I love it when a tea comes without fuss. Pure Leaf Gunpowder Green Tea arrives in a jar or pouch filled to the brim with curled gunpowder green tea leaves. And that’s it! No frills here.
In this tea review, I’ll give you an overview of why this gunpowder tea is one of my highest rated, what exactly gunpowder green tea is all about, and a recommendation of where to buy this tea.
Put your feet up and get ready to feel calm. This is a super soothing and delicate tea to enjoy.
Pure Leaf Gunpowder Tea at a Glance
- Tea: Loose whole leaf gunpowder green tea from Indonesia
- Flavour: Smooth and delicate green tea with very refreshing grass and floral notes
This tea not only tastes good, but it leaves you feeling good. It’s very refreshing and calming, as well as low caffeine, so it’s great for after dinner.
Full Review – Loose Gunpowder Green Tea
- Type: Curled loose whole leaf
- Tea: Gunpowder green tea
- Origin: Indonesia
- Flavour Notes: Grass, hay, refreshing, floral
- Aroma: Green, astringent, smoke, floral
- Milk or Lemon: Neither
- Where to Buy: Amazon UK
The jar is foil sealed, as you can see in my tea photography, and that really helps to lock in the fresh green aroma of the dried tea leaves. I also noted something slightly smoky and slightly bitter about the initial aroma, but these qualities disappear fast.
I really love the little curled whole leaves, typically of gunpowder tea style. Pure Leaf Gunpowder tea is very uniform.
You’ll love the golden clear colour tea liquor it brews into. The mouthfeel is quite thick, and the bubbles hold on the surface of the tea. It coats your mouth nicely.
As for the flavour and aroma of the brewed tea, it’s floral but not overpoweringly so. It’s a natural quirk of the Indonesian origin, rather than added perfume. The astringency is very low and there’s a mix of grass and hay notes rather than one or the other. The aftertaste is long-lasting too.
Overall, it left me feeling cleansed, refreshed and with the focus I needed to write this tea review!
How to Brew Gunpowder Green Tea
Pure Leaf suggest using boiling water, but that’s crazy. This is a green tea, so use water at 80°C instead. I weighed out 1.5g, which is just over one teaspoon, and brewed it for 3 minutes in 200ml of water. This creates the best result.
If you’re brewing a large mug or 1-2 person teapot, use two teaspoons and take a sip after 3 minutes – it might need a minute more. Use glass teaware so you can see the leaves unfurl beautifully.
As for what to eat with it, I would recommend this as an after-dinner tea. It’s refreshing, so good for cleansing the palate.
Why Pure Leaf Green Tea?
Pure Leaf seem to be moving away from loose leaf tea and towards brewed/bottled tea instead, especially in the USA. I think that’s a real shame because their loose leaf and even pyramid sachet teas are fantastic.
Gunpowder green tea is traditionally a Chinese tea. The gunpowder element refers to the method of rolling the large leaves so they look like little gunpowder pellets. Pure Leaf Gunpowder Green Tea is a perfect example of this, except the tea is from Indonesia instead of China.
I love that Pure Leaf even write fragrant and delicate on the outer packaging, giving you an idea of what qualities this single origin tea has. Not many mainstream tea companies do that.
Summary
I highly recommend this tea, it’s a fantastic green tea to try. It’s good for beginners to, with no crazy bitterness or unusual flavours to detect. Smooth, simple, and delicate. Find this high quality gunpowder tea on Amazon UK using the button below or link above.
Tea Recommendation
Gunpowder tea is just one type of many different kinds of tea. I’ve reviewed quite a few over the years. If you’re interested in learning more about tea or finding a new tea type to try, head to my Tea Review Index. This is where all my teas are organised by category. You can also use the search bar in our website menu to hunt down a specific tea here at Immortal Wordsmith.