Avoiding Bitter Green Tea

This info came from the Free Your Tea site. I thought it was helpful and very useful as a blog filler.

1. Water That is Too Hot Can Make Green Tea Bitter

Before the water even hits the tea leaves, it’s possible that you’re already doing yourself a disservice depending on how you’ve heated your water.  This can make your cup of green tea taste bitter.  Green teas are more delicate than other varieties and typically need to steep at no higher than 175 F/80 C for the best results. Free Your Tea teas has precise recommended brewing temperatures to help you get it right.  This temperature will bring out the grassy, natural flavors in the tea without overpowering your taste buds. There are a few ways to achieve the perfect temperature when heating water, but we prefer a temperature controlled kettle to do the work for us.  You can also boil water and let it sit for about two minutes before adding to the tea, or mix in some cold water.

 2. Using Too Much Tea Can Make Green Tea Taste Bitter

 Secondly, it can be difficult to judge exactly how much tea leaves need to go into your cup.  This is made especially difficult when someone at your office steals your trusty mug and you’re left with an unfamiliar, tiny teacup.  Green tea leaves vary just as much by size which can impact proper measurement. Nevertheless, we recommend approximately one teaspoon of tea to one teacup of water. If using a big mug, you need more tea. If the tea leaves are larger so half your spoon is air, you need more tea.

 3. Steeping for Too Long Can Make Green Tea Taste Bitter

 After you’ve added the tea leaves to your precisely heated water, the process doesn’t end there.  Steeping for more than five minutes can over-saturate your cup of green tea and result in the much-dreaded bitterness.  We advise steeping green tea for 3-5 minutes before completely removing the infuser or straining the leaves. We like asking our mobile phone to set a timer to alert us when our tea is done.  Tea never gets better after 5 minutes, only worse.  

 4. Old or Poor Quality Tea Can Make Green Tea Taste Bitter

 Finally, and possibly most importantly, with all the impeccable green tea in the world from tea gardens in places like Darjeeling and Fujian, why drink bad tea? Lower quality bagged teas that you find in the grocery store are more likely to yield a bitter cuppa.  Even loose leaf tea that is improperly stored or old can take a turn for the worse.