This is what I use for tea. A double teabag cup daily with also a capsule of Green Tea Extract. But I wonder how much L Theanine I’m getting. Or which has more.
shade grown Japanese green tea
May I ask the brand and source you use?
I’ve been using tealyra brand for a long time. It is very good quality for a reasonable price.
I use tea for the chemicals and not for the taste. However this stuff tastes very good for tea. Tea leaves need to heated after harvest to stop the oxidation for a green tea and taking out the a lot of the antioxidants. This company steams and then blow warm air across the leaves to dry them. Other Japanese companies will they’ll roast it a little bit to dry to dry it out. But the heat from roasting takes out a lot of the healthy chemicals.
I drink two kinds of shade grown tea the first is kukicha largely the stems of the leaves with a little bit of green. The stems have more theanine and antioxidants and the leaf has more caffeine. This kukicha is from m the highest grade of shade grown tea. But because the leaves been filtered out though it’s very high grade it’s a much lower cost. I started using this tea on purpose because I wanted theanine and I didn’t want caffeine.
Kabuse means shaded.
I also use a shade grown leaf tea that’s got a lot of theanine and a lot of caffeine at least for green tea.
Fully shaded green tea leaves are called gyokuro.
A person can spend a lot of money on gyokuro. I’m more interested in the chemicals in them then how they taste so I usually buy the cheapest gyokuro I can get. On my phone, this next page is mostly gyokuro.
I make the kukicha very strong. I put a tablespoon in 8 oz of hot water Maybe 170°. Hot water makes it more bitter. And because of the stems in it, I usually do three infusions. About 45 seconds for the first then 90 seconds and then two three minutes. The instructions on the bags are for the more commonly used way to make it.
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I buy all my Japanese teas directly from Ippodo Tea in Kyoto
I’ve seen they now have a USA online shop but it’s more expensive and I don’t know if the teas there are as fresh which is important for the Japanese teas.
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Amazon sells tealyra tea as well. They can deliver faster than tealyra so if I am running out I’ll buy from Amazon but prefer not to. Tealyra is generally organic, sells this year’s crop and they can tell me the whether or not the tea has been ruined by roasting. And shipping is fast. When I used to buy directly from Japan it would take weeks and cost an extra 40 bucks for shipping. The main tea I drink kukicha and this brand is my favorite. It is only been steamed and not roasted it’s been shaded for two or three weeks.
For somebody who goes to a lot of trouble to get shade grown tea processed in a particular way, I’m pretty unsophisticated about tea in general. I only care about the phytochemicals
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