Why I Drink 1: Caffeine

This is to be the first post of a recurring theme here at the TTB: why I drink tea. I'm covering Caffeine first because its a big part of a lot of people's lives. Caffeine is a staple in both of the big morning drinks (the other being coffee), as well as in soda drinks. So what draws us to this particular chemical?

Caffeine can be found naturally in coffee, tea, guarana and various other plants. Discovered originally by a German chemist, Friedrich Ferdinand Runge, it acts as a natural pesticide in plants. Human consumption of caffeine, however, dates back much further then this.

Caffeine in mild doses has a fairly wide variety of effects including increase alertness, and increased tolerance for labor (mental and physical) , and decreased drowsiness. Its easy to see with these effects why beverages which have caffeine naturally would be popular in breakfast drinks.

Cheers - Teb

The Mug Matters

I've noticed recently in my tea consumption that the device from which I drink can have a huge impact on my overall experience. I have one cup that I really like, but there are a few mugs in my house that I use, but end up enjoying my brew noticeably less. I think this is mostly a visual phenomenon, all of the cups I don't like have colored interiors, as opposed to the white ones on the mugs I do like. I like to see the color of the tea when I'm drinking, be it amber, green, yellow, or what have you, seeing the beverage as the color it actually is makes a difference. This really hit me when I bought a tea thermos because I could no longer see the liquid at all as I drank. Its incredibly convenient, but it's just strange at the same time.

Cheers - Tyler

Dig This Green Tea Recently

I woke up at 11:00 today in desperate need of caffeine, and the tin which holds my strongest black tea has been empty for the last week, so I grabbed my strongest green tea instead, which has really been habit since the black ran out. It got me thinking about the difference between the four main flavors of tea - white, black, green, oolong - here is what I learned:

These four kinds of tea are from the same plant - Camellia sinensis. The difference is how they are processed. The two major factors are letting the leaves wilt, and letting the leaves oxidize, it breaks down like this:

Green - wilted and unoxidized
Black - wilted and fully oxidized
White - unwilted and unoxidized
Oolong - wilted and partially oxidized

Both the wilting and oxidizing process will happen naturally after the leaves are picked. Wilting happens first and after the leaves have wilted they begin to oxidize. These processes can be stopped by drying the leaves, this means that white teas are dried earlier then other teas, and black teas are dried after the longest amount of time.

The two most commonly consumed teas are green and black, and there has been a good deal of research into the health benefits of tea with green usually beating out black in overall health benefits, because it is less decayed and thus has more of the anti-oxidant found in tea. This means of the major teas white is the healthiest, black should be the least beneficial to your health. However more recent research suggests that the more fermented/wilted/oxidized tea has different health benefits, but some that are equally powerful, because of a substance called Theaflavin & Thearubigins.

So regardless of what kind of tea you choose, take solace that it is doing your body good!

Cheers - Tyler

An Introduction to the Quest

I already drink tea. I already enjoy tea. I have a cup in the morning, and a cup at night. Sometimes I have a cup at midday. I can tell you if I like a tea, or if I don't like a tea. I can tell you that Lipton tea is not so good, and that Tzao tea is better. If you lived in Salt Lake I could recommend you to a variety of good tea shops. But with all this tea drinking I could not claim to be a tea connoisseur. I do not know what makes some teas better or worse then others; I know very little about the process by which tea is made; I know even less about how to best unlock the flavors of any given tea. I know that there are black, white, and green teas, but not what makes them different, or what makes them all tea.

The point of my Quest is to learn what I don't know about tea. This blog will catalog my new found knowledge. It will be about tasting and sampling, it will be about history, it will be delicious, and it will be a good source of anti-oxidants. As you glean from what I have learned I hope we will both better understand, appreciate, and enjoy the finest of hot beverages.