Tao Of Tea: Mei Li, Green Kukicha & Jade Cloud

Currently, my favorite online tea shop is Tao Of Tea. I am not being handed mounds of cash every month to spend on tea so this is mainly due to financial reasons. I tried out some of their teas, enjoyed them, and now I buy in bulk from their inventory. Their prices are also extremely reasonable compared to sites like Verdant Tea or Camellia Sinensis while maintaining a good step in quality from Adagio. All these tea sites are awesome and highly recommended by many avid tea drinkers in the r/tea community on reddit.

My most recent purchase from Tao Of Tea included Green Kukicha, Jade Cloud, and Mei Li.


Green Kukicha

This is a Japanese green tea that tastes like a mix between Matcha and Sencha. It has a powdery, sweet, and vegetal taste with an optional mild, yet, sharp bitterness that can be brought out with slightly higher water temperature. This tea contains a heavy amount of stems, which is part of what give it a distinctive flavor over Sencha. If you're a fan of Japanese greens then I'd give this a whirl (I've never said or typed that idiom before in my life, nor do I plan on ever doing so again). I use a gaiwan (although I should be using a kyusu) and when I pour it out I pour it through a little hand held filter. I use 170-175°F water for about 40 seconds in a gaiwan.

Here is some brewed Kukicha with the cool container in the BG.

Jade Cloud

Pre-brew...

This Chinese green can be described as sweet, floral, and smokey. Unfortunately, it was hard to ever bring out a strong version of this flavor. I experimented with amount of leaf and water temperatures but never got a really satisfying cup out of it (minus 1 randomly awesome cup when I first got it, probably due to freshness). I won't be buying this tea again, but maybe there is somebody out there who can teach me how to make it taste right. My only guess would be that you may have to practically stew the leaves in order to get a strong flavor out of it (around 185-190°F), but I kinda doubt that.

Post-brew...

Mei Li

I really liked this Chinese tea... it had a bold and deep mildly sweet flavor and I SWEAR has a hint of chocolate on certain days... maybe I'm just crazy, though. I'd say this is my favorite of the three greens. I usually pour the water over the Mei Li in a gaiwan while the water is around 178°F and then let it steep about 45 seconds. Use a fair amount of leaf... nearing or at two teaspoons. This gives you some great Mei Li yummy goodness.

YUM. COME TO ME, MEI LI. Sounds like a girl.

Mei Li & Jade Cloud blend??

Hell yea. I used the last of my stash of both to try out a blend. It turned out to be great! I used a good chunk of leaf and 170-175° water for 45 seconds and got a good combination of both flavors. I'd side with a straight Mei Li brew but this is certainly awesome. Haven't tried the second steep yet... but I have no doubt in my mind that it'll taste good.

Lookin' good.

It got kinda messy in there. I liked it.

"Moar Tea For Me" Rediscovered

I just remembered that my blog existed thanks to somebody I know who also remembered that her blog existed. I will surely be whoring out about tea occasionally from now on. Time to catch up...

So I used to consume and own a LOT of tea. That was about 3+ years ago. Even then my college roommates got used to me taking up an entire freaking cupboard in our apartment for my loose leaf and teabags. Now I consume so much tea that I could flood my bathtub on a daily basis. However, my tea collection and teaware is expanding all the time. I don't think you can ever fully master tea... not even the Grand Tea Masters can. I will be learning new things about tea for the rest of my life.

Hello, tea. I am going to learn about you forever and ever.

Anyway, this is who I am. I am a film composer who graduated from California State University of Northridge and was then admitted into the USC SMPTV (Scoring For Motion Picture & Television) graduate certificate program, which I politely declined to continue my career. Only 20 people are admitted into this program every year, so you can see that my main passion in life is composing music. However, my second biggest passion is tea.

Tea and music go wonderfully well together. Tea and work go well together. Since I am a musician that means music is my work. I just shotgunned three clay pigeons all at once.

You could see my current tea making set up in the above picture. There will be another one below this paragraph. I LOVE using a Gaiwan because it allows for multiple quick infusions and, thus, very precise tea steeping chemistry. I heat up my filtered water using this over priced kettle from Adagio Teas that I would not recommend purchasing because there are cheaper ones and the temperature control is absolutely a lie. I then pour my water into my ancient looking tea pot (I checked the inside and there isn't a single crack) and measure it with a digital thermometer. By the way, if you are using a thermometer don't let it touch the bottom of the teapot or glass that you are using because it can change the temperature by about 10°F. Once the tea reaches the desired temperature I then pour it into the Gaiwan and do my thing. I usually steep my green teas rather strong. I never steep my teas for 20 seconds in a Gaiwan. That seems crazy to me. The minimum I ever do is 30-40 seconds for my first steep.

Green Kukicha purchased from Tao Of Tea.

This is all I want to cover for my first post in a long time. I'll finish by promoting some good tea websites below:

Tao Of Tea (I order a lot of tea from here. Highly recommended!)

Adagio Teas (PERFECT for beginners)

Verdant Tea

Camellia Sinensis

Tea on Reddit (you can learn so much about tea by discussing it with the reddit /r/tea community. I post here and 14,000 other tea drinkers do as well)

Leo Captures His Gunpowder Stains

Gunpowder Green Tea comes in little leaf balls. It also has a very different smell than most Green Teas. However, the loose leafs unravel and expand as you steep it in 180º water for 3 minutes. The taste is only for fans of Green Tea, because it is quite potent, and naturally more bitter than other strains you'll find. The bitterness is not a bad thing, though, because it is what makes the taste so interesting and different. It almost has a "smokey" flavor to it, with the unmistakable Green Tea flavor in the background.



I didn't realize that I would receive so much tea from an $8.00 purchase from Adagio Teas. I'm going to enjoy many cups of tea from the batch I bought, even though I'll sometimes consume 2-3 cups of just Green Tea in one day. I recently got a Brita water filter in order to turn the shitty tap water from my college dorm into something drinkable. Because of that filter it tastes great now, and so does my tea. No more tea that tastes like copper, mercury, and chlorine.

My next task will probably be to try mixing 1/2 tsp of Gunpowder + 1/2 tsp of Bancha. I'd also like to finally make a good batch of Bancha, since I can use good water.

I'm also interested in trying this new Ali Shan Tea that is supposedly wonderful.

"Craig Norton followed his guide through a seemingly endless stream of flood-lights. What appeared on the other side of the hall was nothing short of lustful... the taste didn't match his own preference as much as it demanded his preference to match the taste. Craig no longer felt comfortable, so he left the guide and his midget Labrador alone with their trays of tea and cheese."
- S. Frucklotte

Tea & Music

Tea works well with good music! Although some emotions can only be described and felt through music, I will list some emotions that work well with tea:

Euphoria: Does this need an explanation? If you're listening to something so good that you enter this rare state of being, then tea will push you even further. Tea may even be responsible for pushing you over the edge into euphoria, if timed correctly. The image at the left is suppose to represent the state of euphoria...

Ecstasy: When you really feel like music is giving you energy beyond description, a cup of tea can center that ecstatic behavior directly towards your mind. This could then lead to a state of euphoria or feelings of well-being. Keep in mind that this is because a state of ecstasy feels more energetic and "gitty" than a state of euphoria.

Relaxation: Picture this feeling as a form of mild meditation. The warmth of tea can keep your mind wrapped in a little blanket of sereneness. Anything besides Breakfast Tea will help keep you calm while you relax and listen to your favorite music. The baby to left exhibits a perfect display of complete relaxation.

These are the three main emotions that tea works well with, and that tea can be responsible for making you feel. However, you must make sure that you are actually drinking tea that you enjoy. You must also make sure not to screw up the process of making tea, like I just did twice in a row with this green tea. Damn, it tasted like water the first time, and the second time it still wasn't strong enough! No worries, though, because I still enjoyed the first half of it.

I'm currently listening to the Revolutionary Road score, by Thomas Newman. That guy can write some super depressing music, but also some uplifting and beautiful tracks as well. The movie was a wonderful adaptation of the book (both were ridiculously depressing). I'd recommend seeing this movie if you haven't viewed a sad movie in a long time. If you just watched Into The Wild, Requiem For A Dream, The Diving Bell And The Butterfly, American Beauty, or Mystic River, then PLEASE PLEASE DO NOT WATCH THIS MOVIE.

This blog probably gets 1 view every month from just one friend of mine, so don't expect the next post to be anywhere on topic, Kenny! I can't say THAT much about tea.

Japanese Ban-Cha Green Tea

I received this Ban-Cha Green Tea on Christmas day. Since then I've experimented with different steeping times, and I've also researched about how to prepare it. I can assure you that there is a lot of misinformation circulating through the web about this Japanese-lady-with-basket-on-back Ban-Cha Green Tea.

Steep: 40 secs - 1 min (this is called "under-steeping"[see: opinion])
Temp: Just before boiling, even though they use the word boiling on the damn box. You don't use boiling water on Green Tea.
Opinion: To be safe, I would steep this tea anywhere from 1 min - 1.5 mins. This is because it is very easy to mistake water for being hotter than it really is, in which case cooler water would barely steep the tea after only 40 secs.

The image featured on the right depicts half of a tool used for steeping "Full Leaf" or "Loose Leaf" tea. I use one of these. It's simply a metal ball that functions in place of a tea bag. Tea bags suffocate your tea leaves and don't let water move through them. However, for something like Herbal Tea you shouldn't really care about this, as they are always going to be rather strong and well-flavored by just following the steep times.