Regular readers of my blog may have picked up the sense that I like the purity of a single type of tea, and do not buy into the whole hype of flavoring teas.
But today I blended two teas that I have been unhappy with hoping they would be complementary, but I realized after the first infusion the big mistake I made. These were two Japanese teas, but one was a Bancha, and the other was a low grade Gyokuro. In my mind thinking of the flavors of these two teas it seemed like it should work together in harmony. But there was a problem, their brewing methods are completely different.
The best I could hope for was to brew it like the Bancha with short steeps, but with a lower temperature like Gyo. This seemed to not get the best out of either tea, but did not taste bad. This confirms what I've always wondered when people talk of making tea blends such as at Adagio, or other companies that have unique blends, and they mix greens and whites and blacks and oolongs. I always wondered if they were really getting the best out of each individual tea in the blend, as you have to compromise the brewing parameters to try and avoid any off taste.
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