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Great side by side comparison! Thanks. I love it when people do these.

I forgot I had another Sencha sitting in my cupboard. I don’t think I would have been able to drink three cups of 8oz Sencha though =/. Oh well there’s always next time :D

Yeah, I’m definitely going to try this one at a lower temperature, similar to Auggy’s… but I doubt I’m going to have that great of an experience with it. I’m pretty sure that I scotched/cooked my leaves though! :(

I think the scorched tea leaves brought out the shortbread smell. If I had more leaves I’d be tempted to burn mine as well. I mean it didn’t sound like the taste was any different. GM was just not meant to make plain tea.

Except for pu-erh! That was nommy.

The buttery smell was delicious, which was why this was very disappointing to me. And then my later steeps tasted like water that crabs and lobsters had swam around in. Ew.

Hahah, agreed! Even the second steep tasted like water. Gunpowder was delicious too!

OMG that is a girly looking tea if ever I saw one. Awesome. :D Shame it turned out to be a bit boring.

Now now, I don’t discriminate between tea genders. I think they all deserve some recognition and love ;)

So pretty! Sorry that the taste isn’t up to par, though!

It looks better as an image :D, the flowers don’t even dance. They were kind of lame. The secret is that they are tied by some string on the back.

I’m sure my aunt who’s into scrapbooking and card-making could have all sorts of fun with them. But I’m not sure any of it would involve hot water. :p

I almost wonder if this would be worth trying to cold brew… it sounds delicate enough that you might get more depth out of it without having to worry about it becoming bitter.

I rarely drink cold brewed tea, but then again I suppose it’s the same as letting the tea cool to room temperature. I’ll give it a shot with the remaining sampler.

I find that Harney and Sons tends to be pretty vague about their steeping instruction in general [even on the tins – Dragon Pearl’s water temp simply says “less than boiling”].

I’m not sure if that’s for a specific reason, but I like to think that they do it either because different people have different preferences for different teas, or because they want you to figure it out on your own. Anyway, the point of all of this is that I’ve found that I often need to tweak vendor instructions anyway. The label gives me a nice place to start, but I often find it resulting in something too strong or too weak for my tastes anyhow.

I think the issue is that Harney has too much tea so they can’t possibility test all of them for the optimal time / condition. I mean even if everyone has a different preference, there is a standard way to do things. Rishi labels the amount of leaves, steep time & temperature individually for each item.

Hmm. That’s interesting. In re-reading your post, I think that I actually mis-interepreted what you were getting at a bit [it was late and I was hyper – a combination that does not make for good reading]. But yeah, I think that we’re in the same camp, in that most teas benefit from deviating from the “industry standard.” I love Rishi’s instructions for the most part. It actually annoys me when companies put the 180, 2-3 minutes on all of their green teas, but I think that was the point of your mini-rant, no? They [should] have tasters approving their teas, so regardless of how many teas they have more specific parameters they could include in the instructions, but I don’t know how that process works for them, so I don’t know what their reasoning behind their steeping instructions is.

Anyhow, these are just projections and preferences. The main point of it is that they don’t get much more specific on their tins, and at least the bags can be resealed! Just trying to find a little silver lining in sub-par tea log!

One of the things I find amazing about Den’s Tea is their precision and specificity for each tea. Some directions will even tell you that if you steep it at X temperature you’ll bring out more of one flavor vs steeping it at Y temperature which brings out this other flavor.

Yep takgoti, that is correct :D

I love the fact that Den’s tea gives you a specific steep parameter for each and every type of Sencha as well.

@Carolyn Samovar does that too sometimes. I love it!

Love this tasting note. I was introduced to, and fell in love w/, nutella in Europe as well. While one of our stops was Florence, I 1st had it in London.

I have this one too! Can’t wait to try it! Do you have a sample of Paris? That smells delicious as well. Tokyo too. :)

Never been to London, the British pound was too expensive for me. Yummm nutella crepes. Gasp, I thought I had Paris, but apparently I don’t. I have Tokyo and Bangkok though. I think the bergamot scared me off.

Paris smells like strawberries! And vanilla. I can barely smell the bergamot. :) I have Bangkok too!

@Ricky, school trip 7.5 years ago. Chicago to London direct, London>Paris via the chunnel, Paris>Lucerne via bus, Lucerne>Florence via train, Florence>Rome via bus. Day trips to Assisi, Pisa, and Trebleno. Then Rome back to Chicago direct.

Strawberries & Vanilla! I’m sold! I’ll have to order it next time around.

Florence to Rome via bus!??!? That must of taken at least a day! A train ride there is like three to five hours. Never been to Trebleno, been to the other places in Italy though. Been to Paris, but I have to return there when I decide to make a trip to Europe in the future. I didn’t spend as much time as I wanted last time I went.

Yep the trip was only 13 days. Way Especially considering 6 of them were in Italy alone. Loved Nutella Gelato. Discovered I’m not a fan of authentic pizza though lol. My favorite by far was Lucerne, but unfortunely we were only there for 2 days. Next time I’m bringing lots of chocolate home w/ me to make Swiss matcha and chai drinking chocolates!

Gelato was amazing there. I forgot what my favorite was already! The pizza I remember, and Americans definitely did not like it. Rectangle pizza, very cheesy, thick bread, served cold (unless you asked them to heat it). Italian buy pizza to go home and eat it so it’s given cold. I did have some American pizza in Siena, resembled American’s triangle pizza shape, thin bread / moderate amount of cheese, but it wasn’t as good. They heated it…. oh yes they did… except for the fact that after they heated the pizza it was still pretty cold. Now Italian sandwiches are amazing :D

Sandwhiches in all of Europe were amazing. Every morning @ the hotel we had deli meat sandwhiches. Sandwhiches for breakfast! And it was by far the best deli meat I’ve ever had. But Ohmygosh was I sick of chicken! Our dinners were all included in the price and since that’s cheap, we had it all the time. Seriously, all but 2 of our meals were chicken. In Paris we had French Onion soup… and chicken. In Italy we had chicken and pasta @ every meal.

I found some pizzas like we are used to here in America in southern Italy. My family in Calabria (south, past Naples) has a shop which sells home made gelato – it was sooooo good, even better than what I had in Rome. I didn’t drink any tea in Italy either – espresso, espresso, espresso!!! Not that I minded!! :)

I am Italian American, but didn’t realize how AMERICAN I was until I was in Italy for awhile (esp in the little towns where I ate local traditional food for weeks) – the first thing I did when I came home was order Chinese food :)

@JacuelineM… Dirty chais for me! Too bad I wasn’t a tea drinker back then… or coffee (I was only 16). I craved American food though, by the time I got home- not Chinese. I couldn’t wait to have some potato salad.

European Sandwiches, it’s all in the bread. They flavor the bread / it’s made fresh. I think that makes all the difference. Soooo delicious, still craving one right now. French Onion soup, did I have any there? I must have, but I remember Ribollita the most. Italian food is pretty pricey, even in the States.

Haha espresso for breakfast, wine in the afternoon. Oh how the tradition is so different. The culture really is different compared to American culture. What annoyed me the most was the store opening hours. Work for two hours, lunch for a few hours and open again. Stores are all closed on weekends, so you have to do all your shopping on Friday. If it’s raining some store owners would not open. Haha I had Chinese food in Italy a few times, it was pretty decent.

@Ricky, the bread was good but for me it was the meat. I haven’t had deli meat like that since.

Prosciutto was all I had and I didn’t even like it that much. Where’s the Boar’s head ham!?! I felt they didn’t give as much meat as they do here in the States.

Hotels were probably a lot different than actually going out somewhere.

Ahh, that would probably be it. I was deep inside the city / non touristy areas.

My Rishi order just came in yesterday with this in it. I haven’t invested in the full matcha set (yet), so I prepared my matcha exactly as you did (without the latte bit). I had no problem with getting the matcha to foam, so that was cool. I’m not a fan of the little packets either. They look cheap. I have a feeling I’m just going to put this matcha into my protein shakes or smoothies.

@Ricky… I won’t kill you for using a steel whisk, but I may kill you for the melon syrup. lol! Just kidding. Melon syrup does make me gag though. And RE: the "supposedly this is the best matcha and the packets- I agree! While I LOVED this @ Kavarna Cafe and evidentily it does foam, I don’t think I’m gonna get this until they change the pacakging.

@LENA… Den’s set is calling you… ;)

Seems none of us like the convenient on the go packets. I mean if you’re preparing matcha (the proper way), you wouldn’t be drinking it on the go anyways. Then again, when would you prepare matcha on the go!?!? I guess if you are making a cold brew.

Melon syrup’s from Starbucks =P, that’s actually what they use in their Green Tea Latte. Just following their recipe.

Den’s Tea is calling me to get a matcha set! I wish Den had 1oz samplers for some of their tea selections.

I can see making it in a regular bowl or even coffee cup and mixing it w/ a spoon, but that packaging is going too far for me.

The Matcha Miyabi from Den’s Tea doesn’t seem to have any bitterness. (It is outrageously expensive, though.) I plan to try their other matcha once I’ve finished this tin.

Den’s Matcha Kaze isn’t bitter either. I think Rishi’s matcha is closer to Uji Matcha “Kiri no Mori” than Matcha Kaze though.

The oil specs could be from the orange or the tea itself as well. That’s just the essential oils coming out and letting you know the healthy stuff is getting to your cuppa:)