Hills Brothers

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65
drank Green Tea by Hills Brothers
303 tasting notes

I´ve been spending time on and off away from home and my water heater which can be set to 60-70-80-90-100ºC), so I´ve been using quite a lot of teabags I normally rarely use. This teabag is one I must have picked up at a hotel somewhere, but its brand name I had already come across when having a tea after my meal in a Chinese restaurant.
The teabag comes as a pyramid which is nice for presentation purpose, as the tea inside seems not too finely cut. So far the positive side, then the rest : the pouch in which the tea pyrimid comes advises to use water at boiling temperature… for a green tea! I chose to cool down the water a bit before steeping the tea. The brew was quite tasteless, apart from the somewhat bitter finish (because of a too high a temperature still?), not something I am looking for in a green tea.
Quite surprised as well of the very long “shelf life” of this brand´s teabags : I am sure I picked this bag up more than a year ago, and BBD says 21/6/2024.
I cannot find any really useful information about this brand, but from commercial sites I see the tea sells at a very low price, an indication of the tea quality???

Flavors: Bitter, Green

Preparation
185 °F / 85 °C 4 min, 0 sec 8 OZ / 250 ML
ashmanra

Oh, that is quite a far “best by” date for a green.

Ilse Wouters

@ashmanra : indeed!

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65

This is obviously the best “green tea with jasmine” a for the rest very nice Chinese restaurant in Madrid, Spain can offer. I must admit it looks great : a bigger than usual paper envelope containing a piramide teabag. The piramide teabag doesn´t contain dust, but it´s not exactly big leaf either. Although the use by date lies still 1,5 years in the future, the teabag isn´t particularly aromatic, something I usually associate with Chinese jasmine tea. As I was first served the teapot and a teabag of mint tea (the green colour of the envelope is quite similar to the one of this jasmine tea), the water had already cooled a bit when I started steeping, definitely a good thing with this type of tea (the envelope says you should steep at 100ºC though). The steeped tea is better than what I expected from its fragrance (or the lack of it), and is actually quite alright to have instead of water or beer to accompany food. I think it lacks character to have on its own.
What is worrisome however : that even Chinese or Japanese restaurants (had a similar experience in a Japanese restaurant last week), claiming to serve authentic food, pay little attention to the quality of the tea they offer…or maybe they think that it´s more important to impress by the quality of the wrapping?

Flavors: Green, Jasmine

Preparation
175 °F / 79 °C 5 min, 0 sec

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