okay so.... i will just hope that the other ask from this morning went in and you just weren't online? or you slept? worked? idk if it didn't went in, please let me know! anyways, i heard you like tea? i have to admit i don't know much about tea, my dad used to make me tea when i was sick tho. also, whenever i was at someone else's place and they had tea i would drink the tea but normally i'm not much of a tea fan? what's your favorite tea and why do you like tea? - your cc ❄🐇
Hey snowbunny!
Sorry about that. I’m online a lot but i’m often not actively writing more than a sentence at a time unless something gets me in a screaming mood. I have some salty asks i’ve yet to answer.
i’m likely around between 7-10pm central USA time. but not even every day. i do work form about 8 am - 4/5 pm central time. sometimes until 7. i tend to cook or get food between 5 and 8 and eat with my husband. so fandom time is a bit up in the air and i still owe fics and gif sets to people i’m working on... >.< i’m so slow! Also, any time after 10 is me being stupid and staying up past my bedtime. ^_^; which actually happens a lot. and if i do it too much by brain goes poof.
so don’t panic unless you don’t see any sort of answer for 36 hrs. i reserve the right to post something like “i got your ask but no time to actually answer” and then answer outside of the 48 hrs. but i will try to communicate! i really appreciate the follow-up because i’ve heard tumblr eats asks!
oh boy. you’re asking me to talk about tea. hahaha. snowbunny has dug themselves a rabbithole. how appropriate for this fandom.
Ok. let’s start with my favorite tea: i don’t have any. it’s not a cop-out answer. my mood changes ALL the time and while i tend to go for floral and green things sometimes i want a earthy minerally tea. I love all sorts of teas and when i explain tea a bit more you’ll see why i can’t pick a favorite. ^_^
So why do i like tea? There’s so much to learn! Sit back for a Tea 101.
Tea, PROPER TEA (with pinky up and a snooty stuffy voice), comes from the Camellia sinensis (which i have to google the spelling of every time). White, Green, Oolong, Black, and the lesser known Yellow and Dark teas ALL come from Camellia sinensis. This includes assam, ceylon, darjeeling, matcha, dahongpao, tieguanyin, lapsang suchong, and even *GASP* lipton (i think.... though i loathe to include it). The difference in flavors of these styles is due to tea plant genetics, environment, and processing. (Flavored teas are made by incubation with something that caries a smell like food grade essential oils, flowers, fruit, or even smoke and then blended and balanced but that’s a TOTALLY different topic and something i’m slightly less fascinated by.)
Tea plant genetics: while all tea comes from (supposedly -- there’s some interesting conversations about yunnan and taiwan teas being a hybrid of camillia sinensis and local tea-like species but i haven’t really looked into it) one species, like dogs have breeds, tea plants have cultivars. This means that if you take cuttings of one tea plant you can make clones of it! and some famous chinese teas are actually named for the cultivar. For example, Dan Congs (”single bush“) are teas named after the cultivar. Even if many Dan Congs are grown in the same area and processed similarly, the cultivar’s genetics affect the flavors of the tea.
Environment: like wine and coffee and really anything horticultural, the microenvironment tea grows in affects its properties. The amount of rain, fog, sun, shade, humidity, etc in a year or around picking season influences how the tea turns out. I have bought the same tea from the same vendor who sources from the same farmers every year and i can taste a difference. It’s amazing and fascinating. and a TON of fun. According to a tea vendor my family likes to buy from in China, some levels of Chinese tea certification requires a person to be able to taste the difference between regions and sides of mountains. Some japanese tea is grown in the shade so that the leaves would develop a more favorable flavor profile. There is a lot of stuff i don’t know about how tea plant growing influences flavor and i want to learn about it all!
And finally PROCESSING: This is where the classes of tea are differentiated: White, Green, Oolong, Black, and the lesser known Yellow and Dark. Each tea classification is processed differently. The basic steps of processing are a mix and match of drying/withering, rolling/crushing for bruising), oxidation, fixation (applying heat to denature enzymes), sweltering (yellowing), shaping with additional rolling/crushing, drying, and post process fermentation (think pu-er and aging teas in general where microbes alter flavor over YEARS). Not all teas go through every step and the difference in how the teas are handled at the different steps change how much of molecules are broken down and ultimately affects the taste and sometimes even how the tea feels in your mouth as you drink it.
So yeah. There is a LOT to learn about tea. I would like to be able to drink a tea and tell you something about the environment the year the tea was picked or about the processing or about the plant it came from. I’m not there yet. but i’m a nerd and i love smells and flavors and tea really offers me a fairly healthy way to drink my way through smells and science and culture. So i love it because it has so much to offer and i know SO LITTLE about it!
what teas have you had, snowbunny? do you know what sort of smells or flavors you like? i’ll be happy to recommend you something! <3