u/dannysilverghost

I whipped cream with matcha and served it over vanilla and strawberry ice-cream. It was truly happiness in a spoon.

I love our Turkish teas but never had the chance to delve into green tea category from local sources. Here is a relatively new brand on the horizon called Vrosi Tea. They have a very limited product line, inlcuding an oolong and a whole leaf black tea.

Now let's talk about their green tea. It's taste profile is on the sweet side. I like to brew it at 75C and it is impossible to over brew, it just never gets bitter. After the sweetness creamy floral notes comes along, very similar to unroasted Taiwanese Jin Xuan oolong and vegatal umami notes rounds it up. It is very tasty but also very gentle and not as powerful as Japanese greens.

And the price is basically a steal for what this is, 100g package is only around 7.5 dollars. I'll be definitely trying out their other products and I recommend their green tea to anyone who can get their hands on.

These days I have surplus tea that is just not really good enough for gongfu or even western style brewing so I'm planing to make lots of cold brews. The first one is actually super affordable yet also great tasting so I wanted ease myself with something I'd actually drink.

This is Xinyang Mao Jian(g.628) which I've gotten from Beta Tea, it was 2.3 usd for 50 grams. The taste profile almost reminds me of Anzac, a sheng puerh from W2T, it can get really astringent with hui gan when pushed, it is lovely to drink both hot and cold. A bit floral too. My recipe for the cold brew is 15 grams per 1.5 Lt water, 18 h in the fridge.

Now onto my second brew which was a total gamble on a cheap gyokuro, from Beta Tea again, it is just not reminiscent of a proper gyokuro and at the price point of 9 dollars for 50 grams I wasn't expecting much but it was on sale from 17 dollars so I was more than ready to make it at least drinkable. I've used 10 grams Gyokuro + 1 gram of dried Osmanthus flowers in 1.5 Lt water and I let it sit for 12 hours in the fridge. Result was almost like a high mountain unroasted Taiwanese oolong with all those flowery notes coming from the Osmanthus and the vegetal notes from the gyokuro. Overall I think Osmanthus is quite the hack for any tea with rather lackluster quality.

I also made a batch of my favorite cold brew with Jinggu Sun-Dried Silver Needles White Pu-erh Tea Cake from Yunnan Sourcing, if anyone has it on hand you really should try it as a cold brew.

I have a Mao Feng, another Mao Jian but no where as good as the one I've mentioned above, a really upsetting Longjing nearing the end of its life, a yunwu which is not half bad but probably an old harvest just like the rest. I've got them all from Beta Tea for 2.3 dollars per 50 grams so I'm not mad at the quality but also that makes me really free to experiment on them without any guilt. So, as of now I'm open to every crazy suggestion that can improve an old withering green tea batch.