Niftic.com » Tea http://niftic.com it's a kind of a blog Thu, 22 Jul 2010 23:40:12 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.0.1 Budget priced Japanese green tea http://niftic.com/?p=118 http://niftic.com/?p=118#comments Thu, 15 Oct 2009 21:00:39 +0000 Trent http://niftic.com/?p=118
I am not an expert on teas, not a tea connoisseur, or anything of the kind.  My tea reviews likely will exclude words like “nuance” and “palate.”  I lack the ability to dissect and explain the different elements and how they effect the flavor.  I am just a guy who enjoys quality Japanese tea.  And these are my experiences.

A while back I bought a couple items from Ito En.  One was the House Sencha, which I bought hoping for a good quality budget priced sencha.  I was very disappointed.  The House Sencha is basically about the quality I would expect to find in a supermarket at half the price.  It has a nice astringency which reminds me of the first loose leaf green tea I ever had — a bancha from the local Asia Market — but zero flavor, and zero freshness.  Price: $9 for 3oz.  The first Japanese tea I’ve ever given away because I didn’t like it.  (Since I started purchasing directly from Japanese tea companies, anyway.)

At $0.50/oz less than the House Sencha, the Bancha Suruga from Den’s Tea gave me the fresh, sweet, sencha flavor and aroma that makes Japanese tea the best green tea.  It is not at all what I expected based on my previous experience with bancha, though the web site description does call this an “upgraded variation.”  I didn’t think bancha could taste so much like sencha.   Any way, $5 for a 2-oz package of this stuff makes it the best deal I have seen on quality Japanese tea.  The perfect everyday tea.  :)

]]> http://niftic.com/?feed=rss2&p=118 0 Tea blogs http://niftic.com/?p=17 http://niftic.com/?p=17#comments Wed, 25 Mar 2009 09:00:14 +0000 Trent http://niftic.com/?p=17 I had this great idea the other day. Blogging about green tea! After a quick Google search I was disappointed to discover that I’d had yet another unoriginal idea. My discovery of  The Green Tea Review did open me up to a number of tea and tea ware suppliers about which I did not know, and I am very excited about that!  Thank you, Mr. Crosswhite.

Maybe I’ll blog about tea anyway.  Why be original when you can do what’s been done before? :)

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