about tea.  And Scotch.

**I may not be fast, but I usually have a smile on my face.

***The protein powder mixes very well with black coffee, too.  I usually get the standard whatever you can find at Walmart, but Trader Joe's makes a protein powder as well, with fewer weird chemicals in it, that we get from time to time. 

Irish Breakfast Green

Irish Breakfast green tea is a blend of three green teas from Culinary Teas.  The intent was to create a blended green tea with a strong body and bold flavors, reminiscent of Irish Breakfast tea.  The tea went on special right around St. Patrick's Day, appropriately enough, and I was intrigued by the idea, enough so to give it a shot.  The tea itself is made from three distinct greens:  A Kenyan green, a Hoji-cha Japanese green, and a Gunpowder green.  Each tea brings something to the table; the Kenyan (who knew Kenya produced green tea?) brings a nice solid body, the Hoji-cha a toasty flavor, necessary if we're to emulate true Irish Breakfast, and the Gunpowder a crisp texture and a hint of natural smokiness.

As with all green tea, brewing requires a hair more caution than black...I use briskly steaming (not boiling!) water, and brew for no more than 2 or 3 minutes.  Hotter water or longer brew times run the risk of scorched, bitter tea...I suspect this blend is a bit hardier than some, but still, it pays to be careful.  The tea brews up a nice dark green color, a bit darker than I've come to expect from greens, and has a nice body and a full flavor.  As with all greens and whites, no additions are necessary...milk or sweetener would mask the delicate flavors, and defeat the purpose of drinking high quality tea like this in the first place.

There's definitely a complex and balanced profile.  The Gunpowder brings some nice crispness and the suggestion of smoke to the table, and the Hoji-cha definitely lends a roasty, faintly nutty note that doesn't exactly taste like Irish Breakfast, but is at least reminiscent of it...perhaps in the way rooibos reminds one of true Camella Sinensis tea, but doesn't quite taste like the real thing.  The toasty note remains through the finish, which is mildly astringent and refreshingly clean, as I tend to find with quality greens.  There's none of the hints of fruit or flowers as in some un-oxidized teas, but then, such notes would be out of place here anyway.  So, does it remind me of Irish Breakfast tea?  Sort of...it's perhaps more suggestive of Irish Breakfast than a straight up green version of the stuff.

All in all, not my favorite, but a well executed combination of three teas.  While with black teas I sometimes do favor carefully constructed blends, with greens and whites, I prefer unblended, stand-alone teas, though I really like the concept of Irish Breakfast green, and applaud the effort in creating it.  I would love to try more blends along these lines in the future, but I think I'm even more curious to taste each of these teas on their own.  Score:  80 (B-)

Bentley's Flavored Green Tea Double Feature

I like Bentley's.  I've never had anything spectacular from them, but they produce some decent bag teas that I enjoy at work, where I don't have a proper tea kettle or the time to make quality tea.  I'd like it if they made the step up from flat tea bags to sachets or tea pyramids, but still and all, they make a pretty decent cup of tea.  So, today's review is a double feature from Bentley's:  Pomegranate green and Acai Blackberry green.


Pomegranate Green Tea

In an earlier post, I reviewed Bentley's Pomegranate black tea, and I spent a fair bit of time pointing out how irksome it is when a trendy new "miracle fruit" starts showing up everywhere.  I won't rehash any of that here, since a) I already kind of drove the point into the ground, and b) this is a pretty good tea.  I think that green tea plays better with fruit flavors than black tea, and here, the sweet and tart flavor of the pomegranate mingles well with the clean taste of the tea.  The tea itself is nothing fancy, just basic "no frills" green tea.  It's mellow and somewhat astringent, and has a very clean mouthfeel.  The fruit flavors complement the mild floral notes of the tea, and provide a sweet contrast to the mildly bitterness.  The finish is short and astringent, but not unpleasant.  Score:  80 (B-)

Acai Blackberry Green Tea

Right, I promised I wouldn't go on and on about trendy fruits, so I'll leave alone the addition of Acai, a South American berry with a rather sharp, tart taste.  This tea is actually a whole lot like the Pomegranate green, but I find the fruit additions to work even better than the pomegranate.  I taste more blackberry than Acai, which is great; blackberry and raspberry are two of my favorite flavors.  The berry blends even better than the pomegranate with the mellow floral notes and astringency of the tea.  I'm not usually one for iced green tea, but I can't wait to try this tea ice cold, with a splash of sweetener, on a really hot summer day.  Score:  85 (B)


Overall, two decent teas...nothing fancy about them, other than the inclusion of the latest in trendy fruit, but both make a clean, refreshing cup.

Taiping Houkui Chinese Green

Taiping Houkui is a pleasant, mild green tea from Anhui Province in China.  It's apparently sometimes listed as one of ten notable China Famous Teas, and it's name in Mandarin means "Monkey King," though nowhere in my research did I come across the origin of such an interesting name.  The tea looks and smells wonderful right out of the pouch.  The leaves look like a cross between pine needles and freshly cut grass, and the aroma is crisp, mildly sweet, and refreshing.  The smell and appearance remind me a bit of Silver Needle white, a fantastic white tea, and one of my favorites (that will have to be an upcoming review).

One day, I'll buy a cheap thermometer just for making green tea.  It's critical to get the temperature right for green and white teas, and it's not always so easy.  My rule of thumb is grab the water while it's briskly steaming, but before small bubbles appear.  Small bubbles mean boiling, boiling means scorched, bitter green tea.  A thermometer would make this a bit easier, but I guess take some of the skill out of the process.  Anyway, this time I got it right; briskly steaming water hits the leaves in my warmed pot, and they brew for about two minutes.  Some sites I scanned about Taiping Houkui say as little as a minute and a half...your mileage may vary, but the one thing they all agree on is that this tea is one of those lucky ones that does well with multiple infusions.  Simply lengthen the steeping time with each pot (or cup if you're brewing individually), and watch the flavors develop and change across each brewing.  My review is based off of just the one infusion, but perhaps another time, I'll do several and note what changes with each new brewing.

This is a mild, pleasant green tea.  The first sip confirms the initial aroma: very clean, crisp, and refreshing.  The notes are mild; I find hints of vegetation and copper, and a very muted sweetness.  Nothing stands out too much; this isn't a bold tea.  But there are several unique and pleasant flavors mingling around behind a crisp texture and mouthfeel, and absolutely none of the astringency that sometimes appears in a green.  Taiping Houkui leaves a pleasant, lingering aftertaste with faint floral notes, again reminding me just a little bit of Silver Needle.  At the end of a cup, my mouth feels clean and refreshed.

Something I've found of mild greens and whites is that they play well with citrus.  A splash of lemon or orange juice often mingles well with the soft floral flavors.  Yes, it's sort of a waste of a fine tea, but it's also a great mix of flavors.  In this case, 100% grapefruit juice met Taiping Houkui, for a sweet and refreshing mixture.

Score:  80 (B-) Nothing bold in this tea, but a nice, clean, refreshing cup that mostly reminds me, I should get more Silver Needle white.

Organic Gunpowder Green

Gunpowder tea is an unusual tea that supposedly gets its name from the rolled shape of the leaves.  Apparently, to someone somewhere, they resembled gunpowder pellets enough that the name stuck.  The leaves get their shape from hand rolling, a process that must be incredibly laborious and tedious.  The painstakingly rolled leaves unfurl as the tea brews, and you can see they're actually quite long, making the labor process that much more impressive.

Gunpowder green is a fairly famous Chinese tea, and in my experience, largely deserving of its reputation.  This particular tea is another loose leaf purchase from Special Teas, and is 100% organic tea from China.  I made this in my stopgap teapot, 1 flat teaspoon to the cup (or about 1 rounded teaspoon to the 10 oz. mug), and brewed in steaming but not boiling water for about 2 1/2 minutes.  The water temp is important; green tea in full on boiling water is flat, bitter, and astringent...in short, nasty.  I either a) boil the water until it's steaming briskly but not bubbling, or b) bring it to a full boil, take it off the heat, and let it sit for a full minute.  As with all greens and whites, sweetener (or God forbid milk) would annihilate the delicate flavors.

The taste is excellent, with just a hint of natural sweetness and vegetation...a very balanced flavor profile.  The feel on the mouth is quite smooth, and leaves a mild and short aftertaste.  There's nothing really unique here, no grassy or earthy notes that I've found in some greens, just an elegant slightly sweet flavor, and not a hint of the harsh astringency that comes across in cheap green tea.  This is a great relaxation tea...even this morning, with a million things going on, it made me stop for a few minutes and enjoy.

Score:  B+ (nothing unique, but a high quality, ubiquitous green.  Very relaxing!)