How to choose a good tea correctly: green, black, oolong, in bags
Tea is one of the favorite beverages of our people.countries. Today, a wide range of classic and exotic varieties from all over the world is presented in shops and tea shops. But not every product of this category deserves to be called the best. The reason for this is a large volume of low-grade raw materials, which are sold under the guise of a noble drink. How to choose a real tea?
General recommendations for choosing tea
Tea often becomes an object of falsification. In most cases, fake brand collections and premium products. In order not to buy a surrogate, pay attention to the following recommendations:
Prefer leaf tea. Granular is not made from expensive varieties, because the production technology itself deprives the sheet of a part of valuable properties.
Despite some advantages of tea in granules(fortress, fast brewing), drink connoisseurs of this category give priority to the leaf product. In addition, unscrupulous producers can use the bottom coarse leaves or waste products of tea production.
The most high-quality tea is large-leaf (Orange Pekoe). Broken Orange Pekoe often contains broken raw materials, cut leaves and tea dust.
Assess the tea leaves visually. Ideally, they should be the same size and color.
The main smell should be a characteristic aromatea. Strongly expressed artificial flavors producers mask the low quality of raw materials. The fact that the welding is spoiled, will tell a sour smell or the smell of dampness.
The moisture content of the product should be 3-6%. To evaluate this indicator, rub the tea leaves with your fingers. If lumps remain, the product is poorly dried or damp due to improper storage conditions. If the leaf is scattered in the dust, most likely, the tea is old.
Quality tea with strong brewing foam.
When cooled, the quality drink becomes turbid. The reason for this is tannins, which precipitate. The higher the grade, the more it is contained in the leaves of these substances.
Pay attention to the packaging. Inside a cardboard, tin or wooden box there should be a sealed bag. Factory transparent packaging can be found only in a low-grade product. The name and coordinates of the company, the composition and the expiry date must be indicated. A collection of high-grade tea is applied to the collection date and time.
It is desirable that the place of production and packaging of tea coincide. Ideally, the region where the raw materials were collected is indicated.
If the tea is genuine, on its packaging you will find the corresponding logo:
Ceylon - a lion with a sword,
indian - girl with a basket of tea,
Darjeeling girl with tea leaves in her hand,
Assam - the rhino,
nilgiri - mountains.
Separate requirements for some types of tea
Black tea
Pen, which is worth paying attention to whenthe choice of black tea, its color. Ideally, the leaves should be black and shiny. The presence of brown, brown and gray tea leaves is the first sign of a low-grade product. Elite varieties on the leaves have golden or silver villi.
The boiled sheet has a uniform reddish-brown color (the highest grade), a non-uniform brown (first grade), a non-uniform dark brown with a greenish tinge (second or third grade).
The production of black tea is complex and delicateprocess. One of the key stages is fermentation (oxidation). The better it was conducted, the more twisting the leaves. The most qualitative are long twisted tea leaves, called "wire".
Green tea
Uniformity of color is an obligatory criterion whenthe choice of green tea. There should be no brown, white or bright green leaves in the tea leaves. Any darkening and staining is a clear sign of marriage. The shape of leaves does not matter.
The finished drink should be clear and bright. Colors range from dark green to light with a slight shade of yellow. Brewed green tea has a pleasant aroma and a refreshing taste. Cheap mixtures are easy to identify by the strong bitterness and smell of hay.
Chainks can be strongly twisted or not twistedat all. In the case of green tea, this indicator does not speak directly about the quality of the raw materials, because during the production, the leaves are weakly fermented or not exposed at all. The brewed leaf has a uniform greenish color (the highest grade), green with a yellowish tinge (first grade), a non-uniform yellowish color (second or third grade).
A quality product rarely contains more than one flavor. Choose traditional for green tea jasmine or lotus, not blends.
Milk Oolong
The quality oolong is a compact leaf, compressed into lumps. The touch of the tea leaves should be dense and elastic. Fresh tea has a rich flavor, golden color with a greenish tinge.
A distinctive feature of oolong tea is uneven fermentation. Because of this, the leaves have an unusual color: in the middle they are green, and at the edges darker with a brownish tinge.
Can it be quality tea in bags?
There are many rumors about the quality of packaged tea. Many are sure that the product consists exclusively of waste products of tea production. Unfair producers do the same, packing garbage in paper bags. Nevertheless, on the shelves you can find a decent beverage. By taste, it will be inferior to good large leaf tea, but it will contain only natural tea leaf. Of the supplements, only natural flavors (bergamot, jasmine) are preferred. You can distinguish a quality product by several features:
The welding should be packed in a filter bag made of nylon or silk. A rope to it is sewn with a thread, and not glued. Ideal option - individual packaging for each sachet.
The packaging must be sealed in film. If inside you have found tea dust - before you a poor-quality product.
If water becomes immediately dark when the packaged product is brewed, artificial dyes are added to the welding.
The ready-made drink of quality tea leaves is always clean and transparent, has a natural tea smell, moderately tart taste.
