Once upon a time I ordered a bunch of green tea samples from Verdant. I’ve only drank a few of them, because I wanted to brew them right, & so I held off until I got around to getting myself a better scale & a thermometer. “You don’t need a thermometer & scale” someone in my head tried to tell me, but the scale I had didn’t measure grams, & I have a tendency to over-estimate. So I finally ignored ‘the voice’ & got both.
There is enough of this sample to go for 2 different steepings, so today I’m enjoying it Jingshan style: I filled my glass cup 2/3 full, the water was too hot, so I did a few menial things, then the water was too cold. I turned the kettle back on, tried again. Of course, it was too hot again, but I paid better attention this time & once I got the temp to 175 I sprinkle on the tea.
Backtrack: dry, it smells fresh, like alfalfa. The leaf matter is smaller than dragonwell or some of the other green teas I’ve had, more broken up, very delicate. At first it was hard to sip off the cup, as there was a lot of ‘dust’ floating, but it finally sank down.
There is quite a bit of bitterness, which has an edge of lime to it. Although some of the green teas I’m drinking work well this way, I’ll use the gaiwan when I do my next sampling of this tea, because I’m not really getting any of the sweet tones that were alluded to here.
