Tea Reviews | It's All About The Leaf

Posts Tagged ‘Chinese Green Tea’

Dry smell is nice and minty.

A 4 minute brew time yields a light straw colored brew.

My first sip leaves me screaming, “where is the mint?”

This is blasphemy. The Moroccan mint police need to called! Someone stole the mint out of this blend!

The dry smell was to die for, the brewed up tea was a total failure.

I was greatly disappointed with this sample.

You can purchase the Moroccan Mint directly from the SpecialTea Brew website.

If anyone’s been following my reviews, they would have noticed a pattern by now. I tend to review teas with any or all of the following ingredients: lemon, ginger, and ginseng. Not to deviate from that trend, this review will be on Special Tea Brew’s Lemon Ginger Snap. Dry leaf is made up of Chinese green tea, lemongrass, lemon myrtle, and ginger. Upon opening up the package, the aroma was a piercing ginger smell. Ginger was the only ingredient I could smell. I steeped 5g in 600ml of hot water for 3 minutes. The aroma coming off the steeped liquor was now more lemony than ginger. Funny that the ingredient that is dominant for a chosen characteristic does not show up as the predominant ingredient in other characteristics. For example, although the dominant ingredient in the aroma is lemon, the taste is predominantly ginger. It was like a lemony swamp, like lemon mixed with muddy grass. It did not smell very appetizing. As for the taste, you are wham smacked in the face with ginger at every sip. It is very overwhelming. Then after you swallow, you can taste the lemongrass and lemon myrtle which in this combination makes it taste dirty. It certainly is more herb than tea. Ginger swamp are the words I would use to describe this tea.

However, having said that, I am glad I gave this tea a second chance by tasting it cold. It tasted much better, not like you’ve just had a face plant in a muddy soccer field of prior, but a subdued bitterness with a much more tolerable level of ginger taste. It is much more drinkable this way I found.

You can purchase the Lemon Ginger Snap directly from the SpecialTea Brew website.

I wish I was at home, reading a book on a nice summer afternoon, because this tea deserves that. Or at least it deserves a little more than sitting in my boring cube at work in the middle of winter. A nice light tea, with strong ginger and lemon tones. While mild, this cloudy sage-green brew is not subtle. It is definitely GINGER and Lemon. Ginger is the strongest element, and comes out more in the flavor while the lemon flavor comes out more in the scent. The herbal element here is more to the fore than the tea element; it really feels more like a herbal than a flavored green tea. The blend works well both sweetened and unsweetened. I also bet this would be lovely iced.

You can purchase the Lemon Ginger Snap directly from the SpecialTea Brew website.

I have to be honest and say, I don’t drink a lot of yellow tea. In the past, it was because yellow tea wasn’t readily or easily available at my local tea shops. But now, I guess it’s not a tea I normally think of reaching for from my tea stash (I currently only have one on hand, a Jun Shan Yin Zhen). So doing a tasting of Canton Tea Co.’s Meng Ding Huang Ya Yellow Tea (as per label on sample) was actually something I was looking forward to.

I admit though, I have always been fascinated as to what makes yellow tea different from white tea and green tea, and how it is produced. The extra step from Chinese green tea production called men huang (literally “cooped up” yellow) seemed reminiscent to me of the steaming of Japanese tea leaves or, even more so, the way the Burmese process tea leaves for eating. However, it is not the same as Japanese tea or Burmese tea leaf processing (which both incorporate steaming in their production), as the still moist fired tea leaves are wrapped with cloth and stored for 1 – 2 days & then the drying & wrapping in cloth is repeated for up to 3 or 4 days in total.

I have heard yellow tea described as a cross between white tea and green tea because of its softer assertiveness and mellow flavour. However, knowing how it is produced always give me the expectation that it would have some aromas & flavours reflecting Burmese “pickled tea leaf” because of being stored or “cooped up” in cloth for a period of time.

Interestingly enough, some of these notes did pop up while tasting Canton Tea Co.’s Meng Ding Huang Ya, which literally translates to Mount Meng Ding Yellow Bud. I actually tasted this tea twice, on two separate days. I used a temperature of about 78°C (173°F) and steeped three times. The first steep was for about 1 1/2 minutes and I upped each steep after by about 15 seconds (really no methodology to my actions, just what I thought might work for this tea).

Here are some of my tasting notes on Canton Tea Co.’s Meng Ding Huang Ya Yellow Tea. Both times that I tasted yielded similar thoughts.

I quite enjoyed this Meng Ding Huang Ya. The first steep was the best tasting and by the third steep, the flavour was gone. I didn’t expect to get more than two steepings from this tea so I wasn’t disappointed. I liked how the flavours were soft yet I was able to discern varying tastes in my mouth ranging from sweetness, vegetal/seaweed, to a sort of fresh tanginess. Very nice.

You can purchase the Meng Ding Huang Ya directly from the Canton Tea Co. website.

The name of this blend is really inviting, who doesn’t love lemon, ginger and snap? Really. The only concern I have with this one is whether or not the herbs will balance with the Chinese green tea. The dry blend is really pretty with the bright lemon grass contrasting with the dark green tea. The dominant scent is definitely the lemon myrtle, having trouble isolating the scent from the tea and the other herbs.

Ready to steep this tea but I’m a bit torn about how to steep it because it appears to be mostly herbal but it’s categorized as a green tea… Going with green tea method, guessing that steeping it any longer or with hotter water will ruin the green tea in it. So it’s brewing up at 175 degrees for two minutes.

The scent of the lemon myrtle didn’t mellow but that’s okay because I love lemon myrtle. It’s an almost clear brew, just slightly golden. Tastes wonderfully tangy with the spicy hint of ginger. The green tea is crisp and fresh with no bitterness.

You can purchase the Lemon Ginger Snap directly from the SpecialTea Brew website.