Alchemy Diary: Lai~ go yam cha :D

show off my leng zai pic ^^

Dunno since when, tea seems to be a drinks that hardly divided out from us. Chinese and Japanese they treat drinking tea as a spiritual issue. European have tea time. And now for us south east asia people we have a habit of "Yam Cha" in the morning with nice dim sum, or just simply ask few friends and "Lim Teh" at the coffee shop for hours and hours.

---Tea making---
So let us discuss, how to make a perfect tea :D
Those important points can be divided into:

Water
Temperature
Soaking
Enjoy

Water

Water is one of the most important element in tea making.

Its is preferred to use water which was without chlorine added into it. So tap water is probably not a very good choice. In case, you can also use tap water with filter to filtered away those chlorine in the water. If you cant fullfill neither of the cases, then its better to find some water source with lack of lime and sodium chloride.

These point are important on making a nice tea is because there is a reason that, it is trusted that using a water on pH level of 7 can bring out the natural taste and odour of the tea.

Temperature

The other rule of making tea is never use an overboiled.

A temperature of water can directly influence the taste of tea. So that it is suggested to keep the temperature of the water between 85-95 celcius. For accurate of reading, tea maker may use thermometer to measure the temperature of the water. Or observe it carefully and stop before it cook until bubbling but it is already trembling. Then tea maker mayb pour the water onto the tea leaves.

Soaking
Soaking can be said as the most important step of tea making. The time of soaking the tea can affect the taste of the tea greatly. A too long of soaking will make the tea too bitter while too short time of soaking make the tea cannot bringing out its real taste.

Another point of soaking is the tea leave must remain open, which means that there must be spaces between tea leaves, so teaspoon and teaeggs are not advisable on tea making because it makes the tea to pack tightly, so that there were too less spaces betweent them.

Different kind of tea demand a different time of soaking. It is better to check what is the suitable time of soaking a kind of tea before make it in order to taste the best taste of the tea. But there is one similar part between all teas, which was the smaller the tea leaves the shorter the time of soaking. As we can see that those tea leaves which was chopped into powder are advised to soak it for only 1-2 minutes.

an example of teaegg

Enjoy
Finally, after u have prepare your tea, just sit down and clear your mind. Just enjoy the taste of tea and forgot all those jobs, all those issue which annoying you and enjoy it.

But remember that, never use plastic or paper cups to serve the tea as is will spoiled the taste of the tea. And you may serve it with chinese tea kettle and cup.

chinese tea set

---Active antigents??---
We now that teas invigorate our body and soul, but why is it?
For knowing that, let us see what is the active ingredient in those teas. There are many important substances in tea leaves, such as poliphenols (which make our tea taste a little bit of sour) ,methylxanthine, caffeine(which contain about 4% in the tea leaves), different kind of lipids, amino aicds, mineral substances and volatile compounds.

---Help on Diseases---
There are also antioxidants which can neutralize the free roots that may causes the development of cancer cells in our body. Means that, drink tea constantly can keep us away from cancer.

Researches also showing that black tea can help to prevent heart disease as few cups of black tea perday can lower the chances of getting stroke and blocked blood vessels.

As and extra tips, drinking teas when getting flu can also make us better as there are some chemical substances in the tea which can help us to fight against the pathogen more efficiently.

Besides that, many people also worried about the caffeine contained in tea can affect their body. The fact is, the caffeine in coffee and tea are absorbed by a different way by our body. Our body will absorb the caffeine in coffee immediately while only absorb the caffeine in tea gradually. So that, drinking tea usually will only invigorate our body a lesser time that coffee do.

But, there is some precaution as some of the black tea also contain heavier level of caffeine. So, for some of the people with sensitive system might have to becareful with green tea and chinese flower teas too.

So why not just make a nice tea, and throw away all your worries and enjoy it relaxly:D