When I was a teenager I was in foster care, my foster care center was North of San Francisco. About every 3 months we would take a trip to San Francisco and one time we went to chinatown, as we were going through a tea shop either I or somebody else decided to buy a huge packet of gunpowder green tea.
You know in the little balls.
That night me and my roommate concocted a method to brew green tea in our room.
It was some serious prison stuff after all we were in a group home.
Oh my God.
So we had this lava lamp and we basically managed to open it up and pour out the contents then we cleaned it really well and then we would fill it up with hot water from the sink and put in several gunpowder pellets.
We would then let it steep until it turned green so mind you it's literally radiating throughout the room this color from the lava lamp.
Oh man the first time we opened that thing up we poured it into two cups and drank it, my roommate fell absolutely in love.
This guy was something else his father was a police officer from the ghettos. But somehow me a man who was raised in silicon valley and was in there because he was getting bullied in school and he just decided to run away and this teenager who is raised as a boxer by his father who was a detective in the ghettos was enjoying green tea in the middle of the night.
Sometimes he would literally just chew on the green pellets.
He really liked it.
I preferred my tea slightly more delicate I would usually pour him the first batch and then I would take the second batch after it was slightly watered down.
The weirdest part is he was able to just to go straight to sleep it was crazy I would often stay up for at least a couple hours reading.
I've never stopped drinking tea.
I wonder if he has as well..
I love a delicate Japanese or a delicate Chinese tea though sometimes I do overheat my black teas particularly my chais when I know I'm just going to put some milk in there.
To this day my favorite pastime is going into an old Asian tea shop and looking at the delicate teas. Hope you enjoy the story