These are the tea leaves:
Honestly, the leaves look like maggots wriggling from the picture.
But they don't really look as gross as the photo.
For comparison, this is the frontier organic gunpowder:
(Fried onion rings, anyone?)
After you open it, the smell of the raw tea leaves is quite nice. The tin itself is quite suitable for keeping tea even after you open the aluminum foil. Nevertheless, green tea is not as fermented as e.g. black tea so you don’t want to keep it longer than necessary to ensure freshness.
Back to the brewing instructions, some will tell you the ideal temperature for brewing is e.g. 70 degree Celsius or that you should e.g. immerse the leaves for only 8~12 seconds. Personally, I am not so much a connoisseur so I normally use whatever temperature of hot water I have in my water dispenser. If the brewing time is given, I try to follow where feasible (since seconds and minutes are quite different!)
For this first try, I followed the brewing instructions for temperature and time. I used around 2 teaspoons (10ml spoon) of tea leaves to make 2x1.5 8 oz cups of tea. This is the “ideal” amount of tea leaves I have been tweaking for my Frontier gunpowder tea so I am using the same for Twinings. [Taste is subjective though so you have to find your own optimal amount of tea leaves to use for your preferred tea strength]
And this is the brewed tea:
The fragrance of the brewed tea is quite mild. You have to put your nose to the tea to smell anything. The color is yellow like yellow urine (oops) but then again, many teas have this yellow color.
Taste-wise, it is mild (it did say 1 out of 5 leaves for flavor strength on the tea tin). However, it is a very smooth tea (not oily smooth but clean smooth). I probably need to increase the tea leaves/brewing time to brew Twinings though (compared with Frontier).
Edit: I really need to add more leaves - my tea is already pretty tasteless for round 2.
All said, I will still consider it a decently good tea. For those new to green tea, it is a good tea to start with. This is only a small 100g tin anyway so it won't be too big a loss if you don't like it.
ps - I have finally unraveled the mystery. They count each emoticon used as 1 picture... no wonder I can never get 8
real pictures in!
Edit: I just noticed the unfurled tea leaves. The Twinings one got holes in the leaves one... I don't think I ever noticed holes in the Frontier one. I will try remember to brew the Frontier one tmr and check for holes. *gasp*
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