Content

• Steps
• Part 1 of 3: Drinking Green Tea
• Part 2 of 3: Drinking Green Tea with Food
• Part 3 of 3: Brewing and Serving Green Tea

Green tea is much more than just a hot drink. Each cup of green tea is packed with antioxidants that can help prevent heart disease, improve brain function, and reduce the risk of certain types of cancer. But it is very important to serve and drink green tea correctly - only then can you get all the benefits of this drink.

Steps

Part 1 of 3: Drinking Green Tea

1. 1 Hold the cup of tea with your right hand while supporting it with your left bottom. A cup of tea, or "yunomi" in Japanese, should be held with both hands. According to Japanese etiquette, the cup must be held with both hands.
2. 2 Try to drink your tea quietly. Try not to blow on the tea to cool it down - this is considered indecent. Instead, just place the cup on the table and wait for the tea to cool down.
3. 3 Enjoy the taste and aroma of the tea. You should like tea, it does not matter whether you like more bitter or sweeter, light or strong taste. It is very important that the tea matches your tastes.

Part 2 of 3: Drinking Green Tea with Food

1. 1 Serve green tea with snacks or sweets that don't overpower the taste. Green tea goes well with regular milk biscuits, a simple muffin or cake, mochi, and small rice crackers.
2. 2 Prefer sweet over salty. Green tea goes well with sweet foods because it is more bitter than food and therefore softens the sweetness of food.
3. 3 Try green tea with mochi. Mochi is a Japanese glutinous rice cake. It is usually round and comes in different colors.
   • Mochi are both sweet and savory. Sweet mochi, called daifuku, are made from glutinous rice with sweet ingredients such as red or white bean paste.

Part 3 of 3: Brewing and Serving Green Tea

1. 1 Brew green tea the right way. Bring water to a boil, remove from heat and wait 30-60 seconds for it to cool slightly.
   • The temperature and quality of the water you use to brew your tea is critical as it directly affects the taste of your tea.
2. 2 Rinse the kettle (preferably a ceramic kettle) with hot water. This must be done to "warm up" the kettle. It is necessary to warm up the kettle so that the water does not cool down during brewing due to the kettle itself.
3. 3 Place the tea leaves in a preheated teapot. Use loose tea whenever possible, as it is usually of high quality unlike tea bags.
   • The most common recommendation is to use one teaspoon (3 grams) of tea leaves for every 230 ml of water. So if you are preparing tea for yourself, then put in only one teaspoon of tea. Add less or more depending on how many people you are brewing tea for.
4. 4 Pour boiling water over the tea leaves and let them brew. The brewing time depends on the type of green tea you take. Typically, green tea should be brewed for 1-3 minutes.
   • When the tea is brewed, strain it to get rid of the leaves.
   • If green tea is brewed for too long, it will taste bitter and unbalanced, so try to strain it on time.
   • If the tea is weak, then add more tea leaves or brew for one more minute.
5. 5 Take a set of ceramic cups. Traditionally, Japanese green tea is served in small ceramic white cups inside so that you can see the color of the tea. It is very important to use ceramic cups as this affects the taste of the tea.
   • In a traditional Japanese tea ceremony, a teapot, cooling vessel, cups, cup holders and a napkin are placed on a tray.
   • The size of the cups is also very important: in general, the higher the quality of the tea, the smaller the cups.
6. 6 Pour the tea into cups, about a third full. The first tea is weaker than the last, so first fill all cups only one third so that the flavor spreads evenly across all cups. Then go back to the first cup and fill all the cups until full. This is called "batch pouring".
   • In Japan, it is considered impolite to pour a full cup of tea. Ideally, the cup should be about 70% full.
7. 7 Drink green tea without sugar, milk, or other additives. Green tea has a very strong taste and, when brewed correctly, is delicious in itself.
   • If you always drink sweetened tea, you may not initially like the taste of "pure" green tea. Try it a few times before deciding which one you like.
8. 8 Reuse the brewed tea. Typically green tea can be brewed up to three times. Just refill the tea leaf with hot water and brew for the same amount of time.