Emma Miller
Hot, fragrant tea is a sure attribute of winter. Nothing warms like herbal and berry teas. However, you need to know some nuances in order to prepare such teas correctly.
Hot, fragrant tea is the best start to any day. Tea tones the body and helps the body wake up, and unlike coffee, in moderate quantities is perfectly safe for people who suffer from high blood pressure.
However, even such a seemingly simple drink as tea requires knowledge of some important nuances.
What is the best way to brew tea?
If you don’t know what to make tea in, use a teapot. Clay, porcelain or earthenware pots are good for making tea. This is why it is better to avoid brewing tea in a cup, especially not in a metal dish. This drink, of course, will warm you up in cold weather, but it will be difficult to call it real tea.
If we talk about the best way to brew herbal tea, then for such a drink is better to use a transparent teapot. In addition to the fact that the glass has no impurities and will not affect the taste of the drink in any way, thanks to the transparency you will be able to see the whole process of disclosure of the bouquet of herbs that are part of the tea. If we consider that tea is first of all a ceremony, and only then a drink, then the possibility to see the process of brewing is not less important than the taste itself.
How to Brew Tea Tastily and Properly
The main rule of any tea is a hot brew pot. Make sure to rinse the teapot with boiling water before brewing the tea.
The second important thing is the temperature of the water. For green teas, it is better to brew teas with water that doesn’t exceed 90 degrees Celsius. Black teas need water heated to 100°C, but white teas brew perfectly well in water heated to 80°C.
If you want to make real tea, never use water that has already been boiled for brewing.
Brewing times for black, green, and fruit teas are different and depend primarily on the composition of the tea and your taste preferences.
Herbal teas are brewed for 10 to 30 seconds, black teas – for 3-4 minutes, and fruit teas – for about 5 minutes. However, this is rather arbitrary, as each type of tea has its own optimal brewing time.
How to make tea at home
If you do not know how to make tea at home – start with the simplest: decide on the composition. You can use dried or fresh mint, Milissa, dried linden blossom, rose hips, dried or frozen raspberries and cherries, dried or fresh citrus fruits, ginger, cinnamon, and honey.
The combination of herbs for the tea is a purely individual matter and depends exclusively on your taste. When deciding on the composition of the tea, it should be based on the flavor that each ingredient gives to the others. For example, ginger does not go well with cherries, but it works great with cinnamon and honey teas. Peppermint won’t pair too well with chamomile, but when paired with lemon and dried raspberries, it will surprise you with a unique flavor.
For tea, it is better to use those ingredients that will help your body wake up. Invigorating herbs for tea are valerian, mint, melissa, chamomile, nettle, yarrow, St. John’s wort, and motherwort.
How to make a delicious tea with fruit
You can use fresh, dried, or frozen fruits and berries for fruit or berry tea. Dried ones are ideal, as this is the kind of drink that will be more flavorful. If you do not have dried fruits and berries, take fresh ones and put them in the freezer for 10-15 minutes. Such a drink will be much more flavorful than one made with fresh ingredients.
The ideal brewing time for a fruit or berry tea is 5-8 minutes. The number of berries to use for brewing will depend on what concentration of tea you want and your personal taste preferences. Average proportions: 10 grams of berries or fruit per 500 ml of water.
Note that neither fruit nor berry teas should be brewed repeatedly. Unlike herbal teas, such drinks may be brewed only once.
If you did not drink the drink and you do not like it when it is cold – do not reheat tea, brew fresh tea instead. It is not recommended to heat fruit and berry teas, as their taste will be spoiled.
