On Mar 25, 12:10*pm, MarshalN wrote:
On Mar 25, 10:24*am, Alex wrote:

Hi everyone. *I'm getting into a major Anxi / tieguanyin phase, and
I've been having some issues with weird grassy tastes. *It might be
that I've bought crappy tea, but I want to make sure. *So, I was
wondering: what temperature water does everyone use for greenish
tieguanyin?

Thanks in advance.

Alex

Sounds like it's the tea.

You can brew it with hot water -- very hot water in fact -- and still
not get grassy notes if the tea's good. *How long do you infuse your
teas for?

MarshalNhttp://www.xanga.com/MarshalN

Thanks for the snappy and thoughtful responses, Lew and MarsalN. The
broader situation is that I got what is allegedly some very good
(lightly roasted) tieguanyin and I've been practicing on some other
stuff in preparation for drinking the good batch. I've been steeping
it for various lengths of time, but not less than 30 seconds. Maybe I
should try treating it like a good puer. Anyway I was getting a very
grassy result so I put in less leaf, and steeped for a 1:00, then
1:30, then 2:00, as I would if I was doing a side-by-side comparison.
It was pretty much all grass all the way through, although the earlier
steeps had a very promising hint of peach in the smell. So, I started
to think maybe the water was too hot, although when I use overhot
water on Taiwanese oolongs the result is vegetal rather than grassy.
It sounds like I may just have some bad / old / under-roasted tea.

thanks again

Alex