i have the BIGGEST fucking pet peeve about people in the ed community complaining about how green tea tastes like shit because it’s bitter blah blah blah.
YOU ARE PROBABLY NOT MAKING THE GREEN TEA CORRECTLY.
I’ll say it once and i’ll say it again, 99% of the time when you make green tea and it tastes bitter it’s because your water is too hot! Green tea is very sensitive to heat, and so if you use above ≈190 degree water it will scorch the leaves and leave you with a bitter taste. the other 1% of the time is that you just have poorly made/cheap tea but even cheap tea can be decent if made properly.
So! if you really want to give green tea another go, here’s a couple of ways to get the right temperature!
use a tea kettle!- this is more so for tea lovers such as myself, but investing in a good tea kettle that heats itself can save you a lot of trouble in the long run if you plan on drinking a lot of tea
boil water in a pan- i’d use a saucepan because it’s easier, but what you want to look for is the stage of which the water boils. First you’ll have some bubbles at the bottom, which isn’t quite warm enough, but once those bubbles start to come up (think irregularly and almost in a zigzag) that’s going to be a good temperature for green tea. If your water is boiling, you’ve gone too far!!
let boiling water cool- this method is probably the least consistent and ideal of the three, but it works nonetheless. so what you want to do is get your water boiling, either in a stove kettle or a pan, and then once it’s boiling, turn off the heat and let it cool to where you can tolerate having your finger touch it. Green tea temperature water should be hot, but not too hot to where it’ll burn you, at the very hottest it should be uncomfortably warm, like a really warm bath you have to wade into
now, if you really want to get into green tea, i HIGHLY recommend you use loose leaf. loose leaf tea will give you a lot better quality flavor and aroma rather than bag tea. Also note, there are many different kinds of green tea! From matcha to Dragon well, green tea is not only super popular, it has a rich history and evolution that’s very interesting. My personal favorite green tea right now is genmaicha, which has some toasted rice in it as well.
All in all, if you don’t like it you don’t like it, but before you hate on it, PLEASE try and make it properly first :D
edit: i accidentally said a maximum of 170 degrees, but i actually meant 190 degrees! my apologies I wrote this at like 2am and didn’t have any resources on me :)
