Quality green tea

Mandzhalas

Hi

I'm green tea drinker, but struggling to find good quality to price ratio bagged tea. At the moment im drinking clipper tea but i believe i can find better. Tried few supermarket own brands, but found them to vary in taste drastically and have yet to find one that i would love.
Where can i buy reasonably priced, but yet strong and tasty bagged green tea (preferably bulk buy)?

J_E

Whereabouts are you based? It gives a better idea of what you might be able to get locally.

Honestly, if you are looking for decent green tea, start by not buying the tea bags in supermarkets because you'll never get the best taste. You really need to get into loose leaf tea (unfortunately I don't know anywhere that does whole-leaf tea, that is the best option). You are able to buy empty tea bags that you can put loose leaf tea into, or get a strainer pot for the leaves. If you are out of a city, a local cafe or restaurant might be stocking Suki tea, which is a good start. If you are in the vicinity of one of the cities, you will definitely have a place you can buy from, and get some nice varieties apart from pure (Sencha) green tea, such as Gunpowder, Jasmine, and Genmaicha, all which have their own unique taste (I personally love jasmine teas, particularly the 'pearl' types which are little balls of green tea.

Also, the taste will be better if you don't use boiling water. Try a little below, around 80C (hot but not enough to scald on a quick touch). You can usually tell if you did it too hot, because the tea will turn a dark brown instead of the golden-green colour and dry your tongue out a bit when you drink it with a bitter taste.

Also worth exploring if you're feeling adventurous is Matcha tea, which is a higher grade tea, and usually sold as a powder. You whisk it with hot water and drink the whole thing without straining. Sometimes people like to add steamed milk to make a sort of latte with it. It's a little pricier though, especially to buy locally.

Let us know how you get on I can recommend a few places if there's somewhere you live that I know.

bnt

I second the need to get in to loose leaf teas, but have found that you don't need a fancy strainer pot. I realised this at a Chinese restaurant years ago, where I was served Jasmine tea staight from a pot without any strainer: the tea was just as nice fifteen minutes later, even though it had sat in the pot - all that time: there wasn't so much tea leaves in there that it got stewed.

At work I use a cheap large insulated mug as my "teapot", and just decant in to an ordinary teacup . It doesn't have a strainer, but if a few leaves get in to your cup, they sink to the bottom anyway. A level tsp of loose tea + 500ml hot water = quality tea for the next hour. :cool:

tringle

IKEA do a glass teapot with a strainer/filter thing built in. I use it when I pick peppermint form the garden, pop the leaves in, pour over the water and watch the colour change. Id love to know where to get loose leaf green tea too, I'm in mid west.