When it comes to brewing your tea, there’s not necessarily the wrong way, says award-winning tea blender Steve Schwartz, author of Art of Tea: A Journey of Ritual, Discovery and Impact. However, there is a strategy to prepare a better experience for your tasters and to deliver a more beneficial cup.
Each variety of tea has a maximum point of “maturation” and a temperature at which it has the best taste and offers the maximum benefits. “The advantage of pulling tea at a set time is that you prevent it from reaching the ripening point of the past,” says Schwartz. Japanese green tea, for example, prefers lower water temperatures and shorter brewing times to produce the best flavor. Ooolong, on the other hand, can be soaked many times and continue to bring out these flavors and benefits.
So what happens when you leave your tea longer than recommended? According to Schwartz, this is nothing terrible. It just will not produce the best possible cup of tea. “You will definitely get more benefits the more you make a tea. You will get more flavonoids, polyphenols and catechins, but you will also get more caffeine and tannins, which can lead to a more bitter, unpleasant liquid as long as the leaves remain,” he says. Schwartz.
In less scientific terms, you will increase your intake of these immune-boosting compounds, which fight free radicals that are A + for your body, but you will also have less fun drinking your tea. (In addition, scientists have really studied short time and found that the benefits you get from tea actually reach a saturation point.) Conversely, if you leave your tea for a very short time, you may not consume it. of these flavonoids, and your tea will have a weaker, finer taste.
It’s really a balancing act, right? You want your tea to have a rich, delicious taste and you want it to benefit you. That’s why Schwartz recommends following two simple rules for the perfect cup of tea at a time. First: Invest in high quality whole leaf tea (when you can). These varieties have a higher concentration of benefits because they are not ground, and therefore have a higher nutritional profile. Matcha, for example, comes from a whole leaf of green tea and is potentially 137 times more potent than green tea.
Here’s all the benefits of drinking matcha:
Second, follow the instructions on the package for both short time and temperatures. (I know, I know: You like to rebel, but it’s there for a reason.) “We want people to have the best experience when they drink our tea, so we do rigorous testing – everything from excessive and underwater leaves “to play with different temperatures — to find what we think works best (generally 1-3 minutes), while understanding that there are a number of times and temperatures that people have to work with,” says Schwartz. a lot of thinking in these instructions will not seduce you.
One last note: “A steak comes out at the perfect temperature and roast that the chef deems optimal for enjoyment, and we like to think of tea in the same way. We believe that all teas should be served at optimal steep hours and temperatures for top enjoyment. “If this is not a microphone, I do not know what it is.”
Make your own herbal tea with a high iron content at home:
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