Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

I originally ordered this because I wanted the benefits and delicious taste of high quality, organic, ceremonial-grade matcha, without the negative effects that can come with the caffeine! I feel that becoming overly dependent on caffeine to feel energized is a huge problem in America, and was very excited to find that there was only brand that met these requirements: Takes all the guesswork out of it! :) Prior to this, I had been drinking Numi's Ceremonial grade daily for the past few months... I've tried other kinds of matcha, but as far as quality goes, you can't get much better than Numi. The quality shows up easily in the pleasant bright green color of it! After trying this tea, and also quite literally putting the powders side by side, I could tell absolutely no difference as far as taste and texture of this brand versus Numi's; That definitely would have been a dealbreaker for me if I had to choose between good flavor versus no caffeine. Naturally, when I start to love a certain food or plant, I'll read all I can about it. I was fascinated to find out about tannins in green tea, and their protein binding properties. The way I understand it, in most teas, including camellia sinensis, tannins act as an antinutrient, thus making it harder for your body to break down and fully utilize proteins. This is a problem to me, because I usually blend my matcha with grass fed milk and marine collagen peptides (both pretty solid protein sources). In addition, these tannins can raise the acidity of your stomach, giving you acid reflux! ("OH! That's where that came from!" she realizes as she flashes back to her daily matcha habit and recent stomach acidity problems. LOL. I wish I was making this up.) I started doing more investigating, and found an article that states "Studies show that 80 Celsius is the sweet spot. It’s hot enough to extract the tannins, but not so hot it changes them (check out a previous post about the ideal temperature to steep green tea). One study shows that if you steep green tea in 80 Celsius water for 20 minutes, you will extract 100% of the tannins." Holy moly! So, in other words, the same hot water method that is used to extract the caffeine, may also be ridding (or probably similarly to the caffeine content, significantly reducing) tannin levels in the green tea! I loosely researched the temperature that is used to remove caffeine from the method stated here, and it appears that it is right around the same temperature: 80 degrees C = 176 degrees F, and the temperature I found used for this method is 180 degrees F. SO... In short? This tea might be a win-win-win, or at the very least, a lot better than the caffeinated alternatives out there! I would be extremely curious to know if there is a way to test for reduced tannin levels in this matcha versus others, but in the meantime I will definitely be sticking to this brand, not only for manageable caffeine levels, but also for the tannin reduction, and, most importantly... That classic Matcha taste we all know and love! Health yeah! :) -Tessa Rae, @restorationpioneer