CoffeeForums Coffee Facts

Well, even though all of the teas come from the exact same species of plant known as Camellia sinensis plant, but there are still so many types of tea around. The most commonly known are the black and green tea, which are one of the most consumed teas around. In fact, even though they are from the same species of plant, each of them has its unique appearance, flavor and health benefits mainly from the way how they are being processed.

One of the main reasons of their differences between the black and green tea is how they were processed. After harvest, green tea was immediate baked or steamed, then rolled and left to dry. Whereas black tea on the other hand, after the harvest, it will then be left for fermentation or also known to be for oxidizing and withering. It was then brought back to be crushed and then go for more fermentation until it was fully dried and turned black. The main different will be that black tea will be fully oxidized and green tea isn't. Anyways, since they processed different, how they should be steeped is also different. Green tea should be brewed not longer than two minutes with warm water at around 85 degree Celsius to avoid burning the tea leaves and making your cup of tea bitter. Whereas the black tea should be brewed with boiling water for about four minutes in order to gets the flavor out. As a result, green tea tends to be more refreshing than the black tea. Furthermore, each of the black and green tea has different health benefits from each other.

Since black tea underwent a full oxidation process, the antioxidant from the tea leaves would turn into different compounds. In which, the black tea has the ability to reduce a person cholesterol and lower the risk of heart disease and stroke. Whereas the green tea with high concentration of antioxidant has the ability to boost our immune system and help prevents cancer.

Either way, black and green tea does provide some great benefits to our health, and drinking both of them will only bring more goods than harms to our body. However, the color of the black and green tea could also affect on your decision on which teas to drink. Even though both of them could stain your teeth, but because of the darker color from the black tea, it will stain your teeth more drastically.