Coffee 2 Tea

In today’s market, a vast number of retailers are happy to jump on the organic bandwagon. To that end, they label their products as organic just to pique the interest of eco-conscious shoppers. Playing to the trends, this kind of marketing is actually quite harmful to the organic market overall. This is because people who purchase something marked as “organic” expect that the product was made in a humane, sustainable, and eco-friendly manner.

If the product, then, doesn’t conform to those standards, people can become jaded about the organic market as a whole. If this is something that you’re concerned with, make sure that the products you purchase are certified as organic. This certification helps increase the likelihood that the product was actually created in a manner that you’re happy with. This is particularly important when it comes to food or drinks, because organic products can actually be safer for you to consume. So always make sure to drink certified organic tea if you want your brewed beverage in the morning to be sustainable and healthy.

While there are thousands of different tea varieties, one tends to stand out as the most often quaffed.  While Earl Grey tea is popular around the world, the black tea from which Earl Grey is derived is the favorite amongst dozens of different cultures.  Earl Grey tea is standard black tea complete with the addition of bergamot oil, which gives the tea its natural citrus taste.  But black tea had been around for centuries upon centuries before the invention of Earl Grey tea.  While the exact location is not known, most speculate that black tea was first invented somewhere in ancient China, Mongolia, or Tibet.  The tea was renowned for retaining is flavor for several years, and was even used as a dye for clothing at some points throughout history.  Black tea accounts for more than 90% of all tea sold in the West.

While green tea has seen a revival in demand because of its renowned health benefits, black tea is still the choice of millions of people around the world.  In addition, black tea has a more distinct flavor and you can find premium discount tea due to its widespread availability. You can even find many tantalizing varieties of flavored black tea online or in your local grocery store.

For years, tea has always been an exotic drink to refresh the mind and body after a tough day’s work. Whenever you feel like you want to relax your mind and regain your spirits, tea is the ideal beverage to take. Tea is also known to detoxify and has been used as a medicine because of its therapeutic benefits.

In many countries, tea has been simply a drink that you can make in any ordinary mug. But to enjoy tea better, the proper setting is filling the hot tea on yixing teapots and place them on a nice table including china cups and saucers if available. Tea should always be served on a pot because it captures the flavor and smell of the brew for a much longer time. Since a ceramic tea pot can come in interesting designs and color, you and your guest can make nice conversations about the elegance of these tea pots while enjoying your cup of tea.

Enjoying a hot, soothing beverage in the comfort of your own home can be just what the doctor called for. Spend a quiet evening sipping delicious tea and experience the magic of figuratively leaving everything behind. For a few moments, let your mind clear itself of all the day’s stresses. Close your eyes and inhale the fragrant aromas from your tea cup.

Let the soothing smell of tea infuse your senses with well-being. There is a wide selection of beverages to choose from that are sure to satisfy your discriminating tastes. You can get quality custom tea blends, gourmet chai in various flavors and combinations, fruit tisanes, and a whole lot more.

While many people might only be familiar with chai by virtue of Starbucks, actual masala chai has been around a lot longer than that global institution. The word chai simply means tea, and this verbiage is used in many areas of the world. Masala chai, therefore, can be roughly translated as spiced tea. Chai tea had its origins in India, and it can be understood as a mixture of brewed tea and aromatic herbs and spices.

In the western world, chai most often comes in the form of a chai latte. This indicates that steamed milk has been flavored with concentrated chai rather than the typical espresso that flavors lattes. Alternate names for this type of beverage also include chai tea latte. While this tea today is viewed entirely as a treat on cold, rainy days, the original use was actually more medicinal. To that end, this and other teas were used to treat and prevent various remedies in many places of South Asia.

Tea plants have grown wild in the Assam region since antiquity, but historically, South Asians viewed tea as an herbal medicine rather than a recreational beverage. Some of the chai masala spice mixtures in current use are still derived from Ayurvedic medical texts.

In the 1830s, the British East India Company became concerned about the Chinese monopoly on tea, which constituted most of its trade and supported the enormous consumption of tea in Great Britain, approximately one pound (by weight) per person per year. British colonists had recently noticed the existence of the Assamese tea plants, and now began to cultivate tea plantations locally. Over 90% of the tea consumed in Great Britain was still of Chinese origin in 1870, but by 1900, this percentage had dropped to 10%, largely replaced by tea grown in India (50%) and Ceylon (33%).

However, consumption of tea within India remained low until an aggressive promotional campaign by the (British-owned) Indian Tea Association in the early 20th century, which encouraged factories, mines, and textile mills to provide tea breaks for their workers. It also supported many independent chai wallahs throughout the growing railway system.

The official promotion of chai tea was as served in the English mode, with small added amounts of milk and sugar. The Indian Tea Association initially disapproved of independent vendors’ tendency to add spices and greatly increase the proportions of milk and sugar, thus reducing their usage (and thus purchases) of tea leaves per liquid volume. However, masala chai in its present form has now firmly established itself as a popular beverage, not just outlasting the British Raj but spreading beyond South Asia to the rest of the world.

While coffee has been the predominant morning beverage in American culture for centuries, many people have begun to make the switch over to tea. One of the main advantages to tea is that there are varying caffeine levels between varietals. You can find numerous tea options, all of which have a distinct flavor profile.

Black teas have a strong taste and the highest caffeine content among teas, while greens are more delicate in flavor and have relatively low caffeine levels. There are also many caffeine-free herbal tea on the market that have unique and exotic flavors. Some of the most common are chamomile and lemongrass.

If you love coffee, here’s some of the latest good news.

• A study of 90,000 Japanese by the National Cancer Center in Tokyo found that people who drank one to four cups of coffee daily had half the liver cancer risk of those who never drank coffee. Researchers aren’t sure why, but they speculate that antioxidants may play a role.

• A study by researchers at the Harvard School of Public Health that followed more than 125,000 men and women for more than a decade found that regular coffee drinkers had a significantly lower risk of developing type 2 (or late-onset) diabetes. Studies in Sweden and Finland also concluded that coffee consumption offers protection from type 2 diabetes. Again, researchers aren’t sure why.

• A half-dozen recent international studies showed a positive relationship between drinking caffeinated beverages — including coffee — and lower rates of Parkinson’s disease and Alzheimer’s disease.

• Other research links coffee consumption with reduced risk of cirrhosis of the liver, colon cancer and asthma.

• A cup or two of coffee can improve endurance in activities such as running, cycling and swimming, according to other research. Coffee has a strong ergogenic effect, meaning it helps people work harder and longer, explains Lawrence Spriet, an exercise physiologist at the University of Guelph who has researched the effects of caffeine on athletic performance for more than a decade. “Even small amounts of caffeine can be quite powerful,” he says.

BARISTA: The Italian name for the master of the espresso machine.

BITTERNESS: A catchall term used to express displeasure with the taste of coffee. Coffee is naturally bitter, but should not be unpleasantly so. When the natural bitterness of caffeine is removed in decaffeinated coffee, the flavour balance is thrown off, bitterness becomes unpleasant when coffee is under-roasted, highlighting its chlorogenic acid, or when it is overheated on a burner.

BLEND: A mixture of beans from different parts of the world and sometime at different roasts, as opposed to a straight coffee, which is coffee from one region. A roaster usually has secret recipes for signature house blends.

BODY: a tasting tem to describe the weight of coffee on the palate. Paper filtered coffee is typically light in body; coffee brewed through a metal screen, as in a plunger pot and in all espresso, typically has more viscous and at sometime syrupy body. Beans themselves have different degrees of body depending on  where they are grown and on  their species, Arabica beans have lower body than robusta beans.

BOILER: The small tank in an espresso machine used to heat water and steam milk. Room temperature water for espresso is drawn by pump directly from the reservoir through a copper pipe that travels through the boiler before delivering the hot water to the filter holder.

BOURBON: A hallowed variety of the Arabica species, named for the French island colony off Africa (today Reunion) where it once grew. Bourbon, the basis of the Latin American trade for hundreds of years, is an impractical choice for a farmer, today, because its yield is one-third to one-half that of many newer Arabica  varieties. Because connoisseurs prize its flavours and willing to pay more for bourbon trees where they were torn out or abandoned.

BRICK PACK: Coffee beans or, more frequently, ground coffee that has , in effect, been shrink wrapped in thin plastic bags. Brick packs, which save both the price mental for cans and storage space, were developed in Germany the 1950’s but only decades later came into wide use in the United States. They are no better than a can for preserving flavour, because both storage methods require that the coffee first be degassed.

What is Caffeine? It is an alkaloid found naturally in such foods as coffee beans, tea, kola nuts, Yerba maté, guarana, and (in small amounts) cacao beans. Caffeine is created in plants as a form of pesticide, to kill of insects feeding on them. In its true form caffeine is a whitish-yellow powder substance, bitter in taste.

Caffeine’s main drug producing effects are: a stimulant that affect the central nervous system, effect the supply of oxygen to cells, the heart rate, and is a mild diuretic. Some studies show that small amounts of caffeine may increase our cognitive functioning and improve our mood.

One common source of caffeine is the coffee plant, the beans from which are used to produce coffee. Caffeine content varies substantially between Arabica and Robusta species  and to a lesser degree between varieties of each species. A single serving (6 to 8 fl oz) cup of  drip coffee contains around 100 to 125 mg of caffeine. However the world over coffee varies considerably in caffeine content per serving, and range from 75 mg to 250 mg.

Tea is another common source of caffeine in many cultures. In general tea contains half the amount of caffeine per serving than coffee, though certain types of tea, such as Lapsang sou chong smoked teas, and oolong contain less caffeine.

Just how much is a safe amount of caffeine, it is generally agreed that consuming up to 300 mg of caffeine per day is safe. That is the equivalence of drinking three cups of coffee or six cups of tea a day.