Sky Between the Branches (Gu Zhang Mao Jian)

A good way to make this seem much better than it is (to me) is to make it my first cup of real tea in a full week.

I still don’t like drinking flowers, though.

this tea. nicely played little tea. i brewed it up kind haphazardly and wasn’t trying too hard to choose a tea, i was like whatevs, and the second i tasted it i was all “hey! … i like this! yum!” gulp gulp gulp

it was gone in record time.
could have been the hours i spent in the sun i suppose? but yum!

so good Shelley_Lorraine. so good.

to bad this isn’t for sale! but hopefully eventually…
http://www.kolle-rebbe.de/arbeit/haelssen-lyon/der-teekalender/

“The Tea Calendar has been launched in a limited special edition. It is very expensive, handmade and not commercially available in this form. This first edition will be followed by a longer development phase in which the Tea Calendar is to be brought to market.”

eventually brought to market. i’ll be looking for it cuz i’m SO CURIOUS.

oh yummy, savory, vegetal green, I would be lost without you <3

And what this? Do I finally detect some of that woody and earthy flavor that others have described. Why yes, I think so. How many more secrets do you hold mysterious green tea?

I think that you have been so aptly named.

Okay, this is surprisingly good. I was at the grocery store the other day and poked around to see what offerings RoT had in the Chinese green department. Chicago Tea Garden made me like them (with their lovely Wuyu and Bi Luo Chun). I just ran out of the BLC and since it’s not like I can buy any more, I’ve been kind of hoping (but not expecting) to find something that could replace it.

This isn’t quite there, but maybe with some tweaking it could be a good contender. It’s got the nice sweetness that CTG’s BLC has and a good nuttiness. It does have a prickle of saltiness and astringency and a bit more sharpness to it than CTG’S BLC, but it’s not so strong that it is unpleasant. I wonder if, with a shorter steep time or less leaf, I could get that astringency to back of. If I could get it to do that without losing the sweeter notes, I’d be a happy camper.

I will say, I’m pretty sure this stuff is fairly fresh as the store didn’t offer this in their bulk section the week or so before I bought it. I’m starting to think that the fresher a Chinese green is, the more sweetness this is. Can anyone confirm or deny that thought?

Second time drinking this. The taste to me would be like water in a pristine stream that just grazes the silt of the riverbed. Earthily mild.

Not sure why I said it tasted like white last time. This is definitely green and has an earthy flavor. Nice, but basic. This is the last of my stash and I doubt I’ll be replacing it.

Drank some of this at work and smiled as it reminded me of Butiki’s organic Spring Twist.

Sweet, yet with the vegetable taste… such a wonderful cup for what $6/ounce… it’s a pretty good deal for the quality … which I did not expect from Republic of Tea (aka, one reason it’s in a baggie where I store my highlighters :p )

p.s. this is the loose leaf version I had/have

This green tea looks rather thin and delicate like mei hua or a bi luo chun but less fuzzy. The scent is sweet and has a note of tropical fruit, maybe passion fruit, as well as a lightly floral quality and a vegetal kind of green bean scent.

The taste is gentle. The most obvious to me is a lotus flavor, which is sort of a creamy and delicate floral and anise-like flavor if you’ve never had it. As the tea cools it tastes rather umami, a bit like gyokuro, and there’s a hint of pleasant bitterness in the finish.

On the second infusion, the flavor is similar but a bit sweeter and milder. Same with the third, but yeilding a little more bitterness.

I brewed it at 2.5g/100ml. When I brewed it again with only 2g of leaf per 100ml the flavor was much more delicate and the “pleasant bitterness” wasn’t even present at all, so it’s a much smoother cup. I’ve been experimenting with leaf amounts for green tea in a pseudo-gongfu style lately to try to find what works best for me. It’s been a lot tougher for green teas than most other types. I keep fluctuating between 2.5g and 2g per 100ml, and much like with this review, the higher amount gives stronger tasting results with more distinguishable flavors, while the lower amount tends to produce a more agreeable and delicate flavor, but bordering on so subtle as to be bland, not in the sense that it doesn’t taste good, but in the sense that it doesn’t taste significantly different from other green teas. Particularly, the repeated infusions seem really dull with this amount of leaf.
As for Sky Between the Branches, I think it’s one of the better green teas you’ll find from Republic of Tea. It’s worth a try if you have it in bulk nearby. They stock it at Whole Foods near me. I wouldn’t buy a whole can of it without trying first though.

I don’t think I prepared this correctly. . . it’s so mild it’s almost not there at all. I pick up a vague vegetalness that clings to the tongue a bit after I’ve swallowed. I do adore the currrrrrly little leaves, though!

I’m gonna hafta make another cup before I decide whether or not I like it; indeed, or if there’s even anything to like.

This tea was both good and somewhat disappointing. I think I would have liked it better if I had approached it as just a regular Chinese green, but I was expecting more. For one, I started using filtered water (my city’s tap water tastes good, so I didn’t think it would change much, but it improved the other teas I had tried. Moreover, both the price ($22 per tin—but I only got two teaspoons’ worth at Whole Foods, which was lucky) and the description made me expect a spectacularly fantastic green. Maybe it was, and my taste buds just aren’t yet used to all the subtleties in Chinese greens, but to me it tasted like others I’ve had. Good, but not fantastic.