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Tea Guides

Top 5 Springtime Teas To Enjoy

March 8, 2022

Tea is delicious any time of year and can be made in any way to give you an ideal beverage of choice for whatever weather or occasion you find yourself in. Spring is an especially great season to enjoy tea in, as it brings with it a beautiful bloom of fresh, lush greenery that seems to stretch as far as your eye can see. You’ll also see an entire season of nourishing rains and growth, celebrating the end of winter and looking forward to a new beginning. Teas can capture this taste and natural beauty easily, giving you a delicious drink to sip on and experiment with. In this blog post, we’re discussing the top five springtime teas that you can enjoy — all year long!

Benefits of enjoying spring teas

You may think that a tea’s benefits are the same at any time of year. While that is partly true, you can gain extra health benefits simply by enjoying your favorite brew during this special season. Experts have found that winter can significantly slow your circulation, leaving you feeling restless and sluggish. This is made worse by the early darkening hours and other seasonal elements and weather shifts.

Making tea drinking a regular habit in the spring can help to rejuvenate your system and get your blood pumping quickly, also bringing with it the added benefit of additional energy and an immune boost ahead of spring flu season. You can also enjoy the added benefits of seasonal allergy repression, as certain teas such as Butterbur have been found to be just as effective as prescription allergy medications.

Springtime teas to enjoy this season

There really isn’t a wrong time for tea, but there are certain flavors and styles that can particularly pop during certain times of the year. Maybe the shift in the season has you feeling adventurous, and want to branch out into new flavors — such as a fresh and tart blueberry, lemon, mint, and black tea blend, or a springtime cherry rose sencha. In either case, we have you covered! Read on to learn about five teas that you can indulge in this springtime season.

1. Blueberry White Blend

Nothing says spring like the honey-sweet, light, and floral taste of a quality white tea blend! Pair this with your favorite fruit addition, and you have a bouquet of flavors that will fall over your tongue with all of the nostalgia and fresh starts that spring can bring. If you’re looking for a new tea to enjoy in your morning rotation, this blueberry white tea blend makes a great choice. White tea is an oral protective tea, and can also have anti-cancer and antibacterial properties thanks to its extensive antioxidant profile. It also is known for giving you a slight morning pep without sending you into a caffeine buzz, as it only has 15-30 milligrams of caffeine. This is one of the lightest caffeinated teas you can drink, as other types of tea can have double this amount per cup. Blueberry additions add to this lovely mix, making it the perfect base for any drink. Add in your favorite dried petals or fruit bits from loose-leaf blends to make this a fruity infusion of your own!

2. Chamomile Tea

We know chamomile herbal tea is a classic, but it’s a classic for a reason! This tea shouldn’t be overlooked in your springtime tea collection, as it can provide soothing benefits and reduce the pain of seasonal sore throats. If you’re dealing with allergies, it’s known as a natural antihistamine. This can gradually help build your immunity to seasonal allergies over time if taken on a consistent basis. If you’ve never tried it, you should — its light and airy flavor blended with notes of fresh, herbaceous taste can make for the perfect daytime drink.

3. Good Morning Oolong Blend

Start your morning right with this bright, full-bodied Good Morning Oolong blend! This tea is like sunshine on your palate and offers you the morning zest and zing that you’re looking for to help get you motivated for your day. Oolong tea comes with its own health benefits and is a great choice if you’re looking to lose weight. It’s also known to help reinforce heart and bone health.

4. Dragonfruit White

Dragonfruit white tea is a great blend to sit and sip by your favorite sunny spring nook. The refreshing and exotic tastes of the fruit pair beautifully with the light and sunshine-like experience that the white tea adds to any blend. Dragonfruit is known for its cloyingly sweet undertones and fresh, tart aftertaste. You can experience the best parts of the flavor profile with each sip, as the heat extracts the most benefit and oils from the leaves. This tea is delicious either hot or iced.

5. Lemon Ginger Herbal Tea

We just had to include this zingy, flavorful lemon ginger herbal tea blend on the list! The ultimate cure for stomachaches, bloat, and fatigue, this tea will help refresh you and get you ready to take on your day. Lemon is packed with antioxidants and can offer significant protection against heart and liver disease. Ginger is ideal to settle your stomach and adds a refreshing taste to this blend! Enjoy this hot or iced, and savor the herbaceous and fresh flavors of the season with lemon-ginger herbal tea!

We hope you enjoyed this list of the top teas to sip on this spring. What would you add to the list?

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Tea Health Benefits

Heal Your Skin With Tea

June 8, 2017

Skin problems aren’t just physical. They’re highly emotional. There’s nothing like a big zit or patch of eczema to steal your confidence right when you have a big speech to give or a date to impress. A trip to the dermatologist can be expensive, and perusing the skin care aisle at your local pharmacy can feel overwhelming. But what if the answer to your skinpocalypse was in your teabag? Lucky for us, what’s inside tea—notably, antioxidants—gives your favorite drink a ton of dermatological benefits. Same goes for tea-infused topicals like facemasks and pastes. The skincare boost you’ve been looking for may already be in your cabinet!

Here’s why, briefly:

Tea contains antioxidants. That’s one of those words everybody uses, but what does it really mean? Your body contains something called “free radicals.” These are toxic atoms or molecules that damage cells by oxidizing them, which impedes their ability to function properly and ultimately causes annoying problems like acne and other fun skin problems. But antioxidants work against free radicals by making them to non-toxic. Basically, they cancel out the bad stuff free radicals do, getting rid of your zits and reducing your risk for skin cancer along the way.

Since tea contains antioxidants, it’s an ideal beverage to boost your skin’s health and appearance. Here’s how a few of our favorite teas can improve your skin:

1) Green Tea

Green tea decreases age-related skin inflammation and protects against sunburns. Plus, it reduces dark under-eye patches. When used as a topical in mask form, green tea exfoliates skin and reduces excess oil. Buh-bye shine, hello beautiful, radiant skin. For another trick, try splashing cold green tea directly on your face and watching your large pores shrink right before your eyes. Green tea’s also known to fight acne. Look for products containing at least 1% ECGG (an antioxidant in green tea) and your zits won’t know what hit ‘em. And did we mention consuming green tea fights cancer? What a showoff.

2) Chamomile

People have been using chamomile tea to treat skin problems since the days of the ancient Egyptian and Roman empires. Chamomile tea’s great for fighting dry, patchy skin and inflammatory conditions like rashes and acne. It can also be used to diminish the appearance of pesky acne scars. You can even use a cold chamomile tea bag as a compress to soothe and minimize bug bites. Who knew?

3) Oolong Tea

Feeling younger than you look? An oolong-infused paste can reduce wrinkles, dark spots, and age spots.

4) Kombucha

As we age, our skin naturally gets less elastic. But kombucha improves your skin’s elasticity, giving you a more youthful appearance by reducing lines and wrinkles.

5) Ginger Tea

Patchy, uneven skin got you down? Try drinking ginger tea, known to reduce uneven skin tone. And you thought you needed makeup for that!

7) Oregon Grape Tea

Your gut and your skin are pretty well connected. Oftentimes, a problem in your intestines shows up on your face. Oregon Grape tea contains herbs that detoxify the liver and kidneys, helping clear up the root causes of problems like eczema, acne, psoriasis, and other inflammatory issues.

8) Burdock Root Tea

Burdock removes waste from cells inside the liver, kidney, gall bladder, and lymph system, eradicating the toxins that would otherwise build up and cause perspiration, which in turn causes a bevy of skin problems like acne and eczema. Burdock tea starts acts at the cellular level and works from the inside out to keep your body from becoming overridden with bad stuff that eventually shows itself as a rash, pimple, boil, or carbuncle.

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Tea History & Culture

Tea Trends for 2017

January 3, 2017

This year, tea’s not just here to stay—it’s poised to rise. According to MarketWatch, the global tea market will grow by 6.88 billion from 14.45 billion at the end of 2016 to 21.33 billion in 2024. Louise Pollock, the President of food, health, and wellness PR firm Pollock Communications, told Beverage Daily, “The beverage category has grown exponentially and tea is set to experience a lot of growth moving into 2017 and 2018.” But what exactly can we expect from the tea industry this year? We noticed a few prominent trends you can look forward to this year:

1) Green Tea

After surveying 1700 registered dieticians, Pollock Communications named green tea one of the Top Ten Superfoods of 2017. As busy Americans look for beverages on the go that are both convenient and healthy, look out for more bottled green teas. In addition to green teas, Pollock Communications expects teas made with whole leaves and natural ingredients to rise, thanks to our increasingly health-conscious population.

2) Matcha

According to Datassential, matcha grew by 50% in the US from 2010 to 2015, and multiple sources say it will continue to rise in availability and popularity in the coming years. In 2015, just 1% of non-alcoholic beverage menus included matcha, so it’s still in its early stage of consumer awareness and demand, but get ready to watch that number climb. Matcha most commonly appears on menus as a tea or in blended beverages, but it’s also a great ingredient in baking, as we illustrated with White Chocolate Matcha Brownies. So look out for this green powder on dessert menus or in the grocery aisle to make your own tea-infused baked goods.

3) Tea on Tap

Restaurants want to make it easy to deliver you a new, exciting product. FoodBytes says, “Suddenly everything is on tap—wine, cocktails, nitro and cold brew coffee, kombucha, on-tred spirits like amaro.” That’s right: this year we predict you’ll see kombucha and other teas on tap with greater frequency. It’s part of a larger trend you’ll see in 2017: packaging and formatting that makes tea even easier to grab in a restaurant or on the go. From eateries that have self-serving taps at your table to coffee shops, movie theaters, and supermarkets offering exotic bottled teas, 2017 will see more grab ‘n sip options than ever before.

4) More, More, More

Tea trends from the last several years will drive the growth of tea consumption at home, at restaurants, and on the go in 2017. We’ll continue to see teas blending herbs and spices to deliver exotic and flavorful beverages, lesser-known leaves like oolong and rooibos sharing shelf space with black and green teas, tea dishes incorporating on-trend flavors like cateja, tea-infused cocktails, coffee-inspired teas (i.e. a green tea latte or mocha), ingredients like berries and fruit replacing milk and sugar as co-stars in every cup, and the strong performance of iced tea—85% of tea consumption in the USA is iced, per the Tea Association of the United States. These trends are far from over, and we’ll continue to see them grow this year.

Whatever way you pour it, the teacup is looking half full for 2017!

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Tea Guides

How Much Caffeine Are You Drinking in Your Tea?

March 28, 2016

Although we can estimate how much caffeine will be in your cup of tea, determining this amount never comes down to an exact science. Many factors play into how much of a kick you can get from your daily brew. Caffeine occurs naturally in tea, but the content varies based on growing variances, manufacturing, steeping times and brewing conditions. So whether you’re looking to give yourself a boost for that late night study session or sip on a soothing blend before bed, check out our definitive ranking of tea based on caffeine level to know just how much you’re drinking:

Herbal Tea (0mg)

If you want to relax with a toasty cup before bed, then herbal tea is definitely the way to go. Herbal teas are a great way to enjoy the benefits from tea’s antioxidants while avoiding the jittery feelings that often accompany caffeine intake. Herbal varieties are typically all-natural, made from various plant materials including the leaves, stems, roots and flowers from plants other than the Camellia Sinensis. Another benefit? Herbal teas don’t pose the risk of having addictive qualities, as is typically common with caffeinated beverages. However, if you’re still craving a little caffeine throughout the day, try substituting one cup a day with an herbal blend.

Decaf Tea (2-6mg)

Now you’re probably wondering,”how and why is there any caffeine in decaffeinated tea anyways?” Well, it’s important to note that decaffeinated does not mean the same thing as caffeine-free. Decaffeinated tea typically refers to black or green tea that has had most of its natural caffeine removed through processes that involve either the soaking or filtration of the leaves. But rest assured, the amount is almost negligible – by law, decaf tea must have less than 2.5% of its original caffeine level. So go ahead and brew another cup, it won’t keep you up at night.

White Tea (10-15mg)

White teas are the least processed of all teas, releasing minimal amounts of caffeine from their leaves while giving off a very subtle and silky taste. Though typically lower in caffeine content than its more processed counterparts, there can still be a wide range. However, white teas are usually blended with different herbs which bring down the caffeine level. White tea is a good option at anytime of the day, boasting little to no negative side effects.

Green Tea (20-35mg)

Green tea works as a great midday pick-me-up. Its moderately low caffeine level produces a very steady effect when consumed, causing no peaks or plunges. It is also considered an effective meditative aid, acting as a mild stimulant without causing any insomnia or jitters. The benefits of green tea are also numerous, so if you want to drink two or three servings a day, I’m not stopping you…

Oolong Tea (30-50mg)

Oolong tea is halfway between green and black teas, both in caffeine and oxidation levels. It has the body and complexity of a black tea while still maintaining the brightness of a green tea, making it a favorite among tea connoisseurs. Its caffeine content is both healthy and palatable, so it can provide a nice boost without the risk of crashing later in the day.

Black Tea (40-60mg)

Black tea is the strongest and most caffeinated of all the tea varieties. It acts as the perfect way to awaken your senses and kickstart your day. Chai tea is on the lower end of the caffeine spectrum while more processed blends can release higher levels. If you’re worried about too much caffeine, don’t stress; black tea still pales in comparison to the ridiculous caffeine content in coffee (just another reason why tea will always prevail).

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Tea Recipes

How to Pair Tea with Food

January 6, 2016

Those who enter in the world of pairings are entering a new dimension of taste.

Knowing which foods pair well with particular teas is a fine art. Food pairing is often portrayed as a staple of the high class and the cultured living. Although the world of wine pairing may be the more popular, the world of tea and food pairings has plenty to offer.

Pairing can bring out particular flavors out of both the food and the tea. It’s as much a hobby as it is a treat. Here are a few combinations to introduce you to the world of tea and food pairings.

Meats

Meat is a particularly diverse category for tea pairing. Much of the decision comes down to not what type of meat you pair it with, such as pork or chicken or fish. Rather, it is much more important to consider how the meat is seasoned and what method is used to cook it.

For example a lemon-herb chicken may pair great with darjeeling or oolong tea, while a fried chicken would pair better with assam or nilgiri for its briskness and mildly malty taste.

For grilled meats dragonwell tea would be ideal due to its toasty aroma. When looking for teas to pair with meats you’re looking for a tea with more intensity and flavor to compliment the meats.

Fruits and Veggies

Fruits and veggies require a much lighter tea than their meat counterparts. While heavier teas such as gunpowder and dragonwell tend to go great with a large diversity of meats, a softer and lighter tea would benefit the fruits and veggies best.

Remember, you’re looking for a tea that’s fragrant and potentially floral, and refreshing. I find that white teas work best for those criteria. Peaches and apricots are a popular fruit to pair with white tea. I would also recommend making a cucumber salad, pairing it with your favorite white tea, and adding a few tiny drops of honey for the smallest bit of sweetness.

If you’re looking for something a bit stronger than white I’d highly recommend oolong tea, especially for apricots.

Deserts

There is tremendous diversity in the desert world. Darjeeling tea tends to go great a variety of cream deserts, from cheesecake to crème brûlée (that’s always my first choice). With chocolate cake, you ought to select a heavier tea.

For a basic chocolate cake a smoky black tea would be phenomenal. A simple earl grey would pair great here. However it would be best not to pair a black tea with an especially sweet chocolate. In that situation I would reach for a light oolong tea to not overpower the sweetness and to bring out the flavors in both the oolong and the chocolate.

Something with a strong vanilla flavor would pair great with Ceylon, which brings out the full-bodied flavor of the crylon.

Herbs and spices

If you feel like getting creative with your pairings use these as a quick guide to flavors: Assam and yunnan go great with chilis, while sencha and gunpowder pair fantastically with garlic.

The refreshing flavor of mint is really brought out by darjeeling and yuny ting oolong. Cinnamon, a staple of teas thanks of its warm aroma is complimented by yunnan, assam, and autumnal darjeeling.

Cheese

Although cheese and wine pairings are absolute staples of upper-class eating, there are plenty of tea and cheese pairings that are worth exploring.

The smoothness and creaminess would blend superbly with various teas. Kathy Yl Chan at Eater.com recommends the following pairings: white tea + ricotta, green tea + Flory’s Truckle cheddar, oolong + Ewephoria sheep milk gouda and Fromager d’Affinois, black tea + chiriboga blue, matcha + tomme crayeuse.

All of these sound like great opportunities to refine your pallet and experience new taste combinations.

Alcohol

This one may seem strange at first. What do you do, pour the booze in with the tea? Should you have a shot of alcohol at the ready or a glass on the side? Either, really.

And actually, I’m a fan of pouring the booze in with the tea, so long as you make sure to not overpower the tea.

However the more refined and experienced drinkers might use the sipping method. A smoky drink like brandy would pair fantastically with a smoky tea. An English breakfast tea would work extremely well here.

For the more daring tea lovers, it’s said that an ideal tea-alcohol pairing is lapsang enjoyed with either a port or a chardonnay brings out the best of both drinks.

Umami

This is a personal favorite of mine. For those unfamiliar, umami is said to be the fifth flavor, the other four being sweetness, sourness, bitterness, and saltiness. It is most often found is in the controversial additive MSG, which has an unfair but understandable reputation of being unhealthy or potentially harmful.

Regardless of its controversy, it is delicious. And anyone who attempts to pair tea with umami is in for a treat.

I tend to go for the traditional approach, pairing sushi with a classic green tea, but you can go with anything from California rolls to my absolute favorite: the crunchy roll! The green tea and the umami in the sushi will combine into a particularly savory taste. It’s an absolute treat.

So if you have a salty, sweet or salty-sweet palate any of these tea and food pairings will do the trick. They’re especially fun to try at a house warming party, birthday or an quiet evening at home!

Feel free to mix and match and let us know what pairings worked best for you!

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