THE COLORS OF OUR TEAS – A FAST AND FRIENDLY GUIDE TO TEA SORTS
By
Dean Fankhauser
Posted
Tuesday Dec 2021
Read Time
4 Minutes
Our score
Tea comes altogether types of shapes, sizes, and colors, starting from the ethereal and mysterious Moonlight White tea to the made and earthy Lao Liu Bao dark tea. to understand the variety of this superb portable, let’s take a glance at a number of the additional well-known classes of Chinese tea.
Perhaps the 2 most typical styles of tea notable in the West are inexperienced and black teas. we tend to owe our familiarity with these tea sorts partially to their prevalence in even the smallest amount dear of tea luggage.
Green Tea
Green teasare made up of tea leaves that seem as if they need to be been fresh, recently plucked. this can be created doable by fastidiously and quickly exposing the leaves to heat that shuts down their catalyst activity, an identical activity that causes the leaves to start out dynamic color if left alone.
This catalyst activity is additionally what causes your fruits — like avocado or banana — to start out browning. Between the pigment content and different phytochemicals, one will notice associate infusion that varies anyplace between virtually clear to deep inexperienced.
Black Tea
Black teas are at the other finish of the catalyst spectrum from inexperienced teas. Whereas the aim of making tea leaf is to prevent catalyst activity, once creating a matcha tea, associate journeyman typically aims to push it to its limits. this can be achieved through bouts of cooking and intense efforts to tear, crush, and bruise the leaves. The results far, a lot of darker infusion that contains a heavier flavor with colors which will vary from bright red to dark brown.
Within the class of inexperienced teas is another quite tea that most likely deserves a category of its own, yellow tea. they’re related to the class of inexperienced teas within the graphic higher than as a result of they’re crafted terribly equally to inexperienced teas and even share in similar flavor profiles.
The most vital distinction between tea leaf and yellow is that crafting yellow tea needs an additional, effortful step that causes the tea to oxidize a touch longer than tea leaf. attributable to this extra method, yellow teas tend to be mellower and sweeter than inexperienced teas, and that they are additional resilient in terms of the period of time.
In distinction with yellow tea, purple teas are a touch trickier to classify, creating up a sort of unusual person class of tea. It’s technically a tea leaf. In fact, what provides purple tea its color is an extraordinarily high quantity of a naturally-occurring pigment referred to as anthocyanin, the identical pigment that creates blueberries blue and black rice purple.
In lightweight of the higher than, it would be best to consider “purple” as the addition of a “bolt-on” property to teas, as purple tea will be crafted into any quite tea. when tasting totally different types, we actually fell dotty with these Long Yuan Purple Buds tea leaf. If you’ve ne’er had the chance, this can be an ideal place to start out so as to check what’s therefore totally different regarding purple tea.
Thanks to the increase in quality of loose leaf teas, additional individuals have begun to become aware of white teas and teachers further. not like inexperienced and black teas, the primary step in crafting a white tea is to naturally whether the leaves.
This typically means that putting the tea leaves in a region that permits the sun to dry them out. sadly, machine withering with heated blowers is changing into progressively standard, however, we tend to continually select our white teas are created in accordance with ancient ways.
The tea class of teas makes up a number of the foremost various and saporous teas in the world. the rationale for this has a lot of {to do|to try to |to try associated do} with the actual fact that there’s a far broader vary for what counts as a tea.
Whereas inexperienced teas don’t seem to be modified in any respect and black teas are absolutely modify, oolongs will lie anyplace between those 2 extremes. {this is|this is often|this will be} why a number of them (such as Floral Tieguanyin) tend to seem as inexperienced because the most vivid of tea leaf leaves whereas others (such as Huang gallinaceous bird Yin) can look virtually as dark as a tea.
One form of puerh, referred to as sheng puerh or raw puerh, is crafted equally to inexperienced teas. it’s typically pan-fried, sun-dried, so ironed into cakes with the intent that they keep foraging. though these teas develop unimaginable depth of flavor over time, they’ll and are enjoyed as early joined wishes.
Another form of puerh, referred to as Shu Puerh or ripe puerh, is forced to mature and ferment at a quicker rate of speed by column up the tea leaves so watching them in a very controlled surroundings that contain a temperature and wetness level good for aging.
Once they’re prepared, they’re then ironed into cakes, awaiting enjoyment by the seasoned tea drinker. Shu puerhs tend to be darker, heartier, and earthier in flavor than sheng puerhs, that are typically crisper and fruitier.