How to improve the taste of green tea?
Friday, July 23rd, 2010 at
9:29 am
I really don’t like the taste of green tea, but I want to drink it because it is healthy. Does anyone have any recommendations on how to make it taste sweeter without losing nutrients or adding too much sugar?
And also, is cold green tea sold by the pint in grocery stores any less healthy than green tea brewed and chilled at home?
Tagged with: Green Tea • grocery stores • nutrients • pint
Filed under: Green Tea
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What you buy at the store has been processed and sat around so long that it’s flavor may be affected. It also has a tendency to use cheaper ingredients.
Tea brewed at home is always better than store bought because you can mess around with variables such as brand of tea, strength of brew, sweeteners, and flavorings to find what you like best.
One of my favorite ways of doing the healthy food sneak on my 5 yr old is to hide them in other foods. In this spirit I suggest you mix your brew with fruit juices or use it to make koolaid. Mix it with regular black/orange pekoe teas. These things have a strong enough flavor to overpower the flavor of the green tea.
Honey!!
you can get cold green tea at the store & that makes the taste feel better.. or just add a little bit of honey to your green tea.. its healthy for the throat
Honey, milk, and a pinch of sugar.
Many stores should have it, like Lipton or Arizona tea.
Lemon & Honey. Green tea is an acquired taste…after awhile you won’t need much sweetener to enjoy it. If you buy green tea from the grocer just check the ingredients label. If it has anything listed besides tea and water then making it at home is better for you.
I love green tea! I bet that the reason why you don’t like it is that you used an unsatisfactory type/brand of tea, or you prepared it improperly.
I will always recommend loose leaf tea. When you use bagged tea, all you have are the tea fannings and dust, whereas with loose leaf, you have the whole leaf. Using anything less than the whole leaf would be a major factor in having bitter or otherwise unpleasant tasting tea. Loose leaf tea tends to have a noticeably superior quality and flavor, and will help you to find the tea that you like. There are also many more types of tea out there then you would probably think including the literally thousands of varieties of each of the six general types: white, green, yellow, oolong, black, and pu-erh.
A probable reason why you didn’t like the tea that you had previously is that you didn’t prepare it properly. When you use tea bags (I’m assuming that you were using a generic bagged green tea), many of the same principles apply as with loose-leaf tea, including the temperature of the water and the amount of time steeping. For green tea, the water temperature should be around 170-180ยบ F (temperature is crucial), and it should be steeped for less than 2 minutes. Also, you should use only one cup (8 oz) of water per tea bag so that the tea won’t be too light or too strong. Do not add anything (including milk or sugar) to your green tea, especially the first time you try a certain kind. Doing so tends to ruin the flavor of most types and make them unpalatable. There are very few flavors/scents that go well with green teas and almost none of them can be done at home. If you want flavored/scented tea, you will probably have to buy it pre-flavored. Preparing the tea properly can have a major effect on the final quality of the tea. I’m sure that once you learn to prepare it in the right way, you will come to love it.
If you start using loose-leaf tea (which is a much better value when compared to bagged tea), you should do some research on the proper brewing techniques (such as on this webpage: http://www.cooksshophere.com/products/Product_Info/tea-steeping.htm ) to be able to enjoy your tea to the fullest extent.
Here is a great place for buying loose leaf tea: http://www.teatrekker.com/main.htm .
To answer your second question, the store bought tea shouldn’t be less healthy than home-brewed tea, unless, of course, there are additives in it. Just make sure that they didn’t add any preservatives, flavors, sweeteners, or colorings, and it should be just as healthy (but maybe not as flavorful) as tea that you brew on your own.
I put lots of lemon in my green tea. It’s quite good.
You are way better off brewing your own green tea at home. It’s a lot healthier since you’re not getting any of those preservatives that they put in drinks at the store. Look into buying an Mr. Coffee Iced Tea maker. I have two and make my own all the time. It saves me a lot of money too.