Scatterbrain

I haven’t tried this one myself yet (just got it in the mail today), but according to Verdants’ site the preferred method of brewing this tea is with a gaiwan. If you’re brewing it western style the site says to use 1 teaspoon of tea per cup of water with 175F water and to let it steep for no more than 1 minute.

I’m not sure I was totally blown away by this one either, although it was good. I seem to favour the Jingshan Green and Dragonwell from Verdant. Do try it with short infusions though (even if not with a gaiwan), because by far the best flavours come out then :)

I haven’t had this year’s, but last years First Picking was (and still is) pretty tasty. I will say that to get Verdant Tea’s Early Summer Laoshan Green to have reasonable flavor I had to fiddle with the brewing parameters some (with some suggestions from David and a fellow blogger); I still have some of it, and although I normally start my Chinese greens at 170F for 1 minute, I found that going up to 180F for 2 minutes helped considerably with the flavor. As others have mentioned, I bet a smaller brewing vessel helps, but I don’t imagine it’s necessary to yield reasonably good flavor from the leaves. You can always shoot David an e-mail (as I have) and tell him what you’re doing, and what you’re looking for, and he should at least be able to offer some pointers.

Sometimes the flavors in green teas are delicate enough that their better characteristics may be hard to ferret out (at least they are for me, sometimes).

Good luck!

Thanks everyone.