Green tea

Tea whose oxidation is halted early by heat, keeping the leaf green and the cup fresh, vegetal or marine in character.

65 teas in the catalogue绿茶

What it is

Green tea is defined by what does not happen to it. Shortly after plucking, the leaf is heated — steamed in the Japanese tradition, pan-fired in most of China — which denatures the enzymes responsible for oxidation. Everything that follows (rolling, shaping, drying) happens to a leaf that will no longer brown. The result is a family that ranges from the marine, umami-heavy steamed teas of Japan to the chestnut-sweet pan-fired greens of Zhejiang, unified by process rather than by flavour.

What makes it this category: Kill-green (fixation) applied before meaningful oxidation can develop.

Defining steps: Kill-green (fixation)

History

The oldest category still made, and for most of tea’s history the only one. Loose-leaf green tea in the form recognisable today displaced compressed cakes at the Ming court in the fourteenth century. Japan received tea from China twice — as powdered tea with the monk Eisai around 1191, and as the steamed leaf style Nagatani Soen invented in 1738, which is the direct ancestor of nearly all Japanese green tea made now.

38 of the 65 teas in this category carry their own history note.

How it is made

Everything turns on stopping oxidation within hours of picking, and on how. China pan-fires in a heated wok, which adds a toasted chestnut note through direct contact with hot metal. Japan steams, which preserves the leaf’s marine and vegetal character and gives the vivid green colour. That single fork accounts for more of the difference between Chinese and Japanese green tea than climate, cultivar and altitude combined.

What it tastes like

Grassy, vegetal and marine at one end; nutty, toasted and chestnut-like at the other. Bitterness and astringency rise sharply with water temperature, which is why green tea has a reputation for being difficult — it is not fragile, it is simply the category least tolerant of boiling water.

Across the catalogue: 15 delicate, 44 moderate, 6 bold. Filter this category by taste

Where to start

Chosen for being forgiving rather than impressive — each tolerates an imprecise brew.

Hojicha
Roasty and gently sweet with essentially no astringency — the Japanese green tea for people who dislike green tea, and a common evening choice for exactly that reason.
How to brew it
Genmaicha
Toasted and comforting, with the rice doing most of the aromatic work. The story that it was a wartime economy measure is widely repeated and poorly evidenced; what is clear is that the rice reduces the cost per cup.
How to brew it
Longjing
Nutty and sweet with a soft body and very little grip. Where Japanese greens go marine and savoury, Longjing goes toasted and sweet — the clearest single illustration of what pan-firing does that steaming does not.
How to brew it
Sencha
Vegetal and savoury at once. Brewed cool it leans sweet and broth-like; brewed hot it turns sharply astringent, which is the single most common way people decide they dislike green tea.
How to brew it

Tools

Comparisons

Green tea styles compared — Five green teas spanning steamed and pan-fired, shaded and unshaded, roasted and fresh. The fixation method splits this category more than any origin does.
Chinese vs Japanese green tea — The largest single split inside green tea, and it is not about country. It is about whether the leaf was fixed with steam or with a hot pan.
Green tea vs black tea — The same plant, taken through opposite decisions about one step. Everything people believe distinguishes them — colour, strength, caffeine, delicacy — follows from whether oxidation was prevented or completed.
Oolong vs green tea — A comparison that only half works, because oolong is a territory rather than a point. A jade Tie Guan Yin sits close to green tea; a charcoal-roasted Wuyi rock tea is nowhere near it.
White tea vs green tea — Both are pale, both are described as delicate, and only one of them is. The real difference is that white tea is never fixed with heat, which changes both what it tastes like and how it should be brewed.
Matcha vs sencha — Both are Japanese green tea and only one of them is drunk as an infusion. The difference is not grind — it runs back to how the bushes were grown.
Sencha vs gyokuro — Identical processing, opposite cultivation. The whole difference is whether the bushes were covered before picking, and it changes almost everything about how the tea is brewed.
Hojicha vs genmaicha — Two toasty Japanese green teas sold side by side, whose toastiness comes from entirely different places. One is roasted after processing; the other has roasted rice blended into unroasted leaf, and the distinction changes what each is good for.
Matcha vs Gyokuro — Both are shaded Japanese green teas and both taste savoury rather than grassy. The difference is what happens after shading: one is steeped as leaf, the other de-stemmed, milled and drunk whole.
Longjing vs Anji Bai Cha — Two flat-leaf Zhejiang green teas that look similar and taste quite different. One difference is shaping; the other is a cultivar mutation that changes the chemistry of the leaf.
Sencha vs Longjing — The benchmark green tea of Japan against the benchmark green tea of China. One processing decision in the first hours after picking accounts for nearly everything that separates them.
Hojicha vs Bancha — Hojicha is made from bancha, so they are not alternatives so much as before and after. Roasting is the only step between them and it changes almost everything.

Guides for this category

What is green tea? — Tea whose oxidation is stopped before it starts, by heat applied within hours of picking. The method of heating — steam or pan — splits the category into two families that taste almost nothing alike.
Water temperature, and why it matters more in tea than in coffee — Temperature is the single most consequential variable in tea brewing, and the one most often got wrong. It is also the easiest to fix without buying anything.
Floral infusions — Infusions made from flowers rather than leaves, roots or fruit. A category defined by plant part, which makes it the most botanically coherent of the herbal groupings.
The origin of tea — Where tea comes from botanically is reasonably settled; where and when people started drinking it is much less so. The famous origin story is a legend, and the honest answer involves more uncertainty than most accounts admit.
Why roasted teas taste nutty — Sustained heat on finished leaf drives browning reactions that generate toasted, caramelised and nutty compounds — the same broad family of reactions that browns bread, and a completely separate step from oxidation.
Choosing your first tea — Named teas rather than categories, chosen by what you already drink. There is no single right first tea, and starting from what you like now works better than starting from what is celebrated.
From green tea beginner to enthusiast — A route through green tea in an order that builds, starting with the forgiving teas and reaching the demanding ones only once the brewing is under control.
Exploring Chinese tea styles — China produces all six categories, and the useful way in is by province and processing rather than by trying to work through a famous-tea list.
Exploring Japanese tea styles — Almost entirely green tea, almost entirely steamed, and organised around three variables: how long the leaf was steamed, whether the bushes were shaded, and which part of the plant you are drinking.
How tea is processed — Every one of the six categories comes from the same plant, and what separates them is a short sequence of decisions made in the hours and days after picking. Learn the sequence and the categories stop needing to be memorised.
Storing tea — Tea has four enemies — air, light, moisture and odour — and almost every storage mistake is one of them. The rules are simple, and one whole category needs the opposite of the main one.
Kettles, and getting to temperature — A variable-temperature kettle removes the most common brewing error. It is also entirely optional, and three free methods get you close enough that the difference is hard to taste.
Does tea go off? — Dry tea does not spoil in the way perishable food does, but it certainly fades, and the date printed on the packet is usually about flavour rather than anything else. Some teas are deliberately aged and get better.
How to read a tea label — Most of the words on a tea packet are unregulated, and a few of them are load-bearing. Knowing which is which is the difference between paying for a tea and paying for an adjective.
Making matcha at home — Powdered tea whisked into suspension rather than steeped and strained. The technique is genuinely different from every other tea, and most of what goes wrong is temperature and clumping rather than skill.
How to judge tea quality — Quality in tea is not one property and is not the same as price. Four things are worth assessing, three of them are free to check, and none of them is what the packet is likely to be talking about.
Why green tea tastes grassy — Because the fixation step preserves compounds that oxidation would otherwise transform — and because in Japanese tea, steaming preserves a different set of them than pan-firing does.
Tea vs herbal infusion — One plant against several hundred. The comparison is worth making carefully, because almost every generalisation about 'tea' fails the moment herbal infusions are included in it.
Tea steeping times explained — Steep time is the variable people reach for first and the one that fixes least. Understanding what it actually controls makes the other variables easier to use.
The mistakes that make tea taste bad — Almost all disappointing tea is one of six errors, and five of them cost nothing to fix. None of them is buying the wrong tea, which is where most people start looking.
How tea spread across Asia — Tea left China by several routes over many centuries, and what each destination received depended on when it arrived. That timing is why Japanese and Korean tea culture look so different from each other and from China’s.

Journeys through this category

Moving beyond tea bags — Someone comfortable with loose black tea who has never tried the other categories.
Exploring green tea — Someone who wants to understand green tea rather than tolerate it.
Discover Japanese tea — Someone who has had sencha or matcha and wants the rest of the picture.
Discover Chinese tea — Someone who wants the breadth of the country tea came from.
Understanding tea families — Someone who has heard there are six kinds of tea and wants to know what actually separates them.
Finding your first loose leaf tea — Someone ready to buy loose leaf and unsure which of the hundreds of names to start with.
Building a home tea setup — Someone who wants to buy equipment in the order that actually improves the cup.
I like coffee — A coffee drinker who finds most tea thin and wants something with body and roast.
Exploring scented tea — Someone who likes jasmine tea and suspects there is more to it than one product.
Learning to taste tea — Someone who can tell they like one tea more than another and cannot say why, and would like to be able to.

Caffeine: Caffeine varies far more with leaf material, leaf quantity and steeping than with the category itself. Shaded teas such as gyokuro and whole-leaf matcha sit at the higher end; stem-heavy teas such as kukicha sit lower. TeaHQ authors caffeine estimates for only 11 of 261 teas and does not infer them from category, because category predicts caffeine poorly.