White Tea
About White Tea
There are many reasons why people drink tea. Many like the stimulation of caffeine that they get from the tea, for others, it is about the taste of it. If you fall into that second group, white tea can give you the real raw taste of the tea plants.
Some people might find the term white tea a bit confusing. The tea that you get from the tea powder is a light shade of orange or brown. Moreover, this tea is grey and almost indistinguishable from named so? Well, it is because the unopened buds of the tea plant, that are used for making this tea, contain a delicate hair surrounding it that gives the leaves a white appearance. Read this article to know more about them. Having a better understanding of them will help you make the right choices when you are shopping.
A beginner’s guide to white tea
Anything cheap is easy to get and takes no effort while anything that is worth having in this world requires a lot of work. That is true when it comes to tea. However, despite the fact that making tea requires just a few minutes, there is a lot of effort involved in the pre-packing process. And the challenges remain despite the advancement in technology. Still, it is harder to manufacture and process this tea. It takes a lot more care while plucking the leaves and drying them. Therefore, it is not surprising that it is costlier than black or green tea. This article will tell you everything you need to know about this tea.
Understanding white tea
White, green tea and black tea come from the same plant, i.e. Camellia sinensis. The name that is more popular for this species is the tea plant. The difference between white, green, and black teas lies in the way they are plucked and processed. The most common type of tea is black tea. Tea leaves undergo extensive processing before you can buy them from a store as black tea. Green tea requires less processing than black tea. And white type is the rarest type of tea. To make this tea, the leaves should be plucked when the plant is young. For the same reason, it is expensive than black or green tea.
Making of white tea
Making white tea involves three steps. First comes the steep of plucking the leaves. Farmers have to pluck the leaves while the plant is young, and the buds are still closed. The next step is withering. This involves allowing the leaves to wilt by steaming them. Another method is to wilt the leaves under the sun. The flavour of the tea changes slightly depending on the wilting method. The final stage these tea leaves undergo is the actual drying of the leaves. For this, they put the leaves in an oven at 100 degrees Celsius until any trace of water evaporates completely.
Types of white tea
Based on the quality of the preparation and the exact method, there are three different varieties of this tea. The most famous and the most expensive one of them is silver needle tea. This tea has a very smooth taste and has a subtle sweetness. One of the reasons why this tea is expensive is because only silvery-white buds can be used for making it. If you want something that is better than the silver needle, then you can look for Jasmine Silver Needle, which is basically scented Silver tea. White Peony tea is second when it comes to quality and price. However, this one is also of good quality.
Benefits of white tea
It is the least processed tea of all. This itself gives this tea several advantages over heavily processed black tea or even green tea. Even though it contains caffeine like any other tea, it retains a lot of nutrients and antioxidants. For this reason, it can help you with your weight loss. However, keep in mind that solely drinking it will not help you lose weight. But when combined with other healthy eating habits and exercise, drinking it can reduce the number of calories that you would be otherwise consuming.
Tips on how to buy White Tea
Finding good quality tea can be harder than you might think. Because there are so many different types from hundreds of different brands, trying to find a tea that is right for you can be a little overwhelming. So, is there a way to select a good tea that you will like from out of all these different options? Well, it is possible if you know what factors to consider while you are shopping for them. Here are some tips that you can follow in order to easily find the right type of tea.
- Type of tea – There are at least a dozen different types of tea ranging from premium quality silver needle tea to less expensive Darjeeling white and African white varieties. Depending on the type of tea, the taste, texture, and price differ. Different types not only differ in the type of plants but there will be slight variations in the way the leaves are plucked and how they are prepared.
- Caffeine content – The amount of caffeine in this tea varies even if it is coming from the same plant. The age of plucking the leaves, and the exact method of drying will affect the caffeine content in the tea. Some people might like the stimulation of caffeine in their tea. Such people would want to go for the tea variety with a higher concentration of caffeine. But if you are more health-conscious, look for the ones with less caffeine content.
- Go through the list of ingredients – The ingredients of this tea from different brands might not be the same. There will be some extra flavouring and also some preservatives. Moreover, this applies to almost anything you are buying. Simply go through the list of ingredients to get an idea about what you are getting.
- Price – Not surprisingly, it usually costs more than black or green teas. This is because a tea plant cannot produce the same quantity of tea as compared to black tea. Because tea cultivators have to pluck the leaves when they are very young to prepare them, the final weight of the tea tends to be much lower. Also, it is more of a delicacy than black tea. This tends to inflate the price of it quite a bit.
Besides white, there are so many different teas that you can try besides this tea. Check out other tea varieties like black tea, herbal tea, fruit tea, green tea, rooibos tea, and many more. But the good news is that you can find all of them easily using our shopping search engine . That way, you can compare the products and their prices against each other and pick the right one among them. Finally, don’t forget to check out other amazing products from the Food & Beverage category.
Question & Answer
Is white tea good for you?
When it comes to food and beverages, most of the food is not absolutely good or bad for the body. However, when you compare white to other types of tea, it is obvious that white is better. This is because, because of the extensive processing that black tea has to undergo, much of the nutrients in it will be lost, and the concentration of caffeine and tannin will be relatively higher. On the other hand, this tea will preserve its nutrients and contain fewer stimulants.
Does white tea contain caffeine?
Mostly the teas that you will come across in a store will contain caffeine. Even if it claims to be decaffeinated tea, there will still be some caffeine in it. In fact, there will be only a difference of five or ten per cent between the amount of caffeine in white and decaf tea. To make it a bit more complicated, the exact quantity of caffeine varies depending on the type and brand of tea. If you want to drink tea that does not contain any caffeine at all, then you will have to go for herbal tea. But herbal tea is not exactly tea.
Is white tea better than green tea?
The majority of the difference between white and green tea lies in the taste. Even though both of them are less processed than black tea, the white one will give you the rawest taste of the tea. But that is not to say there are nutritional differences. For one thing, this tea contains less concentration of caffeine than green tea. It will only contain about half the amount of caffeine as that of a typical green tea. Secondly, because of less processing, the white type will retain more nutrients and antioxidants than green tea. So, it is true that white is better than green tea, albeit not by a long margin.
If you are looking to buy white tea online in the UAE, look no further as you are in the right place. There are more than 500 shops and brands offering them here on Shops.ae. These shops offer products from popular brands like Lipton, Stash Tea, Kusmi, Celestial Seasonings, Mighty Leaf, Twinings, Typhoo.