Tea Pairing 101: Green Tea

This post may contain affiliate links. As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases.

Tea Pairing 101: Green Tea

Want to save this?
Enter your email and get it sent straight to your inbox. Plus, get recipes & tips from me every week!
Please enable JavaScript in your browser to complete this form.

I’m back with another Tea Pairing 101 post. The first was with white tea and now we’re moving onto green. Once again with tea friends Sara and Georgia who are also in the ITEI Tea Sommelier program. We met up at the Lie Sangbong/LIE gallery space for this pairing.

I’ve almost finished with the green tea section of my ITEI course and there was a LOT to cover since there were so many different ways that went into how the finished product gets produced.

Green tea is lightly oxidized so it retains the green color a lot better than more oxidized teas like oolong and black tea. You can tell how oxidized a tea is by the color of the tea leaves.

In Japan, green tea is mostly steamed resulting in a vegetal and slightly sweet taste while in China and Korea, it may be pan fired or roasted which creates a nutty flavor. If brewed properly, green tea shouldn’t taste bitter at all.

I’ve made a lot of bitter green tea in the past from steeping it for too long or using water that was too hot.

Tea Pairing 101: Green Tea

We selected three green teas for this pairing, a Sencha from Japan, an organic Dragonwell from China, and an organic Woojeon from Korea.

Starting off with the Sencha, we kept tea pairing assessment notes so we could keep track of what we were tasting.

To figure out which tea to have first, we took a look at the brewing guide on each of the teas and started with one with the lowest water temperature since it indicates it’s a more delicate tea.

Using professional tasting cups sets, we weighed and brewed three cups. We like to slurp (loudly!) to coat the entire mouth with tea and to mix it with air to get the full flavor.

For the Sencha, I tasted steamed spinach (yup, that’s vegetal) and a hint of sweetness.

Let’s not forget about the food! Green tea goes really well in general with rice so we paired it with mochi, a Japanese sweet rice cake. We got them from mochi-Rin, who makes the most freaking adorable and delicious little bites.

Tea Pairing 101: Green Tea

Three kinds of mochi to pair, a strawberry with rose (above) with an entire fresh strawberry inside, fig and pistachio, and a red bean paste with cinnamon.

For the Sencha, the fig and pistachio mochi paired perfectly.

Tea Pairing 101: Green Tea

Me, getting ready to brew the second green tea, the Dragonwell.

Tea Pairing 101: Green Tea

After the steep, the Dragonwell was sweet, nutty, and slightly vegetal. I took a couple of slurps of tea then took alternating bites and slurps to see which mochi paired best. Again, the fig and pistachio mochi won out since both the tea and the mochi had a nutty flavor.

Tea Pairing 101: Green Tea

Last but not least was a pan fired Korean tea called Woojeon. I have a HUGE soft spot for Korean tea and plan on studying it further once I finish the Tea Sommelier program.

This one had delightful tasting notes of chestnuts, which I really liked. Can you guess which mochi paired best? Yup, the one with the fig and pistachio for the same reason — both the tea and mochi tasted nutty.

The runner up was the cinnamon and red bean.

Tea Pairing 101: Green Tea

Each green tea brewed a variation of green colored tea.

Notice how the Sencha on the left is the greenest due to its steaming process, the middle Dragonwell has a pale gold color from the pan fired process and the Woojeon is the darkest probably due to it being pan fired longer than the Dragonwell.

Tea Pairing 101: Green Tea

The wonderful tea mess we make at each Tea Pairing 101 session. Next up is oolong tea in the fall!

See other Tea Pairing posts:
Tea Pairing 101: White Tea
Tea Pairing 101: Oolong Tea
Tea Pairing 101: Black Tea

About Jee Choe

Welcome! I'm a certified Tea Sommelier and a self-proclaimed bubble tea and iced tea master. I'm all about making tea EASY and DELICIOUS.

You May Also Like:

Leave a comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

8 Comments

  1. Hi Jee — it seems people enjoyed my riff on your oolong pairing, so I thought I would work backwards and talk about your pairing experience with green tea and mochi cakes. The Facebook post will be going up this afternoon (Monday Nov. 6) at 5:06pm Eastern (Facebook.com/pairteas.
    Here’s the link to the corresponding blog post:
    https://virginiaspairteas.blogspot.com/2017/11/sara-georgia-and-jee-present-green-teas.html
    Thanks so much for your interest and support! — you three are amazing!
    Virginia

    1. Hi Virginia, I’m loving your posts following up on our tea pairings explaining the science behind it. I’m learning so much!

  2. What a fabulous green tea pairing 101. We just want to join, drink and eat all those nice suggested Mochi with each tea. Great photography making it all so real. Well Done!