Oh woe is me.
The curse of having too much tea is that little gems like the last teaspoon or so of this sample get buried and when you find them, in this case, years later, they are a shadow of their former selves. (How could I have let this happen? I really must be more careful.)
Doubly cursed, I had the last teaspoon already in the Breville filter when I realized I couldn’t get the settings to go any lower than 160 and I wanted to steep this at 140. I’d rinsed the filter from the last tea I’d made and so the leaves had adhered to the filter. I couldn’t move them to another filter without losing half the sample. Sigh.
So I used the equivalent of chewing gum and coathangers or whatever that saying is. I heated the water in the Breville, let it cool, and stuck the filter into the water manually.
And why not go for the woe hat trick while I’m at it? I also think I used too much water for the amount of leaf I had left.
You may think all of this woe is leading up to a disastrous report. Happily, you’d be mistaken.
Yes, it’s a shadow of its former self judging by my previous note on this, but, somewhat unbelievably, it still has a pleasant, somewhat sweet, green mellow flavor. I’m glad I went ahead and steeped it rather than committing it to the compost heap.
Yay, a happy ending!
Indeed. :-)
hurray for non ruined gyokuro!