5 Surprising Facts About Green Tea

Green tea’s benefits have been well documented – in addition to fighting free radicals, adding green tea to your diet can help to detoxify the body and help with issues like stress and fatigue. Considering its (well deserved) popularity, however, there are still some things that might surprise you about green tea. Below, we address some of them in detail. How well do you know your favourite healthy beverage?

Green tea is not naturally bitter.

If your daily cup of green tea tastes bitter, it’s likely that it hasn’t been brewed correctly. Maybe the water was too hot – green tea tastes best when it’s brewed with cooler water. In China and Japan, green tea is traditionally made with boiling water, but the tea is only steeped for anywhere between 15-60 seconds. For best results, we recommend using a lower temperature for a sweeter, non-bitter tea.

Green tea does not require any special equipment to brew.

You can brew green tea with as little as a kettle – you don’t need fancy bowls or pots to brew green tea. To make things even easier, use Tetley’s Green Tea bags, which are designed to be used just like regular tea bags.

Green tea can improve your mood.

Green tea contains L-theanine, an amino acid that acts as a relaxant, which explains why you might feel so relaxed after drinking your daily cup. And while green tea contains caffeine, L-theanine helps to slow the absorption of it into your body, so you won’t have to worry about the same spike and crash in energy levels that come from most other caffeinated drinks.

Green tea isn’t always green in colour.

While it’s true that some green teas, like the Japanese sencha, can appear bright green after they’re brewed, most green teas are meant to look pale yellow when brewed correctly.  So don’t worry if you’re green tea isn’t exactly green – it isn’t meant to be!

Green tea bags or leaves shouldn’t be left in the mug or teapot.

This goes back to our point earlier about bitterness – leaving green tea bags or leaves in water for longer than 4-5 minutes will increase the amount of naturally occurring chlorophyll from the tea in the water, which will make it extremely bitter. For best results, let the bag steep in the water for no more than 3 minutes.