What’s your favorite type of hot drink? Chances are that you will say coffee or tea. There are mainly two people in the world when it comes to hot drinks – those who love coffee and those who love tea. With a couple of obvious similarities, coffee and tea are the world’s most popular drinks. In spite of the fact that both of the drinks have caffeine, the true essence of the drinks is in the various differences between them.
Opposing Histories
With amazing pasts which include wars that were waged for access to coffee and tea, both of them have histories that are stimulating. Even though the true history of tea is cloaked in time, tea is known for originating more than 3,000 years in the past in China.
Shennong, the emperor, was in love with the beverage after he tasted it accidentally while traveling through the forest. A tea leave sprigs fell into water that was being boiled, and that is how the first delicious cup of tea came to be. Although some people think it’s an urban legend since there aren’t any written records available that verify this tale.
Coffee, however, has a discovery that is fairly recent. Back in the 1400s, a farmer in Yemen discovered the stimulating effect that the coffee beans give by accident. While he allowed his animals to graze, he’d notice that his animals weren’t able to sleep after they’d eaten off the shrub. While he was chewing on the beans, he experienced what is now called the ‘coffee rush’.
Growth and Cultivation
Coffee and tea usually are grown in tropical climates. Since they are evergreen, they both can grow to huge sizes. However, they’re trimmed for maintaining workability while they’re being harvested.
Because climate, soil, sunlight and other things affect the shrubs’ tastes, cultivators will often spend a lot of time to understand much more about the intricacies when it comes to growing coffee or tea.
The Leaf and the Bean – Caffeine Content
It’s not a surprise that the coffee plant’s beans are used for making coffee and that the tea leaves are used for making tea. With around 55mg of caffeine found in one cupful of delicious black tea, it’s found that various teas have different levels of caffeine. Green tea has about a 1/3 of the caffeine amount that black tea has and oolong has around 2/3.
The caffeine in tea enhances taste and smell and increases the concentration. It will take a while before it gets into your blood stream. In comparison, coffee has anywhere from 125 to 185mg of caffeine in a cup. Coffee drinkers usually will experience a lift that is immediate.
Processing
Coffee
The plants that make coffee are cultivated and become Coffea Arabica and Coffea Robusta/Canephora, with Arabica being the one that is preferred. There are a few processes that are involved when roasted coffee is being made. After the beans are picked by hand and then sorted according to their color and ripeness, the flesh of the berry is removed before being fermented so that the mucilage layer is eliminated. Then the beans will be washed and dried before being roasted.
No matter how you prepare your coffee, you have to ground your beans. Mix your ground beans with some hot water and then strain out any particles that are undissolved.
Tea
Tea is mainly cultivated in regions that are subtropical and tropical, and it’s grown in two varieties. The first type is Assam tea, which has large leaves, and China tea, which has small leaves. After the leaves are plucked from their plants, they’re sent to the factories to be processed.
The bud, the young shoot and two adjacent leaves are what is plucked for the process. Then comes the withering, the fermentation, the rolling and the drying that processed flush. Once they’re dried, the leaves then are sorted so that they can be put out for sale.
Tea is very popular, and it can be served either cold or iced or hot with lime, lemon, masala, lemons, and milk. When you make tea, you can use the leaves or the raw tea in a cup, infuser or tea pot, then add hot water. When the leaves are slowly infusing in water, you can add milk and sugar. Once it’s done, the liquid’s strained and then sipped.
Next time you sit down and have a cup of coffee or tea, think about how hard the people worked to bring you that beverage and everything that is involved.
Our Teas
Dr. Rosemary painstakingly developed these recipes over the years for her patient base – and wants to share them with you and those that you love! Dr. Rosemary always has your health in mind and having a great “Tea Experience” of GREAT taste. Shop our selection of herbal and loose leaf teas.