The tail of summer doesn’t mean getting any cooler. Even a few minutes walk on the street make us sweat a lot. Cold brew tea is the perfect thirst quencher to combat the hotness as well as cooling down your mind with zero calories! But why cold brew tea? How does it differ from hot brewed tea with ice? What types of tea are better to make cold brew?
Cold brew tea means steeping the tea leaves with room temperature or cold water. After the tea leaves absorb enough water, the tea essence slowly diffuses. Such a gentle process with lower temperate takes at least several hours (we recommend six hours or above). Compared with hot brew tea, cold brew tea is less astringent and sweeter, which is milder for more sensitive people.
So can we use any kind of tea to make cold brew? General speaking, you can make cold brew out of all the teas in your cupboard. However some types of tea just give more special and extraordinary tastes when cold brewed:
Phoenix Oolong: our signature bestseller cold brew tea. Just a sip of this legendary Oolong can scent your whole palate. The most interesting fragrance is its natural peach flavour which is purely natural due to the oolong fermentation! This tea is smooth like silk, and has lingering peach, apricot and honey notes. Understand more
Houjicha Autumn Moon: Cold Brew Houjicha can soothe its roasted ”hotness”, make it more approachable and sweeter. This low caffeine cold brew is perfect for a low appetite summer afternoon! Understand more
Sencha: Crispy and refreshing like mountain breeze. Excellent for cooling and anti-inflammatory in summer. Cold brew sencha has more layers and aftertaste, and can awaken your senses!
How to Make Cold Brew Then?
For homemade cold brew, you can use 1:100 ratio of tea:water. Say five grams of tea leaves in a 500ml water bottle and put it in the fridge for several hours. For ball-shaped tea leaves such as Iron Buddha Oolong, the steeping time can be extended.
Try making some cold brew tea with our artisanal tea leaves this summer! \
]]>You have probably heard that white tea is also packed with abundant nutrients. Meanwhile green tea is also considered to be a superfood in the tea family. So what are their differences and why is white tea so highly regarded?
White tea is a lightly fermented tea with light apricot to deep amber color. It is sweet and refreshing. It has been widely consumed in Hong Kong but not so popular in recent few decades in China. Now the trend is changing, white tea is getting the spotlight in Chinese tea market. The price of white tea has been stagnant for years but now people discovered that old white tea does not just have better taste but even thereapeutic effect. In Chinese saying, white tea is “One year it is tea; three years it is medicine; seven years it is
treasure!” It is said that in classic Chinese medicine book, vintaged white tea can be a kind of medicine which has tremendous anti-inflammatory effect.
Regardless of its medicinal effect, white tea indeed has abundant anti-inflammatory nutrients, making it an excellent drink for cooling down in hot summer days or when you are having sore throat.
And some people like drinking white tea because of its “natural” production method. How does it differ from other tea production? Well, saying it is natural is not exactly correct. it also involves manual labor to process. But what makes white tea distinct is its drying/cooking method. In general, fresh tea leaves are cooked by steaming or frying method (as in green tea). White tea is only “cooked“ and dried by natural sunlight and wind! So you can imagine tea farmers putting trays of white tea leaves under sunlight with natural breeze blowing on it. And that’s why it is considered to be “cleaner” and can preserve the most authentic and natural taste of tea, what the nature intends the tea to be!
Next time when you are having white tea, imagine how the natural sunlight and gentle mountain breeze pampering the tea leaves and your taste buds! Of course it is good for your health too!
]]>Among all the famous Chinese green tea, the most recognized one must be Dragonwell of West Lake, Hangzhou. And it is perhaps the most expensive green tea in China. During spring time every year, tea lovers all over China are longing to taste the freshest taste of the spring flush dragonwell.
Dragonwell was used to be supplied to the Qing royal court and could be deemd as the king of green tea. This legendary tea won the throne because of the Qing Emperor Qiang Lung, who paid multiple visits to the Southern China all the way from his palace in Peking. When he was travelling in Hangzhou, he got the chance to taste Dragonwell and was astounded by its unique chestnut and bean smell. He then appointed it to be the best of all tea and even appointed a spring to brew the precious dragonwell and hence the name dragonwell was born due to the “spring appointed by the emperor”.
Even after all these years, dragonwell perhaps is still among the most famous and favourite green tea among Chinese all over the world. Every year, a lot of tea connoisseurs order the pre-Qing Ming dragonwell (Qing Ming Festival is about 4th to 5th of April every year), which was considered to be of the best quality, after waiting for a year from the previous spring. Spring tea is considered to be the best for green tea, and actually most of the tea in general, as after the long hibernation in winter, the spring sprouts have absored a lot of nutrients and are said to contain more flavours and aroma. We can tell how much dragonwell tea is savoured from the ever rising prices of the pre-Qing Ming draogonwell every year. Due to the sprawning demand of dragonwell, some other neigbhouring regions are also producing dragonwell nowadays.
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