Category: Article

Don’t you hate it when you’re making a cup of tea that smells amazing, but when you take a sip and it’s bitter? Bitter tea is the worst! Tea becomes bitter due to tannins from the tea leaves. Tannins are a naturally occurring chemical that is found in tea leaves, among other plants. Tannins are also responsible for that puckering feel you may experience in your mouth with some teas (and wines as well).

Now how that does that result in bitter tea? Tannins are released when you are steeping your tea. This can be due to one of two reasons:

1. The temperature of water you are using is too high for the type of tea you are steeping, or
2. You are steeping the tea for too long.

Any of these reasons can result in more tannins being released into your cup of tea. This is one of the reasons why it’s so easy to wind up with a cup of bitter white or green tea – the water temperature is too high or you’re steeping it for too long (or both!). That isn’t to say that you can’t have other bitter teas, because you can definitely wind up with a cup of bitter black tea if you’re not careful as well. I burn my green teas on occasion, even if I’m careful, and find up with a bitter cup from time to time.

If you are steeping a cup of tea with a tea bag, it will be done a lot faster than a similar tea that is in loose leaf form – the tea in tea bags is typically much smaller tea leaves pieces (often referred to as ‘fannings’ or ‘dusts’) which results in a higher surface area and overall less time to steep a cup of tea.

You can play around with steeping times quite a bit to troubleshoot your tea. If the recommendation is to steep for 3-5 minutes and you find 5 minutes results in a bitter cup, opt for 4 minutes the next time you try the same tea. Quality of water also plays a role in the taste of the tea – if you live in an area with hard water, it might be a good idea to try filtered water to see if that helps improve the tea.

If you have any tips on making a better cup of tea, leave them in the comments below!

True teas are made from the leaves of the Camellia sinensis plant, which is native to Asia. As one might expect, tea drinking originated in Asia (primarily China), where it later spread to Europe due to trade. The different types of tea are produced with a variety of processing methods.

Tea leaves are primarily either wilted or unwilted, and oxidized or unoxidized. If you were the pick the leaves off of the C. sinensis plant, it begins to wilt and oxidize unless you do something about it. Basically, wilt vs. unwilted depends on how much time passes between when the tea is picked and when it is processed. Oxidization is stopped when heat has been applied to the tea leaves. White, yellow, green, oolong, pu’erh, and black teas – despite tasting different, they all start off the same.

Rooibos teas, despite being delicious, are not true teas at all. They had made from the rooibos plant, Aspalathus linearis, a plant from South Africa. Rooibos is often referred to as bush tea or redbush tea (based on the colour). Rooibos comes in both red and green varieties. If the leaves have been allowed to oxidize, they are a red rooibos, while if the leaves are not allowed to oxidize, they are a green rooibos. Rooibos teas are naturally caffeine free.

Herbal teas, or herbal infusions/tisanes, contain no leaves from the C. sinensis plant at all – but they are still delicious. You can find a lot of herbal teas/infusions that have a variety of flowers, fruit, herbs, and spices in them – a lot of them make fantastic iced teas. A lot of different ingredients can be present in herbal infusions, it would be quite impossible to list them all because I’m sure I’d miss something!

I primarily drink teas that are produced from leaves of the C. sinensis plant – black, green, white, oolong, and pu’erh teas are all from that the ‘tea plant’. Given the fact that many other drinks are also called ‘teas’ these days, I will be giving them a try as well as I enjoy trying new teas.