How You Can Make Your Green Tea Less Bitter

Have you been feeling like your tea is a little bit too bitter? In this episode, we're going to take a look at why that might be and how to fix it. Let's go through the four different ways you can make your tea less bitter. The first tip comes down to the selection of the tea. Unfortunately, there is only so much you can do to fix a bad tea. The best thing you can do is make sure you choose a high quality tea from the start. These lower quality tea bag teas don't offer the same complexity or sweetness as premium loose leaf green tea. If you're really looking to get a tea with less bitterness, the best thing you can do is look for a high quality shaded tea. The reason people typically describe the tea as being bitter comes down to the catechins. These components are produced by the tea as a protection against the UV light, so teas with more sun exposure will end up being more bitter. If a producer wants to make a tea less bitter, they'll have to cut it off from the sunlight before the harvest. This is typically done by stretching out a special type of netting, or kabuse, over the tea plant leading up to the harvest. A normal shaded sancha will be covered for about one week, but a specialized kabusecha is shaded for 10 days or more prior to the harvest. Gyokuro and matcha are shaded for the longest time, three weeks or more before the harvest. This intense shading process produces less bitterness, but also an intense sweet and savory flavor that is well sought after. If you like teas to be less bitter, you'll want to go for something like a gyokuro or a kabusecha. In addition to selecting a shaded tea, you'll also want to pay attention to the cultivar of the tea. When you buy a tea, you should be able to find information on what cultivar it's from, otherwise you can just assume that it's the cheapest variety. The most common type of cultivar in Japan is the yabukita, but some that are sensitive to flavors might find this a bit bitter. The yabukita has some characteristics that make it more resistant to the cold of central Japan, but it has some characteristics that can make it a bit more astringent. This is what a lot of people are looking for in a green tea, but if you want to reduce the bitterness of your tea, you can look for a tea from a sweeter or smoother cultivar. The asatsuyu, saimidori, and okumidori cultivars are all great ones if you're looking for a smoother or sweeter tea. These teas are commonly used for sencha, gyokuro, and kabusecha, so you should have no problem following the last tip as well. The flavor of a tea comes down to not only the leaf itself, but what is extracted from the leaf. While it's impossible to turn bad leaves into good tea, it is possible to turn good leaves into bad tea. This is why it's so important to get the brewing right, so you don't turn your high quality tea into a bitter infusion. One of the most important things is to get the temperature right. When it comes to Japanese green teas, the temperature used for brewing is incredibly low. You want to use a temperature of around 60°C or 140°F. Even though the amount of catechins in the leaf has been reduced during the shading process, there are still some present and they are extracted at higher temperatures. In order to reduce the extraction of these more bitter components, you can use cooler water. The sweeter components of the tea can still be extracted at this lower temperature, so you'll get plenty of the flavor in the tea. You can even use cold water and make a cold brewed green tea for hot summer days. Equally important to the temperature is the brewing time. This brings us to our fourth and final point, and that is to shorten the brewing time. As I mentioned before, the bitter catechins in the leaf are harder to extract, but they still can be extracted if you use hot enough water or a long enough brewing time. Even if the temperature is perfect, given enough time, the water will still extract the bitterness from the leaf and you will get a bitter tea. That's why we recommend brewing the tea for only one minute. This will extract plenty of flavor from the leaves, but the bitter components will remain in the leaves. The one exception is gyokuro, which can be brewed for two minutes. The reason for this is that the leaves are so tightly rolled and they need more time to open up and fully release their flavor into the water. If you're interested in stocking up on smoother and sweeter teas, you may want to join the monthly tea club. Every month we'll send you a few of our best teas to try and compare, and we'll also give you a free clay teapot to prepare the teas. The first month, you'll get two teas that show less bitterness. One is a long shaded tea from the south of Japan, and the other is steamed for a longer time which can reduce the bitterness of the tea. We think you'll really like these teas, and that's why we included them in the first shipment. If you have any questions about selecting and preparing teas, please feel free to leave them in the comments below. Until then, we'll see you next time.