It's All About Tea — black tea

There are 5 main types of tea: White, Green, Blue-green (Oolong), Black (Red) and Pu-erh.

All five derive from the same plant. What accounts for their many differences are the length of time it takes for the tea leaves to become oxidized and the processing style, which can include such methods as roasting, steaming, pan-firing and aging. (Read more)

It’s easy to set the desired temperature of water when you have an electric kettle with temperature presets. But what to do when you are using the good-old-stove to warm up water for your tea? Don’t worry – it’s actually not so hard to tell the water temperature, as long as you can see how the water in your kettle reacts to heat. (Read more)

Tea has a well-established reputation as a healthy beverage. Thanks to modern marketing the humble Camellia Sinensis tea plant is often presented as downright miraculous. It is known that three or more cups of tea per day may help maintain cardiovascular health. Furthermore, the regular consumption of black tea is associated with a reduced risk of heart disease and a reduced risk of stroke. (Read more)

Coming after water, tea is the second most consumed drink in the world.  What comes as a surprise to many is that all teas come from the same plant – Camellia Sinensis.

Anything else, while sometimes called "tea", is more accurately referred to as an herbal tea or tisane. Tisanes include chamomile, rooibos and fruit teas. (Read more)

“Black Tea” as it's called in the West, or "Hong Cha" ("Red Tea") as it is called in Asia is well-known as an afternoon tea for it’s mellow and sweet flavor. According to legend, the Wuyi Mountains in northern Fujian, China, is where black tea was first developed. One legend tells of passing soldiers using covered piles of tea leaves as mattresses, thus bruising the leaves and creating oxidation, which gives black tea its dark color. (Read more)