India’s love for tea is ages old now. And why not when the entire eastern zone of the country boasts of its luscious tea plantations that are world-famous for their flavour and cater to the tastebuds of the tea-lovers around the world! For the last 50 years, tea consumption in India has been on a steady rise. A study has shown that an estimated amount of 837,000 tonnes of tea is consumed in India every year.
Though consuming tea as a beverage is nothing new now, however over the years, the ways of consuming tea have changed a lot. In a traditional way, tea is consumed with milk and sugar for the greater parts of the country. Though different regions have different ways of treating their tea for consumption, it can be a pretty interesting study to know different tea recipes from around the world.
Moving from classic milk tea to black tea without milk and sugar, to herbal tea, a new tea-trend that is now sweeping across the country is flavoured tea.
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WHAT IS FLAVOURED TEA?
Dry tea leaves can act like a sponge and absorb the flavours and scents with whatever they come in contact with. This can be good or bad. The reason for storing your tea in sealed airtight containers is because it will not pick up unwanted surrounding flavours. On the other hand, using this property, now it is possible to flavour your teas with different flavours of fruits, flowers and spices.
Tea can be flavoured in many ways. Traditionally, the Chinese have added flavour to the tea through scenting.
TYPES OF TEA FLAVORS:
FLOWER SCENTED TEA
The most famous scented teas are Jasmine teas. Many other flowers are used to scent tea leaves such as rose, marigold, lily, magnolia, chrysanthemum, and orchid. Scented teas are made by adding fresh or dried flowers to fried tea leaves which are already processed. This can also be done with black, green or oolong teas.
The finished scent is very light and pleasant. If you come across a tea that is heavily scented, like you’re drinking from a perfume bottle, it is most likely to be artificially scented.
FRUIT SCENTED TEA
Any fruit can be used to scent a tea, such as apples, plums, peaches, apricots and berries of all types. Both fresh or dried fruit can be used. Teas with dried fruit or the dried fruit peel is called fruit-infused tea. By adding fruit juice to a brewed tea one can easily create a flavoured tea.
SMOKE SCENTED TEA
Lapsang Souchong is a traditional Chinese black tea from Fujian province. The tea is smoke-dried over a pinewood fire giving it a distinctive smoky flavour. Genmaicha is a Japanese green sencha tea that is blended with puffed rice kernels to give it a smokey taste. This gives them a light nutty flavour.
SPICE TEA
In Indian culture, spices are often added to flavour tea, the most popular being the masala chai.
Do you have a recipe for any flavoured tea? Share with us in the comments or in oneapp’s recipe book section.
Also, read our article on “Know about 6 different categories of tea“