Silver Needle Full Moon

Use about 2 g of buds — the buds are light, so that is roughly three teaspoons — per 100 ml of water at 80 °C. Let it steep for two minutes, then strain. The same buds carry two more infusions: two minutes, then three.

Yes. Put about 1 g of buds per 100 ml into cold, soft water, leave it in the fridge for six to eight hours, then strain. Drink it as it is — no ice, no lemon: the tea is delicate and sweet enough on its own, and both would cover it up.

Water is almost everything that ends up in the cup, so its quality decides a large part of what you taste. Filter it if you can; without a filter, use a low-mineral spring water such as Volvic. Hard, strongly mineralised water makes the tea taste flat — the delicate floral and honey notes disappear behind the minerals, and what is left is dull and slightly chalky. On a white tea as fine as this one the difference is not subtle; the same buds can taste like two different teas.

We work with the Aarke Purifier, which turns even mediocre tap water into water worth drinking — but a simple filter jug does the job too. And the same applies to cold brew: filtered water, straight into the fridge.

Absolutely! And the second infusion is often the best one. Unlike the broken leaf in a supermarket tea bag, whole leaves need the first infusion just to open up, and they change as they go: bright and fragrant at first, then denser and sweeter, finally quiet and mineral. In Chinese gongfu cha, eight to fifteen infusions are perfectly normal. The steeping times for the later infusions are printed on the pouch.

Less than most people assume. What you taste as intensity comes from tannins, oxidation and roasted notes — caffeine itself is barely noticeable in the cup. A pale, gentle tea can carry more of it than a dark, robust one. That is why we show the two scales separately.

The reason lies in the plant. Caffeine is not there for our benefit but as a defence: the tea plant builds it to keep insects away from its youngest shoots. That is exactly where it sits most densely — in the bud and the top leaves, while older, tougher leaves hold less. A tea made from buds alone, pale in the cup and delicate on the palate, therefore often sits higher on the caffeine scale than a dark black tea. Variety, altitude, temperature and the moment of harvest all play their part, and so does the cup itself: how much leaf you use, how hot the water is and how long it steeps decide how much caffeine actually ends up in your brew.

The scale helps to put that in perspective. Depending on leaf and brew, a cup of tea sits somewhere between 10 and 70 milligrams of caffeine — at the bottom light infusions of stems and older leaves, at the top a generously dosed black tea from young leaf. A cup of coffee starts at around 90 milligrams and climbs to 200 and beyond, depending on bean, roast and dose. Coffee, in other words, begins roughly where tea leaves off.

The curious part: dry tea leaf holds a higher share of caffeine than a coffee bean does. What decides is not the content of the raw material but how much of it makes its way into the water — and that takes surface. A bean is ground; a whole leaf gives up only part of what it holds in two minutes of steeping. Which is exactly why matcha is the exception among teas: it is milled to a fine powder and not infused but drunk whole, leaf and caffeine together. A bowl of matcha therefore sits closer to coffee than to tea.

Keep the bag closed and store it dry, dark and away from strong smells. A cool spot at room temperature works better than the fridge.

No, this tea carries no organic seal — and that is down to cost, not to how it is grown. Certification is barely affordable for small gardens, and those are exactly the gardens the most remarkable teas come from. Jungpana Tea Estate sits at 1,600 metres in a secluded valley in Darjeeling and works without chemical pesticides. We have stood there and seen it. That commitment cannot be certified, but it can be tasted.

Your order is packed in Berlin and reaches you within two to four working days. Shipping within Germany is free from 69 €.

Then it's on us. Write to us within 30 days of delivery and you'll get your money back in full. Nothing needs to be sent back — keep the tea or pass it on.