I recently saw a video from Japanese tea lover Shizuka Maitani about the final processing and blending of Japanese green tea. It is so interesting that it deserves a...
Fumio Maeda Original Blended Fukamushicha
I received this tea from Tea Company Sayamaen, a tea store from Tokyo that is over 50 years old. Much thanks to Kayoko Ikeya for personally giving me this...
Tamamidori: The First Cultivar Developed for Making Tamaryokucha
Tamamidori (たまみどり) is a very old tea cultivar, it was registered as Japanese tea cultivar #4 in 1953. Although it is still being cultivated, it isn’t widely available. I...
Strictinin: Another Beneficial Compound Found in Tea
Strictinin is a type of polyphenol with molecular formula C27H22O18 that is found in tea, cloves, guava, Japanese alder, and coast beefwood, among others. In a tea leaf, strictinin...
The Taste Of Tea Stay Calm
I’ve been wanting to taste a GABA tea but they aren’t easy to find, at least not outside Asia. Luckily, I received a sample of Stay Calm, a GABA...
Pairing Japanese Green Tea With Food
Have you ever paired wine with food? You can do the same with tea. There are different ways to pair Japanese green tea with food, as we’ll see next....
GABA in Tea
GABA, short for γ-Aminobutyric acid, is an important inhibitory neurotransmitter (meaning that it calms nervous activity). It is also found in plants, and the tea plant is one of...
Takeo Tea Farm Organic Oolong
First of all I want to thank Geoffrey of the Steep Stories blog. He sent me some rare Japanese teas as a gift, and this is one of them....
The Everything Healthy Tea Book (Book Review)
I learned about this book from Nicole Martin of Tea For Me Please. She reviewed this book on her blog a couple of months ago. The Everything Healthy Tea...
Roasting Gyokuro
Today I’ll be doing something very uncommon, but curiosity knows no bounds 🙂 It all began when I opened a package of gyokuro that was very old, 3 years...
Sugimoto America Houjicha Powder
At this year’s World Tea Expo I received a houjicha powder sample from Sugimoto America. It’s very interesting because I had never seen houjicha in powdered form. Houjicha powder...
Tea and Wine: A Comparison
Are you a wine enthusiast? Tea and wine are very similar. If you like one, there’s a high chance that you will enjoy the other one as well. In...