Reviews
Part of One plant, six processing routes: a field guide to specialty tea
Specialty tea tasting works best when you fix every variable but one
A controlled method for comparing specialty tea at home: fix every variable but one, score bitterness and astringency apart, and taste all three steeps.
What to take away
- A comparison is only worth anything if one variable changes at a time. Everything else has to be pinned down.
- Brewing method itself changes the aroma you get out of the same leaf, so the method has to be part of the record.
- Successive infusions from one measure of leaf are not copies of each other, and the differences are measurable.
- Write numbers down. Memory for flavor is short and heavily influenced by what you expect.
Pin down everything except the one thing you are testing
Fix the dose in grams, the water volume, the temperature, the time and the water source. Then change exactly one of them. Change the tea and the temperature at once and you have learned nothing you can carry forward.
Change one variable at a time
Controlled test
- Dose
- Fixed in grams
- Water volume
- Fixed
- Temperature
- Fixed
- Time
- Fixed
- Tea
- Changed
- What you learn
- Carry forward
Confounded test
- Dose
- Fixed in grams
- Water volume
- Fixed
- Temperature
- Changed too
- Time
- Fixed
- Tea
- Changed
- What you learn
- Nothing
Brew side by side, not one after the other. Two cups in front of you at the same moment is a far more sensitive test than two cups twenty minutes apart, because the reference is present rather than remembered.
The method is a variable too
A 2025 study compared top-brewing, where water is poured onto the leaf, against bottom-brewing, where leaf is dropped into water already in the vessel, across several temperatures.
It found distinguishable aroma markers between the two methods, naming geraniol, nonanal and methyl salicylate. Part of the effect traced to EGCG binding aroma compounds and slowing their transfer into the liquid.
The practical reading is narrow and useful: pour order counts. Fix it, record it, and stop wondering why a tea tasted different at a friend's house.
Do not throw the leaf away after one steep
A 2026 study tracked three successive green tea infusions from one measure of leaf. It found that gallic acid, its esters and L-theanine declined steadily from the first infusion to the third.
Matching shifts appeared in the volatile profile and sensory ratings. Most quantified compounds correlated with puckery, bitter and acidic ratings; their absence correlated with sweetness and freshness.
So the third cup is not a weaker copy of the first. It is a different balance. Tasting all three is one of the cheapest ways to learn what a tea actually contains. How far a given leaf shape can stretch has been measured, in serving specialty teas without wasting leaf.
A score sheet you will actually use
| Field | What to write |
|---|---|
| Dry leaf | Size, uniformity, smell after warming the pot |
| Liquor color | Pale to dark, clear or cloudy |
| Aroma | Two or three words, no more |
| Body | Thin, medium, thick |
| Bitterness | 0 to 5 |
| Astringency | 0 to 5, the drying feel, not the taste |
| Aftertaste | How long, and what it turns into |
Bitterness and astringency are separate lines because they are separate things. Bitterness is a taste. Astringency is a physical drying. A tea can be high in one and low in the other, and merging them makes your notes useless later.
Running a fair blind test
- Have someone else pour, or number the cups and shuffle them out of sight.
- Use identical vessels. Cup shape changes perceived aroma.
- Three samples maximum in a sitting. Fatigue arrives faster than you think.
- Plain water and a break of two minutes between samples.
- Record your guess before you look at the labels.
The formats you might be comparing are set out in five ways to serve specialty tea without overdoing it, and the category background is in the 2027 field guide to specialty tea for beginners.
Common questions
How many teas can I compare at once?
Two properly, three at a push. Beyond that the later samples get judged against a tired palate rather than against each other.
Do I need a special tasting set?
No. Two identical mugs, a scale, a timer and a thermometer will do. Matching vessels matter more than expensive ones.
Should I taste hot or cooled?
Both. Aroma is strongest hot, sweetness and body read more clearly at about 50 C. Many faults only appear as the cup cools.
What if I cannot describe what I taste?
Use comparisons rather than adjectives. Closer to hay or closer to spinach. More like cocoa or more like raisin. Precision comes from contrast, not vocabulary.
