How to make green tea? Step-by-step guide

If any...

types of teas should be called 'super teas' it is certainly green tea. Its fame dates back thousands of years and is a series of very interesting stories that continue to this day.

We invite you on a journey through the fascinating world of green tea, where nothing is as it seems at first glance, where there are still many mysteries waiting, and you can be sure of only one thing - a captivating taste. In order to acquire the skill of perfect green tea brewing, you first need to explore its character, learn about its special properties and simply... fall in love with it!

If there are guests at your door and you do not have time to go into the meanders of green tea and just want to find out how to brew it, no problem - click on the third point to go straight to practice :) But we hope that when the guests leave, you will go through the other points!

1. We will tell you a fascinating story of green tea.

2. We will indicate the most important properties of green tea.

3. We will give you a hint about how to make green tea.

4. ...and we will explain, why you should sometimes avoid (!) green tea.

We wrote about the legend, thanks to which the tradition of drinking tea got popular, in our autumn magazine "November tastes like tea." It is worth reminding it, because it is really cute and it will do a great start to a conversation ... over tea, of course.

What about the history of green tea itself? We will surprise you here.

At first there was ONLY green tea!

The "olden tea" was brewed in the simplest and most natural way. The green leaves of the Camellia sinensis plant were simply thrown into hot water - they were not oxidized, which would otherwise turn it into another kind of tea. Only a number of experiments and, we believe, simple human curiosity contributed to the development of other tea types.

As we have already mentioned, the protagonist of this text is born without complications - after the leaves have been ripped off, they are allowed to wilt gently and then cooked to keep the green colour and stop oxidation. The result is tea with high concentrations of chlorophyll, polyphenols and antioxidants - it has the most "tea essence" of all teas! Green tea has had not only the longest history, but also an unchanged production process for centuries. In many countries, it is still harvested by hand, sometimes with the help of old agricultural machinery inherited from generation to generation.

What has the ship to do...

Kliper is a kind of very fast sailing ship, which started to be built at the beginning of the 19th century. Until then, Western civilization could only taste black tea, because the sea transport from China took a very long time. At first the green leaves... oxidized and blackened as time passed.

...with tea?

Thanks to the engineers who got into the design of the hand-held clipper, the time of transportation by sea was reduced by almost half the time! Then green tea reached the West.

Are we playing green? We play green because it is worth it. Lu Yu has already written about the benefits of regular green tea. You have not heard of him? No wonder, after all, he lived about a thousand and a half years ago (his book Cha Jing (Tea Classic) was a big bestseller of his time - and you guessed it right, the title of the book is in the headline of this paragraph).

Green tea is more than just... tea. Of course, it meets all the conditions that real tea should meet - it is tasty and aromatic, it is good for a chitchat, it cools down the body effectively in summer, it is a perfect foundation for thinking and reflection... But green tea is also a real treasury of benefits for our body.

1. Green tea speeds up metabolism and helps to burn fat.
2. Green tea has a lot of antioxidants - it slows down the aging process.
3. Green tea inhibits the growth of bacteria in the mouth and improves its condition.
4. Green tea lowers blood sugar levels and inhibits the development of type 2 diabetes.
5. Research shows that green tea lovers live longer!

To make it more interesting, we will start from a slightly different angle - with mistakes that creep into the process of making green tea, which changes an invigorating brew with a multidimensional taste and health properties to some yellow water with a tart taste. So, how should you NOT make green tea?

• Green tea does not like boiling water. It has to be handled more gently than black tea, which has got us used to a certain freedom and can withstand 2 hours of brewing without any problems, giving us a pretty good taste afterwards. Its green tea cousin is much more capricious!
• Green tea does not like the tightness. The leaves must have space to develop. So let's put aside all kinds of "lockable" walnut-sized brewing gadgets.

1. The right brewing temperature for green tea ranges from 60 to 90°C. Check what is written on the packaging. The right temperature depends on the specific type of green tea and the size of its leaves. An invaluable helper for making tea and an indispensable tool for every tea lover is a temperature-controlled kettle.
2. Green tea likes soft water. Instead of a tap water, use mineral water.
3. Green tea time. The leaves brewed briefly (up to 3 minutes) will stimulate and refresh us. In turn, green tea brewed longer than that releases more antioxidants and calms us rather than stimulates us. The brewing time of green tea also depends on the size of the leaves. In the case of the highly crumbled ones, brewing should take much less time than brewing whole leaves.
4. Green tea likes space. Especially in the case of whole, uncrushed leaves. Therefore, let's avoid narrow, tall vessels and choose a round, squatted teapot or jug.

Lack of moderation is always harmful. This is also the case with green tea. This is mainly because of one ingredient - theine. Theine is simply caffeine, only in a different form. There are contraindications that should be taken into account before starting to drink green tea regularly. And if you feel that green tea is your biggest addiction, be sure to check for any of the following ailments:

• Anemia. Green tea makes it difficult to absorb iron.
• Hypertension. Green tea weakens the effectiveness of hypertension medication.
• Insomnia. The thein content makes the green tea stimulating.

In addition, green tea should not be consumed if you are:

• ...a child. Because of its thein content.
• Pregnant. Green tea weakens the absorption of folic acid.
• Fasting. Green tea can irritate your stomach.