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Khumbu Green from The Tea Table

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80/100

Khumbu Green

Green Tea by The Tea Table

Khumbu Green Tea from China is designed to steep and release its flavor in cold water as well as hot. Delicious vegetative character with light astringency and very smooth. Brews to a pale yellow. Use 1 tsp. per cup and steep 2 minutes in 180-degree water.

3 Tasting Notes

Cait
95
Cait 3 tasting notes

Okay, wow! This is a tea meant to be cold-brewed (which is how I like my iced tea) so when this arrived for my tea-of-the-month subscription I was very excited to try it. Sadly, the weather lately has been rainy and cold and entirely off-putting to the whole concept of iced tea, so it took me a while to finish up my previous carafe of iced tea so that I had something to brew this in, and then I wound up leaving this tea brewing in the fridge for something like three or four days!

Given how long it was brewing, I was pretty worried when I pulled it out: it looked barely darker than plain water, and I thought that maybe I hadn’t used enough leaves (I put in my standard three heaping spoons for two liters). But I poured myself a glass anyway, and even before I tasted it I could smell the tea as I lifted the glass. It smelled earthy and green and not at all weak, so I closed my eyes and had a sip — and wow! That’s some tea! The adjectives that come to mind are “hearty” and “toasted” and “solid”, which clash oddly with visual ones such as “watery”.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/cait_tea/4609134579/in/set-72157623664718933/

Definitely a new standard in iced tea for me.

This is also a very nice hot tea. It has the same toasted flavor to it without being quite as earthy, and intriguingly adding a small bit of honey makes it taste almost milky with the sudden sweetness.

I’m also amused that this tea is so much darker when brewed hot:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/cait_tea/4616069126/in/set-72157623664718933/

Ah-hah, there’s a good mix: this Khumbu Green with the Ceylon Black with Orange that I recently picked up from the DeKalb Farmer’s Market makes an excellent iced tea. I think it helps that the Ceylon Black has a really strong tea flavor as an iced tea, so the deep earthiness of the Khumbu doesn’t just bowl it over. I used a 2:1 mix of Khumbu and Ceylon, and the orange flavoring on the Ceylon was very muted, a nice little hint behind the tea but not an overwhelming orange drink with some tea in it. (Also, the Ceylon cold-brews a nice golden, so this mix isn’t as pale as the pure Khumbu was! And the mingled leaves were really really pretty — I’ll photograph them next time I make this.)

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