Wednesday, April 7, 2010

How to make homemade green tea


In Japan it is said that it’s okay to cut branches of plum tree, but it’s not good with cherry trees. Cutting branches may make cherry tree vulnerable. But, the cherry blossom was so beautiful at my parents’ yard, so I took a branch home from there yesterday. It was a big tree, so I hope it was okay.










There was an instruction for easy homemade green tea, on the tag came on a tea plant that I bought the other day. It is a pretty rough instruction, so you may take some trial and error to find out your best result. But I’ll introduce it here.

** How to make homemade green tea **
1. Heat exact 50g tea shoots and leaves in a microwave oven for 2 minutes
2. Knead the leaves hard for 2-3 minutes (Be careful not to burn yourself)
3. Heat the leaves again in microwave oven for one minutes to dry them
4. Repeat kneading and drying until the leaves get crisp, and then it’s done.

In Japan, picking of the first tea of the season starts from around the end of April or the beginning of May. The first tea has better quality than second or third picked ones. You pick one shoot and two (or three) leaves from the tip. Then follow the instruction above.

6 comments:

  1. oh, wow.. i never thought of this myself.. Is it possible to create the powdered type?

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  2. Hi, gita yoanita-san I'm not sure but matcha (powdered green tea) producing will be much more difficult (^_^;)

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  3. Did you ever do this with your tea plants leaves? was it good?

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    1. Unfortunately, I’ve never tried it. The plant is now kind of wilting. I’m not a good gardener, hahaha (^^;;

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  4. :( maybe it will be ok. I hear they like lots of water, but well drained soil, and neutral to slightly acidic soil Ph. Maybe it just needs some Azalea fertilizer?
    I just bought tea seeds about a month or so ago, one sprouted in two weeks the others are just now poking up through the soil. Wish me luck!

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    1. I guess the reason for wilting of my tea plant is soil which has very bad draining. Not only the tea plant, but also some other trees in my garden began wilting in the rainy season. This year, the tea plant shoots out new bubs. It's coming back to life.
      I hope your nursery tea plants grow well and hopefully you can harvest some leaves in four years. Good luck!

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