Best Green Tea – From Chai to Iced

Which is the best green tea to drink? Consumers in the east and west have made this beverage extremely popular over the past few years. It seems that every food and beverage company now makes a green tea product, from bagged tea to iced, bottled fruit juice combinations to chai/latte concoctions. How do we wade through the choices to find the best green tea?

Different Types

Traditional green tea is a beverage brewed from the dried leaves and buds of the camellia sinensis plant. It is drunk hot, without milk or other flavorings added. Nowadays, however, you can get other drinks using green tea in place of the traditional black tea.

Chai is an Indian style of tea that combines black tea with honey and spices such as cinnamon and cardamom. It is heated with milk to make a creamy sweet drink.

Iced tea is brewed and served cold. Iced green tea is often sweetened slightly and may have lemon added. It is increasingly common to find fruit juice/tea combinations in the cold beverage section of the grocery store. These have varying proportions of tea to juice.

Which Tea Is Best?

Of course, the style of tea you prefer is a personal choice. It is only recently that drinks traditionally prepared with black tea, such as chai, are now available using green tea. As far as finding the best of each type of tea, that can be a little tricky. You may have to sample quite a few in order to find just what you are looking for.

If you prefer your tea in the traditional style, brewed hot and without any additional flavorings, you might want to visit a local tea shop to try several varieties. Loose tea is generally better than that in bags. There are three reasons for this.

First, the higher quality tea is reserved for loose tea. Second, the tea that goes into bags is chopped up. This means that it will oxidize more quickly, and thus will not stay fresh for very long. Third, the bag itself is brewed along with the tea. Although some companies use high quality unbleached paper in their tea bags, the reality is that you are still drinking steeped tea bag along with your tea!

Local Tea Shop

Tea shops offer a wide variety of all types of teas. You can try the products of different locales by the cup, or take some home to experiment with. The owners of these stores share a passion for good tea, and can be invaluable sources of information for aficionados and neophytes alike.

A 2004 study conducted by UK scientists identify the chemical markers that distinguish the best green tea from the rest. Guess which Chinese green tea they singles out for praise?