Tea Primer for Boba Lovers: Eight Things To Learn

Tea is the most popular beverage in the world and it is consumed in hundreds of ways. 

Coffee, soda, fruit juices, koolaid, fancy, bubbly waters from fancy, bubbly countries? None of these have a CHANCE of coming close to the number one spot. And its not hard to see WHY tea is so popular. It had a huge headstart! Tea has been around for approximately 4,000 years. 

There are tons of different types of teas, each with its own mysterious and twisted history, intricate chemical compounds and changes that occur during processing, different cultural ideas of how to drink the final product, religious and cultural connections… It’s a lot to take in. 

Go on Amazon and type in the search box thingy “book on tea.” There are over 10,000 books you could order TODAY that are dedicated to tea. The craziness doesn’t stop there. You could sign up for specialist courses offered all over the globe. You could even attend quite a number of colleges with literal Bachelors and Masters’ degrees in the study of tea. Seriously. You could get a Master’s degree in Tea Technology and Value Addition, or Tea Culture Management, or Tea Science. You could even study really, really hard for the next ten years and (attempt) the Tea Sommeliers written and practical exam.

And I’m barely scratching the surface. Like I said: it’s a lot to take in.

This post is on the longer side, but it is a fairly thorough primer – a one-stop, learn-just-the-stuff-you-need kind of thing. When you’re done, you’ll have a basic understanding of the most popular and widely consumed drink on the planet. And you’ll be proud of yourself. Go you.

Let’s get to it.

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1. ONE TEA TO RULE THEM ALL

All teas – white, green, black, oolong, yellow, (did you know there even WAS a yellow tea??) – ALL of them come from the same plant: Camellia Sinensis, a sub-tropical, evergreen bush native to Southeast Mainland Asia.

Tea was discovered and first grown where China’s Yunnan Province meets India’s Nagaland region and the northern areas of Myanmar, Thailand, Laos and Vietnam – the part of the world frequently known as Indochina. Here’s a map so you can bone-up on your Asia mainland geography. All the area in the tan box is the native habitat of tea.

Tea grows well in areas that have cool winters and hot summers. Indochina, with its breathtaking, high-elevation mountain ranges, and distinct, subtropical jungle areas, fits the bill perfectly.

Tea plants thrive in cool, humid areas with consistent rainfall throughout the year. The ideal temperatures for tea growing is about 65*F and humidity is REALLY an issue: too much rain and you grow a sad tea plant. You can grow tea on a mountain (and that really does make an excellent tea), but higher altitudes slow growth and limit the plant’s output. Much like the cacao tree and most coffees, tea prefers diffused sunlight, which is why some plantations grow tall trees in regular rows, where the trees stabilize the soil, serve as a “wind break,” and filter the sunlight so the little fellas can thrive.

There are two main varieties of Camellia Sinensis:

• Camellia Sinensis Sinensis: This variety is grown primarily in China, India, Japan, and Nepal and has small, olive green leaves.
• Camellia Sinensis Assamica: The Assam region of India is where this tea plant is most commonly cultivated, and is where it gets its name, although today it is also grown in southern China, Myanmar, Laos, and Vietnam. It  has large, pale, plump leaves.

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2. TEA TERROIR

The word terroir comes from the Latin ‘terre’ meaning ‘from the land.’ When talking about food, terroir goes way beyond the basic concepts of taste and flavor by taking into consideration the unique climate, farming practices, and habitat in which the food is grown. When food experts use the word terroir, what they are really saying is ‘Taste of Place.’ Almost every specific food, drink, or ingredient is associated with a specific land or region: the best tomatoes are grown in the volcanic mountain soil of Scipio in San Marzano, Italy, the best vanilla comes from Madagascar, the best coffee comes from the mountains of Ka’u, Hawaii, the best Caviar comes from the Caspian Sea… you get the idea. The tea PLANT is the same everywhere. It all comes down to where it is GROWN. Where it is grown really matters.

And remember: tea plants are finicky. They won’t grow just any old place.

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3. LABOR OF LOVE

There are 8 steps to harvesting, processing, and blending tea. It’s a complicated process (and we’re not going to TOUCH all the different things you have to do to actually care for a tea plantation!). Instead, we’re ONLY going to look at plucking a tea leaf off the plant and turning it into a delicious cup of steaming goodness.

Teas are harvested by hand – at least the best ones are – plucked from the youngest leaves, the tiny guys just sprouting at the top of each tea bush. Wanna get specific?

That’s HOW they are harvested. The WHEN matters even more! Tea is harvested several times over the course of the growth season, and each of those harvests have a specific name and tea harvested during these times have a corresponding different cost:

• FIRST/ SPRING FLUSH: the very first plucking of a tea plant’s harvest season in January, when the leaves are the youngest and most tender, yielding the purest and freshest cup of tea that plant is capable of producing; These early leaves are usually more delicate and tender and therefore more light, floral, fresh, brisk, and astringent in flavor. This stuff? PRICEY.
• SECOND/ SUMMER FLUSH is picked as early as April and runs through May or June. Second Flush yields larger, more mature leaves with a purplish hue and silver tips or leaf buds. The leaf growth during this period is much more rapid than the early spring growth, giving us a stronger yet smoother flavor. Second Flush teas are known for their full-bodied, muscatel, and fruity flavor.
• MONSOON FLUSH runs from June or July through October and yields large leaves that brew into a stronger color and bolder flavor that is less complex or nuanced than the previous Flushes. Teas from this Flush are often used for iced tea and commercial tea bag tea production. Cheap.
• AUTUMN FLUSH happens in October and November and yields a finished tea with a rich copper-colored liquor that can be described as rich, full, nutty, and smooth in flavor. Leaf growth slows down during this period and the tea plant is squeezing out the last of what it has to offer before it goes dormant for the winter.

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Random fun fact #3: Speaking of picking tea…. There are people in this world who believe that the best tea is LITERALLY PICKED FROM THE BUSH BY TRAINED MONKEYS. These people are morons.

Monkey picked tea is not a real thing. Don’t buy it. Even if the packaging looks cool. Monkeys are pretty smart, but they can’t pick the good leaves from the bad ones and they sometimes throw their poo. The marketing idea behind this tea? Brilliant. “We can totally convince dummies that tea never touched by human hands is somehow more valuable, rare, and desirable than regular tea. Our customers are idiots.” 

These are all lies.

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After tea bushes get a hair cut, the leaves are laid out to dry in big ‘ol baskets in a process called ‘withering’. Like any other flower or plant, tea leaves will naturally begin to wither once they are plucked from the bush. The goal of this step is to let the moisture in the leaves evaporate. Depending on the type of tea, this is done by drying leaves under the sun or in a room with good ventilation. Withering also helps the leaves to soften so they won’t break when you roll them.

Processing tea leaves requires breaking down some of the cell walls so that the air can react with them. This is done by shaking, tossing, crushing, and rolling the tea leaves to get them ready for oxidation. Essentially, rolling “bruises” the leaves to initiate oxidation by releasing their juices and oils.

During the process of breaking down the cell walls, it is necessary to break apart tea leaves which are starting to clump together, and they need to be unraveled to promote oxidative fermentation. To do this, the leaves are run through a sieving machine frequently (which is literally called “ball breaking” and no. I didn’t make that up).

When you bang the heck out of tea leaves, you are releasing enzymes and oils that alter the leaf’s flavour, and initiating the oxidation process. This is by far the most important part of the tea-making process. The level of oxidation is what DETERMINES what kind of tea is created. Once the cell walls of the leaves have been ruptured, they are left exposed to the air. The oxygen reacts with enzymes in the tea leaves and changes the chemical composition of the tea. The leaves gradually darken, just like any cut fruit does when left out (peel a potato, leave it on the counter too long, and it will turn brown. Oxidation!).

One key step in processing tea leaves is to heat them once the desired level of oxidation is achieved – usually by giving them a steam bath. Heating stops the enzymes in the tea leaves from any more oxidation happening (just like cooking potatoes stops them from turning brown when exposed to air).  In other words, once protein enzymes have done their job, heat is used to denature them – to basically “turn them off.” This step happens at various stages in the tea-making process, depending on what type of tea you want to make 

The tea leaf had 100% moisture when picked from the bush, right?  During each of the steps we’ve outlined, it slowly lost its moisture content. The goal of the drying stage is to bring that moisture all the way down to 3-7%. If the tea leaves are packed with too much moisture then they will get mouldy and go bad QUICK, and if they have too little moisture, the leaves will taste dry or burnt.

Before tea leaves are sent to the packing company (Lipton or Lords of London or whatever) they have to be sorted. Tea scraps and dust – called “fannings” – are separated from the larger leaf pieces.Fannings are packed for tea bags, whole leaves are separated for rolled, whole leaf teas (a LOT more expensive), and stems and gross bits are tossed out or fed to the squirrels. In general, the processed tea leaves go through a sifter multiple times to ensure they are sorted by size and shape. This process classifies the tea leaves into different value categories, known as “leaf grade.”

The last step is to blend different types of tea leaves that may have been processed in entirely different ways and on entirely different continents into a finished product. This is where the art of tea really comes into play! There are literally THOUSANDS of blends you can purchase – from the very rare to the mixed-in-someone’s-garage, pretty cheap varieties. Here are six types of an upscale Scottish Tea, each based on a mix of Chinese, Indian, and Laos tea (and each aged or flavored with Scotch and/or Whiskey – so that’s something new).

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4. PROCESS MATTERS (MOST)

All teas come from the same plant, right? So what do tea producers do differently to make one plant into radically different things? It all comes down to the way the tea is processed:

Read an article if you want to learn more. We’re not going to make yellow tea and it’s pretty rare in America.

https://mansatea.com/blogs/learn/yellow-tea?srsltid=AfmBOopucwZ70lKyW3Vo6tqy8i-bZIUmPaTbjIQiM7B6nu9mLhFwd_hU

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5. A MILLION BLENDS

Whenever you have a VERY old food that is beloved around the world, you are going to get a LOT of variation. Sometimes, people are just trying to make something they like a little better. More often, manufacturers and company owners worked like crazy to introduce new flavor combinations, create new specialty products… all in an effort to snatch more of the market. This has been going on for a long time and has resulted in some of our most beloved tea varieties.

TEAS YOU MAY HAVE HEARD OF (BUT KNOW NOTHING ABOUT)

The modern tea world recognizes six categories of tea: green, yellow, white, oolong, black, and dark (Pu’er). Okay. We’ll get to some of those in a bit. But what about all the “fancy” teas on the Publix shelves, the ones with weird, foreign sounding names? 

Here’s a few sentences on each of the six “biggies” you should know about, if for no other reason than to have something to say when you are interviewing for a job and the snob behind the desk says “tell us something interesting you read recently.”

Fun fact: Don’t be a rube and call it “chai tea.” The word “chai” is the Hindi word for “tea,” which is derived from “cha,” the Chinese word for tea. Chai is usually referred to as “masala chai” or “spiced chai” since “chai tea” means “tea tea.” It’s like ordering a bowl of salsa sauce. It shows you don’t know what you’re talking about.

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6. MATCHA IS JUST FANCY, EXPENSIVE GREEN TEA

First, some culture:

Matcha green tea was introduced to Japan in 1191 by the Zen monk Eisai. Supposedly, he planted tea he had brought back from China in the garden of the Buddhist temple in Kyoto. Supposedly, he was the first person to grind the green tea leaves after harvesting them, and supposedly, he was the founder of the tea ceremony chanoyu.

There’s not a HUGE amount of difference between regular green tea production and making matcha. It’s a bit more labor intensive and a bit more challenging…. but it is essentially the same thing.

Here’s the process:

1. Green tea bushes are shaded to increase chlorophyll production, which gives matcha its rich green color and nutrients. The youngest, most tender leaves are hand-picked in the spring, usually May. 
2. No withering. No Rolling. Proceed directly to firing (always with steam). This intensifies the green color. 
3. Dry FAST, in a cool place. This minimizes oxidation. 
4. New step #1: The leaves are deveined and destemmed to create tencha, the raw ingredient for matcha. 
5. New step #2: Grind the leaves: The tencha leaves are ground into a powder using a traditional stone mill. The grinding process is what gives matcha its name, which literally means “ground tea”. 

Matcha contains more caffeine than other green teas and regular brewed teas. To make matcha tea, you dissolve the powder in hot water, whisking the liquid in a zigzag motion until you create a foam.

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7. NOTABLE NOT-TEAS

Other beverages, drinks an UNINFORMED person might call “tea” (like mint, chamomile, sleepy time, dried apricot-banana spores-cashew nut whatever “herbal teas”) are not teas. Those drinks (which aren’t bad, per se), are called “tisanes.” Unless the leaves were snipped off the top of the Camellia sinensis plant, it’s not a tea, it’s a tisane. and you need to know the difference.

Here are three NOT-TEAS you should know about:

Yerba maté comes from a tree from the holly family and is native to Paraguay, South America. The words “Yerba Mate” come from two languages (Spanish and Ketchua), and literally means “herbs from the calabash”, because mate leaves were brewed in special vessels made of dried calabash fruit gourds. The first to use Yerba Mate as a drink were the Guarani Indians, some 1200 years ago. So it’s old. Not as old as tea, but pretty dang old.

Yerba Mate is made in a way very similar to tea with only a couple of key differences: yerba mate is aged and sometimes smoked, the final blend is a mix of stems, yerba dust, leaves and additives (such as herbs, citrus peel, spices, etc), which will define the taste, aroma, and color of the mate.

How do you make a cup? Steep the dried leaves in hot water and you get maté. Brew it cold, and you get tereré. 

Interesting fact: yerba mate has the same psychoactive compounds as regular tea – just in a more concentrated form. You get a bit of methylxanthines in tea (caffeine, theobromine, and theophylline). You get significantly more in yerba mate. These psychoactive compounds give yerba mate a KICK.

Fun Fact #6: For a while, there were some serious rumors going around that Yerba Mate was a low-grade narcotic. Why? It really does have quite a kick. But that rumor? It escalated Yerba Mate’s reputation and popularity among the teenage set – even though it’s not true.

Tell a kid “this drink will low-key get you buzzed” and they’ll buy it, every time.

Dummies.

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8. TEA IS A CHEMISTRY LAB

Snatch a tea leaf, right off the top of a plant.

Each one is packed with hundreds of different compounds. When it comes to taste and health benefits, the ones we care about most are the polyphenols – the antioxidants – which can be up to 40% of the dry weight of the leaf. As the tea is dried, oxidised, and further processed, there are hundreds of chemical reactions going on, and amino acids, enzymes, methylxanthines such as caffeine and L-theanine, minerals and vitamins and more than 700 aroma compounds are developing, most of which weren’t in the FRESH leaf. They appear (like magic!) during the harvesting and oxidation stages. For this reason, tea is considered by food scientists as one of the most fascinating, complex, and chemically diverse foods in the world. And the funny part? The folks in the white lab coats  BARELY know anything about any of it.

“‘Black tea has [only superficially been] studied by scientists due to its complexity and a lack of knowledge of its composition. In black tea [we have identified] around 30,000 molecules formed during fermentation & oxidation and only a handful have been studied.”

Nikolai Kuhnert, Professor of Chemistry, Jacobs University, Bremen, Germany

THE SKINNY ON POLYPHENOLS

Polyphenols – also known as catechins – are by far the largest group of compounds in tea. In terms of flavor, Polyphenols provide tannin – the flavor compounds that give tea its astringency, that dry-mouth feeling after a drink, while also providing colour and flavour. Nutritionally-speaking, polyphenols are an important class of antioxidants and are believed to have disease-busting properties. All over the world, millions of people drink green tea religiously – every single day –  because they are certain it is going to keep them healthy and young and beautiful. There IS a good bit of science that backs up their claims (so you should probably start drinking more green tea).

You can BUY the polyphenols in green tea in the from of an extract from a number of chemistry labs. Just make sure you have a lot of money before clicking “check out.” Just 100 grams of green tea polyphenol will set you back $1000.

FLAVOR BIT PLAYERS – THE FLAVONOLS AND FLAVONOIDS

The majority of flavour and colour in tea comes from Theaflavins, Theophylline & Theobromine, all of which are formed from how flavanols change during tea processing. 

There is caffeine in tea as well, but you knew that already. Sure you did.

I bet you DIDN’T know that tea has roughly HALF as much caffeine as coffee. Or that caffeine, that lovely pick-me-up chemical doesn’t just make you jittery… also contributes a bitter taste? How about this: Did you know that tea has another psychoactive ingredient? It’s called L-theanine, an amino acid which has a calming effect and balances the stimulant effect of caffeine. 

See? Smarty pants doesn’t know as much as he thought.

Are there other, equally  important chemical compounds? Absolutely. This is just a tiny summary. Memorize this bit so you can sound smart at your next party.

Wanna learn a bit more? Read this: https://www.chemistryworld.com/features/the-chemistry-in-your-cuppa/2500010.article

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