How I make an awesome cup of green tea

Here is the way I make green tea. Although there are extremely complex and fetishized methods of brewing tea that are culturally diverse and amazing to watch, the only goal I have here is to make a rocking cup of drinking tea.

You need:

A little more than a teaspoon of green tea,
this isn't exact as some teas are tight (gunpowder) and other are wide and take up more space (dragon well), so a teaspoon of dragon well is actually less tea than a teaspoon of gunpowder

Water
I use tap from our well, just make sure it doesn't smell chemically or otherwise off.

A thermometer
Lots of folks don't go this far but if you are new to tea brewing it is worth it, 10 degrees makes a big difference with non-black tea.

A glass container
At best, a french press, in a pinch, a pint glass. Glass is great with green teas because it doesn't hold heat long and keeps the tea from getting too hot when it is brewing.

Some sort of strainer
I use top hat strainers mostly. If you are using a vessel with a strainer (a french press, some tea pots) this is not needed. Never use tea-balls they compress the tea and it leaves you open for too many jokes "Hey man, nice tea-balls!"

Step 1- heat the water to 175
I use the Utilitea from Adagio (I'm going to review this sometime, but it's great). Regardless if you are using that or a tin can and blowtorch, get the water to 175 and confirm it with you thermometer.

Step 2- Put your tea in your glass container
One tea spoon of good loose leaf should be fine for a mug/2 small tea cups

Step 3- Pour the water over the tea (important)
Don't add the water to the tea, add the tea to the water. Pour the water towards the side of the vessel and this will create a little whirlpool effect pushing the leaves on top to the bottom and the leaves from the bottom to the top. the point here is to make sure that all the leaves get completely wet at approximately the same time. You never want dry leaves floating at the top.

Step 4- Allow the tea to sit for 90 seconds to 2 minutes of so then remove the leaves.
This isn't as important as the temperature, but time it if you want

This should leave you with a great cup of green tea, it will be too hot to drink just now so wait a few minutes, smell it brewing, then sip. If you are using good leaves (and there is no excuse not too, as rebrewing is cheaper than using crap leaves or a tea bag) follow the same steps but use water that is a little cooler (165-170). The leaves are already open so you don't need as much heat to brew them the 2nd or 3rd time. I usually get 3+ brews out of green tea, it matters what type and quality.