It me!!! Tea person!!!! I know a lot about tea!!!
There are two main branches of tea- but like anything, the deeper you go, the more complicated it gets. The two branches intersect and deviate in funny ways.
Caffeinated tea, made from two main varieties of the Camellia sinensis plant. Its the bush commonly referred too as the tea tree plant, and responsible for green, white, red, dark, and yellow tea. Think matcha, pu’uer, tea tree oil, everything verging around that. The variety of tea depends on when the leaves are picked (green tea is the young light green leaves of early spring) and how the tea is cooked, dried, fermented and/or aged. Different flavors and additions can be added, but be careful bc they can be used to mask poor quality tea.
Herbal tea is an extremely wide description of any drink made from steeping herbs and spices. (Herbs are the leaves of plants, spices are anything else.) I struggle to write anything because there are so many niche cultural tea practices and traditions, and so many different effect that can be gained. Some are calming and hel sleep, some are caffeinated through different ways, and some can help with heart problems. Some are just to taste nice :D
But yeah there are some basics, want me to go in a specific direction? I know the most about chinese tea making!
Tea person!!!!!
I know about the plant most tea comes from, but I haven't heard of red and yellow :0 (I assume dark = black) Is red like hibiscus...?
Reminds me of when i bought some cheap 'black lychee' tea wayyy back and learned pretty quickly that it was just plain black tea with some cheap flavoring to make it smell nice. smh
I don't think I knew herbal could be caffeinated! I mostly only drink chamomile, as far as herbals go. Makes me wonder how many times I picked one out, thinking it wouldn't mess with getting sleep that night lol
There's not really anything specific. If you wanted to ramble about chinese tea making specifically or any history behind that, I'd be all ears!
