White Tea Blog
Sweetening white tea
Lots of people don't like the bitter taste of some teas, and prefer to sweeten it with sugar or artificial sweeteners. The result is that the bitterness is reduced, and the sweetening may bring out more of the flavor. In my experience, that is often the case with black teas.
Many drinkers of green tea also flavor their tea with natural substances like honey or stevia, subduing both the somewhat vegetal taste and any bitterness.
White tea is usually not bitter if it has been correctly prepared, but the flavor can be too subtle for many, expecially those who are used to stronger-tasting teas and sodas. Compared to other teas, white tea is naturally sweeter, and after a few tries, most will find that unsweetened white tea is a complex drink that doesn't really need sweetening.
Sweetening white tea with sugar may not be the best idea, since adds calories and may overpower the natural sweetness of the tea. But honey and stevia are other options that are much healthier, and some tea lovers praise agave nectar, which is a little bit pricier. All three may bring out more of the flavor of the white tea.
Of course, the main thing is that you enjoy the tea the way you like it, sweetened or not.
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White tea rituals
Lots of tea lovers have special rituals when they prepare and drink their tea. For some, I think that is a natural result of the Asian roots of the tea, and the ceremonies sometimes associated with it. The elaborate and elegant Japanese tea ceremony comes to mind, and many aficionados like to put themselves in the proper frame of mind when enjoying their favourite brew.
Of course, such a ritual doesn’t have to be remotely as involved or elaborate as the Japanese tea ritual. For some, it just means taking a few minutes’ break from the hubbub of daily life and concentrate on the many sensory inputs that tea can give. For others, arranging the cups and pots on a tray before using it or just measuring up the amount of tea can be a sort of a ritual. It can be very simple, and may heighten the enjoyment of the tea.
Certainly, if drinking tea is a solemn occasion, one may take more time to really notice things like all the facets and elements of the odor or the taste of the tea. I even know people who enjoy the sound of tea steeping or the finished tea filling up the cup. I gets kind of meditative.
I’m more of a reckless tea lover, and I don’t really have much of a ritual when I brew the tea. I do sometimes make the tea more elaborately and use my best teaware, but that’s mainly when I have guests I want to treat with some Silver Needle. As far as I know, there's no particular traditional ceremony associated with white tea, so we're free to make up our own.
Although white tea is somewhat more expensive and rare than green tea, it can be enjoyed without much fuss. I drink white tea every day as I work, so there’s not much solemnity involved. But I do find that white tea has a calming effect, and seems to “ground” me from the stresses of my workday. It’s like when I taste the tea, it brings (cliché alert) a little ray of sunshine into the day. The day becomes special, in a way, in that the tea reminds me that there is a much bigger world outside of my job.
I love white tea.
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White tea - the anti-soda
When a void arises in your life, fill it with something better
- Unknown
It’s all the rage to start blog entries with a quote, but this one is in all honesty just a variation of something I read somewhere. It illustrates how I started drinking tea for real, which was to fill my need to nurse a drink without resorting to sodas.
I was drinking one to two liters of soda a day, which is far too much by any standard– and it wasn’t even the diet versions. I was essentially filling my veins with high concentrations of sugar every day. Not a great idea if you want to stay in good health.
I had heard good things about green tea, not least the health benefits, but I didn’t really take to it when I tried it. That was undoubtedly partly because I was brewing the tea from tea bags bought at a supermarket, but even after I switched to loose leaf sencha, I found myself still drinking cola almost every day. Green tea was okay, but drinking it didn’t give me much pleasure. It became more of a chore.
Then I bought some white tea from an online vendor, and after I had learned to brew it properly, I suddenly found two weeks had gone by without me drinking any soda at all. That was one and a half years ago, and I haven’t had any cola since.
I think the reason I really took to white tea, and why it still gives me pleasure to drink it every day, is that it doesn’t have the grassy taste that green tea has, and white tea has a natural sweetness that appeals to my sweet tooth. It certainly seems much less bitter than most other teas.
Whatever the reason, white tea helped me wean myself from sugared soft drinks, and I don’t miss them.
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A blog - about white tea!
So I can't help but notice that there are no teablogs dedicated solely to the best tea of all, the white tea. This disgraceful state of affairs cannot continue. There are many excellent tea blogs on the internet, some about green tea, some about black tea, some about teaware, most about tea in general, but as far as I can tell, this will be the first blog dedicated entirely to white tea.
I intend for this blog to have a pretty wide scope, since the world of white tea is already big and expanding as more people discover this delicious brew. I will write about teaware, different types of white tea, how to brew the different types, how to get the most out of your white tea, how to best share a passion for white tea with others, how to store the tea - pretty much everything that concerns white tea. I'm particularly looking forward to doing some reaviews of the different white tea I try. I will let the blog develop over time, and we'll see where it goes.
I drink a lot of tea, and almost exclusively white and green teas. Of the two, I usually prefer white tea, and I have tried many varieties in most price ranges. But I'm nowhere near an expert on the matter, and I still have much to learn. Hopefully, this blog will help me delve deeper into the world of white teas, and maybe even to share with you some of the things I learn.
Here goes.
Trey
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