Content:
Everybody knows about the advantages of green tea: people drink it to loose weight, to become younger looking and to treat some diseases. Unfortunately, few people know how to brew tea correctly.
If you think that daily tea drinking with boiling tap water and tea bags usage has beneficial effect on your metabolism, you are absolutely wrong.
Green tea brewing requires right approach. Of course, you don’t have to know the whole processes of a traditional tea ceremony in Japan and China as far as it takes a lot of time and effort. However, you will have to assimilate some important rules.
Green Tea
Let us discuss some peculiarities of green tea. Some people believe that green tea is a special sort of a tea plant. Well, both black and green or white tea may grow from the same tea plant. It depends on the growth stage and processing methods of tea leaves.
It is known that the tea plant throws out new buds regularly in the process of growth. New buds with 3 – 4 leaves, called flashes, are used to produce the most elite tea. Tea plant of middle age is for low – grade tea production. As to old leaves of tea plant, they serve to be raw material for the cheapest and widespread tea, called large leaved tea.
The quality of the end product depends on the process technology. You will get green or white tea if you dry a tea leaf or tea bugs quickly. In case leaves pass fermentation process, then we get black, yellow, red or dark – blue tea. The process of fermentation includes a stage of biologically active materials aging which lose all useful properties. It increases a consecration of tanning agents, known as carcinogenic substances.
Besides, green tea has anti-inflammatory, anticancer and antioxidant effect. It stores a maximum of biologically active materials. For instance: green tea contains 10 times more vitamin C than black tea. As to black tea, it’s much easier to get all useful properties by filling it up with boiling water.
Now, let’s learn how to brew green tea properly.
Good Water
You will need soft water. It’s not recommended to use tap water full of different admixtures. To solve this problem, you can buy bottled spring or artesian water or you can soften tap water by using a special filter.
Another method to soften tap water is to put a bottle into freezer. When you see 2cm ice on the walls of the bottle, pour out the rest of water and let the ice melt. After that you can use melted water to brew tea.
Good kettle
A kettle should be heated. You can parboil it, otherwise, the cold kettle takes away a part of the warmth for brewing, and it can spoil the first brew. All useful microelements and essential oils just don’t have enough time to exude.
It is better to take earthenware kettle to let tea leaves breathe. Moreover, clay is chemically neutral and retains heat. Apart from earthenware kettle, you can use porcelain, pottery or glass ware to brew green tea. Unfortunately, such materials don’t let leaves breathe. Keep in mind that it’s not recommended to use metal or plastic ware to brew green tea.
Proper Boiling Water
If you want to brew a real healing drink, then don’t let water boil. (Water boils at 100ºC). It is enough to heat water up to 95ºC. Try to define proper temperature by external evidences: you will see bubbles – that means it’s time to take the water off the fire. Let it cook for a while and you will get a perfect temperature to brew tea (between 60ºC – 90ºC ). If the water is too hot, it damages all useful properties of tea leaves.
Proper Process
Well, the water and kettle are ready and now it’s time to brew your green tea according to all the rules:
- Fill the kettle with green tea leaves. Cover it with water and pour it out at once.
- Then fill the kettle with required amount of water (about 1 teaspoon of leaves to half glass of water). It is recommended to follow the instruction on a tea package). If there are not any comments, then brew it for 3 minutes. In case tea brewing takes a lot of time, then it has a bitter taste. Now pour the tea in a cup. If you cool several portions, then fill the cups gradually, cup by cup in order to reach identical taste. Now you can enjoy pleasant and healthy tea drinking.
Useful Properties
- One should know that green tea may be brewed a lot of times. Tea leaves lose their useful properties each time after new brewing. Thus, it’s recommended to brew tea 3 – 4 times.
- Don’t pay attention to tea color as various sorts of teas have different colors – from transparent to a honey – amber color.
- Never drink cool cold green tea with the aim of general condition improvement, as far as such tea loses all properties our body requires.
- Keep dry green tea in a non – transparent hermetic ware (canisters, wooden boxes). Don’t use paper packages and boxes since tea loses its flavor.
- If you want to increase the use of green tea leaves, then add some sugar in a container with the tea as it raises the amount of water soluble glycosides to prevent any colds and strengthen one’s immune system.
Now you know how to brew green tea properly. Drink it with pleasure and brew the specific amount of tea you are able to drink. Green tea should be warm or hot. Add some milk or sugar to taste.
Be healthy!
