My Recent Batch

Eco-cha had this tea included in the sampler I bought and I like it a lot. You can see how beautiful the leaves unfurl and the quality of them. The taste is light but flavorful, I know this because I've had sinus congestion since I got back from Hawai'i, and I pretty much can't taste or smell anything except for a short moment immediately after I blow my nose. The fact that this flavor breaks through is quite impressive and I would love to understand the nature of it. I'm really looking forward to how this tastes once my allergy season passes.

I've had about 4 steepings and the flavor is just now tapering off for me. Again, I'm not sure if that's a limitation of my ole-factory, or simply how this tea goes, but I'll test this out again as well. The price looks to be $9 for 38g and if my math isn't failing me that's about .23/g, well worth the money. The other thing I will note is that I wasn't gentle with this green. I was boiling water for the neti pot, and I fixed that up before coming back and pouring it over the dry leaves. For those who are strict with temps, I couldn't tell you the exact temperature of any of these brews. But using the Appalachian tradition of guesstimations, I'd say it probably cooled off somewhere in the 170-180F (76-82C) and I steeped for about 10s. The second steeping I did even later and was very tepid, probably more akin to cold brewing really but was still quite good. I did let that one go much longer, about a minute. The third & fourth I did for about 30s+ from a high pour off a boil.

I call it a great tea when it tastes good no matter how it's brewed.