Favourite Teas?

Just curious - anyone got any favourite teas they'd like to tell us about?

Hi Oolong,

My favorite tea is "comfrey" tea. It not only tastes good but has a slight relaxing effect. I used to grow it in my yard. It produces large leaves about a foot long and wide which could be dried and used for making tea. Others use it for medicinal purposes.

Last year I decided to buy some and spent endless hours on the internet to no avail. A few persons drank it by the gallons, ruined their liver of kidneys and died and in the USA it was taken off the market.

Finally, a health food store that I frequent sold me some bulk dried and crushed leaves (designed to be mixed in water and used as fertilizer for plants). I bought a 10 years supply while the getting was good. It makes good tea, but it has to be put in boiling water since it hardly gets wet in a dripolator.

I really haven't tried many others other than the store shelf 'Lipton tea'.

Harry

Thanks for that, Harry.

I'd vaguely heard of comfrey tea, but never really heard much about it.

As you may be aware, it is a source of some distress to tea-lovers around the world that a high proportion of Americans have only ever consumed what Lipton sell as 'tea', or close equivalents. For me, it's especially depressing because I know that up until World War II tea was not only more popular, but most of the tea consumed in the US was green (40%) or oolong (20%)! And now you get mass-produced fannings. Hey ho.

I was reading about the early history of Lipton just the other day, as it happens - started out as an unusually successful grocer from Glasgow, an early story of the triumph of advertising; sold goods cheaply, advertised the fact widely, and managed to open 400 branches of Lipton's grocers before he even went into selling tea. When he did go into tea, he sold 4 million pounds of it in his first year, 6M in the second, opened up the market for Ceylon tea to such effect that his company was virtually synonymous with it in the space of a few years.

Well Oolong, Lipton tea is pretty ho-hum taste wise. In fact without sugar or
sacharin I can't drink it straight. It tastes like oak leaves would probably taste. (I threw that in so you wouldn't think I had ever had oak leaf tea.)

Your interest in tea is contagious. I will probably make up some of the specialty blends that my wife is forever bringing home. I need to do something. I quit alcoholic beverages about 10 years ago because I always abused the usage. Now, though retired, it wouldn't matter, but I have too many projects underway all the time to afford the downtime. I want to translate 2 books into many more languages and provide an interactive hyperlinked table of contents. This is most difficult when dealing with a foreign language.

Anyway, I now drink about one 2 liter bottle of diet coke a day out of habit and tea just might be a good alternative.

You mention "green tea". Why is it called that? Are the dried leaves still green, or they just not dried out as much or what? In the US what tea would you recommend that actually tastes good without sugar?

cheers,
harry

Hi Harry,

Green tea is so-called because the leaves are indeed greenish - especially after brewing, the difference from 'black' tea (the leaves of which are typically dark brown after brewing) is very obvious.

All tea has to be almost completely dry (no more than about 3% moisture) before it's transported, or it spoils - the differences between green tea, oolong and black tea are all in what happens before it's dried, and to a lesser extent how it's dried. Green tea is dried quickly (as is white tea), sometimes having been steamed first to gently break down cell walls and facilitate the drying process. Oolong tea is typically 'bruised' by being agitated, again breaking down cell walls, but because it is not immediately dried out after this. chemical processes start to take place in the leaves - most notably oxidation, which has a range of important effects. Black tea is bruised more severely and consistently, generally by being rolled, and is dried slowly to allow it to oxidise more-or-less completely.

As for coke vs tea - healthwise, tea is undoubtedly a better option; it contains a range of actively healthy components, most importantly its antioxidant polyphenols... but also a fair bit of caffeine! There are many very good teas available in the US, or so I'm told - you might like to check out these reviews of online vendors. I predictably recommend oolong teas - you can generally make them quite strong without making them bitter, and they have qutie a bit more caffeine per cup than green tea, while being something like as healthy. You could also try high-quality black teas; Darjeeling, decent Ceylon and even large-leaf Assam teas are all fine without milk or sugar (although it's arguable that Assams are better with), as are Chinese black teas like Keemun.

Thanks Oolong for the reply.
I printed out some of that post and will try a few of the "green" teas because the American teas (the name brands) are all brown.
regards.
harry