9 Easy Tips For Choosing The Best Tea Flavor

By Grover

It’s hard to know what tea you want to try, but here are some dos and don’ts to get you started. The variety of tea available in markets gives us many options to choose from. After all, tea is a highly researched food product, so it’s always beneficial to know what’s coming from a cup of tea. By exploring your options you’ll be better equipped to pick out an ideal brew at home for you. Here are nine tips to help you choose the perfect tea.

#1. Start with a basic blend.

Don’t buy too many types of tea if you don’t like them. The more choices you have, the more like to argue the flavor choices you make for yourself. In fact, I could always do without all of the different types of tea blends on supermarket shelves. Start with a basic blend that’s similar in taste, style and presentation.

#2. Always try a cup or two.

Most of us normally only drink a cup or two of tea before our entire morning. That’s one reason most of us won’t try and mix tea with other beverages. If it’s not breaking a sweat to take a sip of tea, don’t add too much water or it may dilute the tea’s flavor.

#3. Know your tea quality.

Taste and texture are very important. It’s a good idea to have the flavor and quality of your tea tested. The product you’re buying should carry a carefully marked label that includes its brand name and has the words “Tea” or “Mint” or “Tarragon” or a combination of these things.

#4. Strive for balance.

A blend is less predictable than just a cup of tea. You can feel like your tea is too dry or too thick or it can even taste bitter, depending on what’s in the blend. If you’re tasting a set of four teas, you want to check each drink to make sure you’re getting the right balance. You want to avoid blandness, too much bitterness, too much wateriness or too little acidity. It’s also important to give yourself a break from a particular blend. Mix up your weekly mix once a month to refresh your palate.

#5. Don’t drink tea immediately.

If you’re planning to drink tea immediately, you’re not taking time to enjoy each and every sip of the mix. What’s most important is to enjoy each tea’s flavor before the rest of your morning. If you’re having trouble drinking the mix without drinking the same amount of water, keep the water in your cup as the blend is steeped.

#6. Ask questions.

To know how to make your tea even better, ask questions. The more questions you ask the better you’ll get a sense of how it tastes in your body and what you enjoy in each combination.

#7. Taste each blend again after you make a selection.

After you taste each brew and change the kinds of leaves you add, look at the package label again and look for significant alterations. It’s important to taste the mix every few days, and always on different days and occasions. You’ll taste different combinations of leaves with different flavors and even differences in flavor when you refresh your palate.

#8. Savor each sip.

By now you should feel like the tea you’re drinking is teeming with unique flavors. Finish each cup before you begin drinking another. When you stop for a rest, savor every sip that you take. Think of a couple of these teas you think are important and appreciate the tastes that come with them. You’ll feel more satisfied with your selection and likely spend more time savoring them.

#9. Do not substitute tea for coffee.

You can’t replace coffee with tea for many of the same reasons you can’t replace coffee with tea. While coffee is rich in caffeine, you have to be careful of excessive doses of caffeine. A strong cup of tea will likely mask coffee’s effects. Tea also lacks the flavor of coffee. If you want a different experience, try a herbal tea. Teas are a highly researched food product, so you’ll never be able to generalize and say everyone who drinks tea is a tea lover. It’s always important to try different blends before you fully commit to a particular variety. Before you even get started with tasting, you need to take a few minutes to ensure that tea is your drink of choice.

About Grover, the Artificial Tea Blogger

With so much tea content already existing on the internet, we thought it might be fun to see what kind of articles a robot would write if provided it were provided a story idea. So we used Grover, a “state-of-the-art defense against neural fake news”, which will write an article on anything you want, you just have to input a headline. The results are often uncanny, funny, weird, or just plain wrong.

Visit grover.allenai.org to explore AI2's state-of-the-art fake news detector and generator.