Week 2

    I spent my entire Tuesday this week at the Burnside shop. On a rainy morning like what we had this week, business was super slow in the morning, which meant I had plenty of time to pester Dakota about his tea knowledge. Seriously, we spent a whole hour and a half talking about tea since no one came in during the first two hours of the shop opening! Although not officially certified, Dakota’s incredibly well read on tea history, culture, and production, having lived in China specifically to learn about tea. This week’s post will offer a highlight of the things we talked about.     Officially speaking, teas that do not come from the Camellia sinensis plant (which are primarily split into the sinensis or assamica varietals) plants grown primarily in China and India can’t be called teas, they’re simply herbal infusions. “Official” teas are split into five categories depending on how they are oxidized after harvest. It’s interesting to note that in China, teas are officially categorized into Black, Red, Oolong, Green, Yellow, and White, but in the Western world, it’s categorized into Black, Oolong, Green, White, and Pu-erh. I’ll follow the Chinese classification and explain some of the discrepancies below

• Black - This corresponds to Pu-erh in the Western system. It is a fermented tea, and one of the earliest types to be developed. After picking and drying, these teas are pressed into disks and left to ferment anywhere from months to decades, which imparts sweetness and a huge depth of flavor to these teas.
  
• Red - This corresponds to what we call black teas in the Western system. These teas are allowed to oxidize fully after picking and drying, which imparts its black color. Oolong - Somewhere between a red and green tea, these are partially oxidized teas.
  
• Green - Green teas are differentiated from red, oolong, and black teas by the lack of oxidation involved in its processing. Green teas are usually just picked and dried.
  
• Yellow - Although officially recognized in the Chinese classification system, it’s not present in the Western one since it’s considered a subset of green teas. Yellow teas are processed in much the same way, but have an additional fermentation step after firing (drying).
  
• White - These are some of the most expensive teas due to their freshness. These are generally made up of very tender young tea leaves or buds, and are not oxidized at all. The components generally just undergo steaming before being dried and packed.

    Fun detour: The reason we have two ways of pronouncing this particular leaf juice around the world has to do with the trading routes it was exported along during the 16th and 17th centuries. By land, the Chinese route began in the Yunnan province, where Mandarin is spoken. “Cha,” which is how my family pronounces it, gave birth to other terms like chai or chay which are found in India, Russia, the Middle East, and parts of North and Northeastern Africa. Tea was also introduced to Europe by sea, and since major ports in China are primarily located along its southern border where Cantonese is more common, derivatives like “te,” “tea,” “teh,” and “tee” are what it’s called in Western Europe and some coastal African countries.

    Dakota also spoke at length about caffeine levels in tea. We generally think darker teas are more caffeinated, but that’s not always the case. In the assamica varietal, that is true, since in general it has more caffeine than the sinensis varietal and is most commonly used for black teas. But oxidation generally causes the caffeine in a tea to degrade, and thus, a white tea might actually contain more caffeine than a black tea. I know that’s true of TCT’s #68, the Silver Tip Jasmine, which apparently holds a lot of caffeine. I’ve also noticed this week that despite having long proclaimed that caffeine doesn’t really have an effect on me, it’s definitely caused me to crash every day after coming home. This is interesting since tea contains the molecule L-theanine, which binds to caffeine in the brain, and is key in “smoothing” the effect of caffeine on the human body. Drinking tea generally makes you feel a lot less “shaky” energy than coffee, thanks to L-theanine. Other important molecules in tea include catechins, flavonoids, and antioxidants, although Dakota didn’t go into as much detail about what particular effects these have on the body. I’ll look into this more next week!

• For the question about blending teas, Dakota said it really comes down to taste and preference. Teas that traditionally come blended (like traditional chai blends, for example) may have some hard and fast rules about what and how much of something shows up in a tea, but those have also been developed depending on regional taste and availability. Historically, tea blending has been used to supplement the nutritional value of a tea. In traditional Mongolian tea, you’ll often see salt and butter supplemented for this reason. Blended teas are also particularly common in British teas because the tea imported from China to grow in India was originally of very low quality--blending teas helped improve quality and flavor.

Whew, I think I’ve satisfied my four-paragraph minimum requirement, but there’s still so much to look into! As mentioned previously, I’ll be spending more time this coming work looking into the biochemistry of tea since that is a particular point of interest, but I wanted to touch on my other goals for this project:

• Becoming more efficient: I haven’t fully internalized the different recipes of teas we make to the point that my actions are automatic after hearing the ticket, so rechecking the ticket and recipes takes up precious time. But that just means I have something to do when business is slow! This next week, I’ll spend some of my downtime practicing more drinks and reviewing recipes. I also need to develop a system that will allow me to work on more than two drinks at a time.
• Learning shop housekeeping: Sierra taught me how to open shop on Wednesday! It’s surprisingly simple, involving just turning on the bubble tea sealer machine, some lights, and clearing a few surfaces. I also learned to take inventory on Tuesday with Dakota. Next up, I'll ask to learn how to close shop sometime.                                                                     

Long post, but thanks for bearing with me! See you next week!

Tea of the Week: #20 Lady Londonderry (tastes like lemonade!) Honorable Mentions: #71 Genmai Cha, #9 Creme de la Earl Grey, #80 Lavender Sunset