How Tea Works

Legend has it that tea was discovered by a curious Chinese emperor after leaves blew into his boiled water. Now tea is the second only to water in popularity worldwide. And despite the varieties of tea, they all come from a single species of plant.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to Stuff you should know from house stuff Works
dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh
Clark with Charles W. Chuck Bryant Jerry in Studio one A.
You just pointed us out to each other as if

(00:21):
I was going to be like, who it was Jerry,
and it wasn't me Jerry. So I'm Chuck here Chuck, Okay,
that's Jerry. All right. That was a little confused, right there, gotcha.
Here's a lady. I'm a dude. All right, now that
we have that sort of let's talk to you. Uh,
or we could change the name of the podcast to
two dudes and a lady. Yeah, we could. Maybe that'll

(00:43):
be our side cast where we talk about this podcast.
Sidecast that's right coined by Josh Clark Circond two thousand.
So now you own that. I just put it on wax.
Pretty pretty sweet, pretty slick, ye, So Chuck, Yeah, you
have or drink tea? I just stuff finished up some
green tea. Are you still a green tea drinker? Yeah?

(01:04):
I mean I like all kinds of tea, but I
uh drank some green because I was studying for this
and it just was like, yeah, sure you used to
drink it by like the mini pitcher full. Yeah. I
used to drink it cold. Yeah, um, you don't need that.
I had this hot. Well it is wintertime. Yeah. Do
you like? I like green tea. Yeah, I like green

(01:25):
tea the most. Um. I like chilled green tea. I
don't like woolong, which until I guess today or yesterday,
I thought it was long. Did you know it was woolong?
I had no idea and I've never had it I have.
It's very woody. It's almost like roots, like you put

(01:46):
some roots in some water, um, warm water, seep for
a while or steep steep. I don't know why I
always have trouble with that. It's clearly steep. Seep is different. Yeah,
that's a different word. But for my whole life of
confused steep and seep when it comes really yeah interesting
Uh Anyway, Wolong not the biggest fan. I like green

(02:09):
tea and I like it chilled black tea. I'm not
really big on. Yeah. I like a good English breakfast tea. Love.
Do you or Earl Gray? You like those two sure
man little little cream, little sugar. Yeah, And then of
course you've got your herbal teas like I don't like this.
Are you don't know? I've been drinking celestial seasonings tension
tamer So that's actually right. Well no, well that was

(02:33):
the big reveal that I was working up to, but
just plodding along. But now that you've rushed me, I
will agree with you. No, not all those are t right.
Those aren't. Here's the really big reveal. Tho, okay, English
breakfast tea, green tea, woo loong uh. White tea. Remember

(02:55):
that snap a lad where that old man shows the
backpacker dude, Oh, it's like a Snapple white tea and
he just goes, we put up to the top and
it's like that's it and he goes, that's it. That's
white tea. All of those are the same thing. They're
all the same They come from the same plant. One plant.
Did you know that? Um? I did not know that

(03:16):
until I've researched. It's a Chamelia senensus is the t
plant the tea bushes. Uh. And now we have to
say there are different varieties of chamelea sentensus c sentensus
is what those in the no call it. Uh. Well, horticulturists, sure, um,
but the plant itself. There's one species of key plant,

(03:38):
and that's what it's. That's what it all comes from.
It's how the tea is made. That that Um explains,
explains the differences, and then you know, you add some
stuff like apparently Earl Gray has the essential oil of
the bergamot orange mixed in, which is nice, but that's
still it is t yes, right, it's got something added

(03:59):
to it. Now, if he just took burgamot orange, dried
it out, put it in a tea bag, and sold
it as herbal tea as like orange dream, we wouldn't
have tea. The tension tamer, it's not tea, it's a
It's a dried herb that you steep or steep depending
on your preference in warm water. Yeah, it's a steeped
hot beverage. Beverage. That's a good way of saying it,

(04:21):
because that's exactly what it is. So the cats out
of the bag, which means now that we've done that,
we have to explain everything there is to know about tea.
That is right. Uh, And I guess there's no better
place to start than the seven b C. Of course,
and the Emperor of China um No One knows that
this story is true. Of course. It's a pretty good

(04:42):
story though. But it's a good story because we don't
know the exact origin of tea um. It's been around
for a long time. But some people say Chinese Emperor
Shin nung Um, who ruled about five thousand years ago,
was traveling through China and he was big into sanitation.
Uh like boil your water kind of sanitation. This is

(05:03):
thousands of years before germ theory, which is a couple
hundred years old. I wonder what led him to that conclusion,
which was spot on. You know, I don't know, I
don't know. We're getting the way back machine and ask him, yeah,
that's right. Okay, it's a lot of fuel for that
one question, but it's a pretty good question because yeah,
you're you're right, it's spot on. How how do you

(05:24):
know that boiling water kills germs if you don't know
what germs are exactly? Uh So he was traveling through
China and reportedly stopped to rest and was preparing some
boiled water, some delicious boiled water, and a gust of
wind blew some leaves from a bush into the water,
changing the color, and he was like Hey, this is

(05:45):
a different color. Now let me try it well, and
it's delicious. He was renowned as a scientist. Yeah sure,
he was definitely at the very least securious fella. Um,
and yeah, he decided to try it. He's like different
colored boiled water. Of course, I'm going to try that
and see what it's like. He had his right hand
try it first, then five minutes later was like okay, yeah, yeah, exactly.
He didn't die. I think that's what all the fat

(06:07):
cats did back then. Um. So it turns out that
that was debris detritus from the Camelia senensus. He was born.
He was born in China. No one knows that that
story is true. I think, like you said, um, but
it's a pretty great story. And since we don't know

(06:28):
the true origin, ty, why not. Yeah, I'll go with that.
It's not that far fetched. When the Western Zoo dynasty
was around, the tea was a religious offering, and during
the Han dynasty it was pretty limited, so it was
safe for royalty. Um. By the time the Tang dynasty
came around, which was six six eighteen to nine oh seven,

(06:49):
they found a bunch uh. They found discovered a lot
of more tea plants, and that ironic that t became
established during the Tang dynasty. Yeah, that was pretty funny, um,
because tang as the opposite of tea, right yeah, I
mean they're both water based, so probably not the opposite.
I don't know, it would be the opposite of tea. Um. So,

(07:13):
like I said, they found a bunch more plants in
the Tang dynasty, and the Chinese government actually said, you
know what, everyone should drink tea because it's good for
you and so, and we can make money off of
it of course. Uh. And then from the Tang dynasty
it spread to Japan by priests. You were studying in China.
They also brought Buddhism at the same time. Both of
them took root. The Japanese said we like this, let's

(07:36):
try making some other stuff out of it, and that
they actually created them teeth ceremony, which is a big
deal in Japan still to this day. Have you taken
part one of those? I have not. You me took
um some classes when she taught in Japan yours back. Um,
But apparently it's just one of these things where you
you're just constantly learning. It's never you're never like I'm

(07:59):
a I'm a master at t You're you're always learning more,
you're always trying to be perfect. And the thing that's
so elusive about it is it's supposed to be utterly simple. Yeah,
it's it's a it's elaborate, but the steps are meant
to be simple, Like it's a very simple plane form
thing like the sushi rice. It's like, uh, right, why

(08:22):
are the Japanese obsessed with doing things really well? They
really are that they don't phone it in right, Um.
But the whole thing behind the tea ceremony and the
Japanese adoption of it is that there's this idea that
t share, sitting down and sharing ceremonially and in a ritually,
a ritual manner, a cup of tea can bring peace

(08:44):
between people. Yeah, what's the the tea ceremony? I know
you there's a saying, there's another saying, Yeah, it's a
cup of tea with me ichi go ichi e one time,
one meeting, which is the idea that every encounter is

(09:05):
unique and can't be duplicated. Very nice, That is nice. Um.
So in Europe, you know, I think a lot of
people associate with tea. Of course, with England and Europe,
the UK Britain took a little while though. All those
places there was a lag. Yeah, there was. We're in
like the seventeenth century now, and the Portuguese were the

(09:26):
first people to uh not imports tea, but drink tea
in England. Yeah, they were. They were trading in the
East Indies, specifically Java and the Dutch. If you'll remember
from did we ever do a full nutmeg episode? I
think we did right cinnamon too, that this all this
showed up back then in the seventeenth century in the
East Indies around Indonesia, Java. Um, the Portuguese just had

(09:51):
the place on lockdown until the Dutch came in and
we're like, we're taken over. One of the things that
came out of that was the import or the introduction
tea to you Europe through the Dutch. Yeah, they pretty
much horned in on their trading routes and brought t
to Holland from China, and then from Holland of course
it spread throughout Europe. Uh. And I think the King

(10:11):
of England at one point married at Portuguese uh woman
and the princess, Yeah, princess that had a lot to
do with it too. Of course, Charles the Second did
married Catherine of Braganza, who was, it says in this article,
a t addict and she was like, must drink some tea, man,
and uh, all of Great Britain kind of followed suit

(10:32):
because back then, once a princess did something, sure, you know,
everybody wanted to do that. Yeah, even if she was
a fiend of some sort, like a caffeine fiend. Um.
So the end of the East India Company's monopoly on
trade in China, which happened in eighteen thirty four, was
a really big deal because basically they you know, everything

(10:54):
was coming from China until then. And then at that
point the East India Company said, hey, we could grow
our own tea in India and we're gonna start doing it.
Uh And they did, and by eight thirty nine they
had enough cultivation going on, um that they had the
first auction of a psamte in Britain, which is that's
a big deal. That's the variety that they used to

(11:15):
make Darjeeling tea. How was it? And I think their
number two in production today right Yeah, India, China, Kenya
and Sri Lanka are the big four tea producers the Indonesia.
I think it's fifth, and they're like, can't you just
say top five? You don't produce Well, they do produce
a lot, but not nearly as much. Uh. The other
thing too that happened during that the monopoly was, um,

(11:39):
the tea Clipper was born, which is pretty neat. When
the company had the monopoly, there was basically no rush
to get it there because they had the monopoly, like,
you'll get the tea and you will sail over there
and will all be good. Have you ever heard of
Slow Boat to China? Is that where it came from? Cold?
What about High Road to China with your boy Tom Selleck? Well,

(12:03):
oh yeah remember that movie? I never saw it. Yeah,
it wasn't very good. That was his brief foray into
a major motion pictures. Didn't he play like the King
of Spain in one of the Columbus pictures back in
the early nineties? I think I remember that? Yeah? What
was that either or Columbus? Yeah, I can't remember. So

(12:24):
the t Clipper, yes, uh, there was no rush, but
until when that monopoly ended, it was basically like the
fastest boat to get there, the fastest ship will be
the one that gets the sail. So they started making
these uh these new ships that were had huge sails
and tall masts could go a lot faster, and it
started the era of the t clipper races. Um. Basically,

(12:48):
you would leave the Canton River in China, go down
the China Sea, across the Indian Ocean, slink around the
Cape of Good Hope, up the Atlantic, pass these oars
and into the English Channel. Then you were to to
up the River Thames by a tugboat, and the first
boat to throw their their load up on the docks
would be the winner, which is pretty neat until they

(13:09):
built the Ses Canal and then it was like, well,
out of that, it sounds like a pretty great race though,
Yeah it was. Yeah, I wonder how long that took.
I think they were just holl And but the whole
time too. Yeah, but even still had to take weeks,
you know, I would think, so, um, and this we
should say this is the that was the mid nineteenth century. Um.

(13:30):
The we would be remissed to do an episode on
tea and not mention the Boston Tea Party, which was
a thing. Everybody knows about the Boston Tea Party. What
I didn't realize is that the British Royalty, the British
Crown still, even after losing the colonies in part over
tea taxes, UH, still continue to just tax the heck

(13:54):
out of tea for for at least a decade afterward
before they finally relented and started to like drastically reduce
it in the face of tons and tons of piracy
and smuggling. Apparently, in the late eighteenth century, UH seven
million pounds of tea were smuggled into Britain and five

(14:15):
million pounds were legally imported, so the smuggling there was
more smuggled teeth than legal tea in Great Britain in
the late eighteenth century. Right. But apparently despite all this,
it wasn't until nineteen sixty four that the Brits, the
British government finally said, you know what, We're gonna stop
fiddling with the t tax and just not tax tea anyway.

(14:36):
Was this nineteen sixties, Yeah, nineteen sixty crazy, Yeah, tea
it's huge in Britain. Yeah. And at this point in
the late nineteenth century is when I think the average
UH Britain was consuming about six pounds a year per person.
It's a lot of tea. Yeah, I wonder what that
would be today. I meant to look that up. Is
that what harvest? Dry harvest or man? Is that a

(15:00):
seeped tea bag? It's not seeped. That's a lot of tea. Yeah,
there's a lot of man. So Chuck, we got the
history under our belt. We'll move into how tea is
actually made after this. Okay, buddy, we were talking about

(15:32):
the history, and then before that we mentioned that there
were four main types of tea, green, black, woolong, wu tang,
and white tea. I just don't understand how O O
l O n g is woolong. It's oolong. I guess
the w is both. It's invisible but not silent, you know.

(15:54):
And like we said, all those teas come from Camellia sinensis. Uh,
and there's different varieties of them. The awesome makes start dealing. Um,
But the way that you process the leaves is where
the differences come about. Right, that's right. What's interesting to
me is all t almost all tea in the whole

(16:15):
wide world is harvested by hand. Yeah, like uh, I think, um,
what was the spice we were talking about? Saffron? Saffron? Yeah,
I think n make too. When did we talk about saffron?
I think I mentioned it in the Cinnamon podcasts. It's
expensive because it can only begin harvested and anytime you're
involving people, it's gonna cost more than some big, stupid

(16:38):
machine that can do tons of it at once. And
that is certainly the case with t because there are
only a couple of harvest a year, the first flush
in the early spring, the second flush in the summer.
And they they really care for the tea plant. They
pick and prune at them year round, but they only
choose what a couple of leaves from each plant when
they're actually harvesting. Yes, so they they're the top two

(17:02):
leaves and the bud in between. That's your tea. Everything
else is just basically the home for the tea that's harvested.
Like the rest of the plant, This huge enormous like
plant bullush shrub is just there to like sprout out
these little bits and the little sprouts or the tea
that we drink. It's amazing, And that's all the tea.

(17:23):
That's the oolong, that's the black tea, that's the white tea,
that's the green tea. That's all of them. It's from
these shrubs, just the top two little white leaves in
the bud, that's right. And from there, once they're picked
by hand, uh, they are taken to the factory, which
is on the plantation because something starts happening as soon
as you pick it, and that's called oxidation. And oxidation

(17:47):
needs to be very controlled because it's not necessarily a
bad thing, because it actually is partially why you get
certain varieties of tea, right. Yeah, depending on the kind
of tea you want either want oxidation or you want
to prevent oxidation. And we should probably say oxidation basically
is when UM any kind of molecule, but specifically an

(18:08):
oxygen molecule UM or O two uh interacts with something
like UM the metal in a car, or the inside
of an apple, the leaf off of a t shrub. Um.
Once the oxygen interacts with it, it starts to chain
reaction inside where these oxygen molecules that have to pair

(18:31):
or two unstable or unpaired electrons. Once the oxygen interacts
with some other atoms in the cells of these things,
it robs those atoms of their electrons, right, because it
wants to pair up and when it does this, it
starts the process of oxidation. Yeah, which is actually John
Fuller or old Buddy wrote this one. Uh and he

(18:54):
was a big t guy, big imagine he still is.
Um he he's characterized it as actually burning it. So
like when you eat your apple bite and you go
to your desk and you leave it there, and then
you go to the bathroom for an hour or so,
you come back. The reason your apple is brown now
is because you've exposed that inside to the to the

(19:15):
O two and it's burning it. Yeah, because normally the apple,
the inside of the apple is protected from the oxygen
in the air we breathe in the atmosphere by the skin.
Once you puncture the skin, when you break the skin,
it's exposed to oxygen and that process of oxidation takes place.
The same thing happens with a leaf from a t shrub.
When it's attached to the shrub, it's protected from the

(19:37):
outside air. Once you pluck it from there, and especially
once you like break it or tear it apart or
do something with it, it's exposed to that air and
oxidation takes place and it withers in very much the
same way that UM a leaf on a tree, a
dead leaf in the fall withers and changes color. That's
oxidation as well. Yeah, the same like you said to

(19:58):
the same thing, like that can happen to a car
if you don't get that true code. Yeah, that's why
you pay thousands and thousands of dollars more the dealership
for that true. That's right. Uh. Black tea is the
leader of all teas that counts for about production and uh,
like you said, the Earl Gray or the English breakfast tea,

(20:19):
that's black tea. UM. And it's not always I mean,
doesn't necessarily look black. It's kind of a reddish brown
when when you seep it. Yeah, that's right. Yeah, I'm
not gonna help out your problem, am I. And then no,
I'm just gonna confuse you. I thought I might knock
it out today, but now it's gotten worse. I think.

(20:39):
Actually you've also said too long a couple of times. Yeah,
that's kind of my choice. Okay. Um, So with black
tea in particular, that's like the um the oxidation master,
that's right, that's the one you want oxidation for. Uh.
So with the actual process of making tea, of processing
tea leaves into black t you're actually inviting oxidation. Um,

(21:03):
and you're doing that. Well, you want to talk about
how you how you make black tea? Yeah, it's a
it's a five step process. I mean, there's a couple
of methods, but they both include generally these five steps.
Yet one is by robot and the other is by yeah,
human hand pretty much the Orthodox method and the CTC
or the cut tear curl method, which sounds cool, but

(21:25):
it's not um because Orthodox is you know, by hand,
which means it's better. Uh. And all of this again
is it takes place in the factory on the plantation
grounds after the human hands have harvested the tea leaves
and brought them to the factory. A couple of fields over. Okay,

(21:45):
the first step is withering, and that's when you're gonna
spread it out and let them wither. Like we're talking
about with the leaf that falls, it's just basically losing moisture. Yes,
after that, you've got rolling where if you're using the
Orthodox method, the human hand method, you're actually rolling out
and pressing the leaves so that you're kind of pressing
the moisture out, but you're also simultaneously pressing some of

(22:07):
the oils, those beneficial oils inside the tea leaf out
so that they stick to the outside of the leap,
so they're kind of retained and dehydrated. Yeah, and if
if you're doing the hand method, you it's a gentle process.
You're trying not to break the leaf. With the CTC method,
they're just chopping it up. And you know, because it's

(22:28):
a big dumb machine, right and with with say other
types of tea, you wouldn't use that method because when
you do chop it up, you're exposing it to oxidation
even more. Right, you're right, which is part of the
part of the process that's actually the third step is oxidation.
So after the leads are either pressed by the orthodox
method or cut by robots, it's left out in a

(22:48):
kind of a damp, cool space to basically oxidize even further,
to turn copper turn brown with her and then lose
the rest of their moisture. That's which is a good
thing in the case of black tea. Yes, from here
you're gonna dry it out with some hot air and
the color is gonna change even more, uh, from that

(23:09):
copper that came from the green. And now you've got
your brown and your black color and going on. And
then you put the leaves by size and by quality,
or if it's going to become say bag tea or something,
it's chopped up almost into like a powder. Yeah, kind
of just little tiny bits and then bagged and all
that stuff. But if it's just loose leaf, then it's

(23:31):
sorted by by size and quality. That's right, then you're
gonna pay more for it. Yeah, And that's black tea,
and that's the tea produced in the world goes through
that process, either by human hand or by robot hand.
Green tea is next, and that, like we said a
million times, is from the same plant. So cool, It
is very cool. But basically what happens here is it's

(23:52):
pretty much the same process, but you're just not oxidizing
it as long because you're going to steam it or
I didn't know this, you could pay for it, I
guess if you're just growing your own tea and doing
it in your house. Uh. You just saw Chef, right man.
That was a good movie. He's very good movie, way
better than Birdman. The only thing I didn't like a

(24:14):
spoiler yeah, about Chef was the whole the whole social
Oh yeah, that was like a little weird underwritten by Twitter.
Yeah it didn't. It was a little weird. I thought
it was just strange that they're like willing to date
the movie totally that much. You go see it in

(24:35):
ten years, you'd be like, this is so two thousand
and fourteen. Yeah. I thought it was not necessary either.
But anyway, good movie. It was a great movie, and
I thought it's still fit. It's just thinking ten years
down the road, it's gonna be odd like the movies
that talk about my Space. Yeah, you sad, sad movies. Um,

(24:56):
but where were we We were drying out, we were well,
you were seeing you. We're saying. And this is the
point of steaming. Is it stops oxidation? Yeah, and keeps
it green, hence the name green tea. And it's not
just the um the tea leads themselves are green or
greenish they're supposed to be, but also it imparts a
greenish hue to the actual brood tea as well. Um.

(25:17):
And the way that the green from the original green
color of the leaves is kept as from preventing oxidation,
and that's that's done by steaming. And I looked everywhere
to see how steaming prevented oxidation. I couldn't find it.
I think it's one of those things where people are
just like, yep, it does it. Everyone's content to basically

(25:38):
stop right there, and I'm like, no, how And I
tried to reword at a couple of different ways, and
I'm like, okay, how does heat prevent oxidation? Couldn't find
that either, But apparently that's what it does. So I
don't know if it seals the cells off, maybe atterizes
them somehow, and it prevents the oxygen from getting to
it from someone. Yeah, if you know how steam prevents oxidation,

(25:59):
please let us. But as far as as far as
we can tell, it actually does, that's right. And uh
we should point out here that it's there can be
a range in hue. Um, there can be a yellowishue sometimes.
And there's actually something I didn't know about that you
told me about yellow tea. Yeah, so supposedly, um, the
steaming process can go a little awry, or it used

(26:20):
to back in the day more frequently. Yeah, and it
produces another um type of tea. Uh it's called yellow tea.
And that's like sold, you can get it now. I
don't know I'm sure there's some specialty store that sells
yellow tea. Yeah, yeah, um, all right. So basically at
this point, green tea is um after it's frozen in

(26:43):
time and staying green. The process is about it, and
the process from there's the same as with black tea
pretty much. Yeah, you're gonna sort it, you're gonna cool it,
you can dry it out, you're gonna sort it again
and then sort it one more time. A lot of
redundancy in creating green tea. And now we're at Wolong

(27:04):
or Oolong, which is basically like it's kind of like
yellow tea. I don't think they're one and the same,
but it's a it's steamed, but it's steamed after the
oxidation process has taken place to it to an extent,
So it's oxidized but not as much as black tea,
and it's steamed but not as early as green tea.
So Oolong is between the two. What's crazy is it

(27:25):
doesn't taste like black tea or green tea at all.
It's definitely its own thing. Still, it's from the same plant.
I don't think I've ever had it at all. Yeah,
I need to just try something see what all the
fuss is about. If you go to like a like
a Lawson's, which is a chain of um convenience stores
in Japan, strangely enough, you can go in and pretty

(27:46):
much anywhere you can buy like water, green tea and
Oolong tea like in a cooler like you can get
it everywhere, those three things, and you should try all
of them. You have to try along at least once. Yeah,
I'll try some tomorrow. Okay, that's my that's my dedication
to you, sir. Uh. Then you have your white tea

(28:07):
and that is very much a specialty tea and somewhat rare,
and it is only picked two days out of the
year when the buds aren't open yet, and it's um
it's less grassy, it's a little smoother, but it is
similar to green tea. And it has only been available
outside of China for um, not that long, just a
few years, right, Snapple has only been making it for

(28:29):
a couple of years. Well, well that should date it immediately,
um like Twitter dates chef. Uh. And it was reserved
for Chinese nobility because of you know how rare it is.
But um, now you can get it. And we talked
about um other kinds of tea two Like herbal tea
again is just basically dried herbs that you steep just

(28:50):
like regular tea. Like chai chai is actually tea, that's right,
because it's tea mixed with spices like cinnamon and pep
or and stuff. So that's still constitutes tea. But like
camerameal t it's not really teah. It's it's insane, right um,
And it's just again, it's just some dehydrated cameramel flowers

(29:13):
that you steep in hot water. Um. Same goes for
ruey boss, which is a mouthful, but it means red
bush and Afrikaans. That's right. Same with mate, which is
not to be confused with macha. No, but we'll talk
about macho right, Yes, let's talk about macha chuck because
I love the stuff I had not been Uh maybe

(29:36):
you can call me a macha poser or jumping on
the macha bandwagon. Yeah, I in that article you sent
it said that like it's the darling of the t set. Now. Yeah,
And um, my friend in California, PJ and l A.
You've met p J J. He uh he is or was?
He may have bailed on it. But he was trying

(29:57):
to make his own special macha green tea and bottle
it and sell it. I know what you mean, but
I don't think he got past making it at home stage. Well,
there's a lot. There's not a lot to it, but
there's Again, I think the Japanese taste ceremony is surrounded
or surrounds macha. That's what you're preparing is macha and

(30:17):
all mucha is. It's like really really good green tea
that's been ground down to a fine powder by hand,
which automatically makes it more expensive than any other teas
or most other teas. Um. And what you have is
this really fine, beautiful green powder and you put like
a teaspoon up in a bowl or a cup or

(30:38):
something like that. Uh. And you're supposed to sift it.
I think through like a sifter. Yeah, um, just to
open it back up again. Sure, make it pop. Uh
And then you add some hot water and then you
use a whisk to stir it. Yeah. And there's um.
I don't think we mentioned that. The other big difference
with macha is is that bushes, Uh, the bush are

(31:00):
covered twenty days prior to harvests from sunlight and that's
the big distinction, and that means it's gonna have a
lot more chlorophyll and something called lanine. Oh, that stuff
is good. That's just the amino acid that UM. Apparently
that's what allows you to feel both um invigorated and calmed. Yeah,
it works in conjunction with caffeine. UM. And it's actually capable.

(31:24):
It's an amino acid, like you said, that is capable
of crossing the blood brain barrier. So like when you
drink it, it goes right to your brain. It doesn't
have to be um converted and metabolized, right, and it
supposedly has all sorts of cool benefits like um cognitive enhancement. Um.
You're just kind of clear. It's just neat stuff. Well,

(31:44):
and that's what the macha proponents will tell you, Like,
have some of this stuff. Man, it's like go juice.
You'll be clear headed. Take a hint of this um.
But Macha's there's a couple of forms. There's the yasucha
and the kotcha. There's at the coicha probably coecha ki chaicha.

(32:05):
Uh you sucha is thin tea and coecha is thick tea.
And the coecha man that is something else that is
made with half the water twice the macha. That sounds
like my kind of macha. Well, they say, by the end,
by the time you're you're done whisking it, it's gonna
be like the texture of paint. Serious macha. Yeah, because

(32:25):
macha has like a distinct taste. Oh yeah, I love it.
I mean I'll make like, uh, I get it at
the Asian market near my house, and I will just
add it to my regular green tea, Like I'll whisk
it up and then just add it there. It's a suspension.
It's not a you're not actually uh, you're drinking the
tea leaf. Like if you mix up your match and

(32:47):
then leave it there a few hours later, it's gonna
be separated. Yeah. So it's a colloid. Is that what
that's called? I think so. So I'm not gonna repeat
that because I'm not positive. Is it a callid? I
believe so, like quicksand colloid is something yeah, something that's
like it's not actually dissolved, it's just mixed together. I

(33:07):
think you are right. So it's it's a colloid. And
um people proponents will say that it's better for you
because when you see tea ice cream, you when you
sip steep tea right, um, you're only getting you know,
I don't know the percentage, but you're only getting some

(33:28):
of the benefits of the tea because the tea leaf
is still in there with the macha. You're actually ingesting
the tea leaves. I see, you know what I mean? Yeah,
and that jam goes right past the blood brain barrier.
And it does. And it's pretty trendy too, because you
can now get a restaurants and they'll be like macha
sprinkled on a food dish. Or have you been to

(33:49):
Umi Sushi yet? No? I went to Kraft as a
Kaya the other night though, So where was is that
in Krugs? Yeah? Is it good? It was really good
and actually had a cocktail. Thought about you because you
know I don't oh yeah, you don't drink that much.
It was It was good. It was bourbon and like
lemon and ginger. It's uh tie spice like one other

(34:10):
thing maybe honey. It was pretty tasty bad. It was good.
It sounds good and the food was excellence. It's a
little pricey, but it's you know, like when you eat
the sushi it's you can so tell the difference. It
just melts in your mouth very very much the same
with Umi Sushi as well. It's just just the quality
between that and just about every other sushi you've had,

(34:30):
is it's just light years beyond. Yeah, it is really evident.
When you tasted I had some of the albacore and
it was just like it was literally like melted butter.
I'll bet it's so good. Well, the point is, Umi
Sushi makes a green tea Macha souflet with cremon glaze
that actually you me replicated once it was it's amazing.

(34:51):
It's amazing. So Macha really goes with a lot of
really good stuff. Even though it is trendy, it's still good.
It is good, and it's like you say, it's super earthy.
It's just I recommend you try it. I like a lot,
So I don't know if I'm getting the good stuff
from that Asian market. It's probably the cheap stuff, but
it's still tasty. I honestly don't know if it's one

(35:11):
of those things where like you get what you pay for,
if a lot of it is just checked up price
because it is much or what. I don't know Now,
this stuff is pretty inexpensive that I get. Actually for
what for the amount you're getting, it's really not that
cheap now that I think about it. Yeah, okay, yeah,
it's a little canister of it. Yeah, it's pretty small.
You're probably paying what you should be. Uh. We talked

(35:33):
a little bit about the blood brain barrier, but we'll
talk more about the health benefits a tea right after this. So, Chuck,

(36:00):
we're going to talk about the health benefits as I
said before the break, but first let's talk about how
to prepare tea. Well, yeah, there's a couple of ways,
depending on what you're you're dealing with. You can either
be a loose leaf person or a bagged tea person.
And I got the impression from this, Like you said,
Fuller was a tea guy, and he he did a

(36:22):
very good job of trying to reserve judgment. But you,
if I remember correctly, he was a loose leaf guy.
And it comes through in this um this article. The
loose leaf is better. Yeah, he had a special little
unit there where he poured the water in. It kept
a loose leaf separate, but it was all contained in
one like cup that you screw it lit on or something. Yeah,

(36:45):
you can get those or you can just do there's
all sorts of equipment you can have to make your tea,
you know. So the if you're preparing tea in a bag,
you just pop it in some hot water. Well, not
necessarily depends on the kind of tea for what temperature
do you want your water to be? And I didn't

(37:06):
know this Black tea is the only one where you
want it boiling at two hundred degrees wolong You're gonna
u is the next and that's about one nine, which
is close to boiling. Yeah, or you know, you just
use your finger to determine whether it's one degrees. Uh,
Green and white tea, Um, it's just steaming water. It's

(37:27):
only about a hundred and seventy degrees and um, you're
black tea. I'm sorry. Black and White take the longest
to seep in steep at four and a half to
five minutes. Um wu long is about three to four
and green tea, man, you can get that stuff going
in thirty seconds. Boom, and you're drinking it. My tension
tamer takes seven minutes to steep. It says on the
box what it does. It can you tell the difference.

(37:50):
It's a tame your tension. Yeah, I actually can. That's good.
It's pretty neat. I can't remember what's in it, but
it talks about the active and green whatever the dried
herb is. But um, with with the difference between bag
tea and loose leaf tea has a lot to do
with the benefits from it, right, so with the C
t C method, which again of the world's te um

(38:14):
A lot of that undergoes the CTC method because it's
black tea, right, But you get like this powdery, chopped up,
little bitty substance and it's put into a bag and
it forms a little clump and water doesn't circulate as well.
The benefit of um, loose leaf tea is that, um,
the water steeps through, yeah, steeps through uh and circulates

(38:39):
amongst the tea leaves more like, man, I think you're right,
But it circulates among the tea leaves, and the tea
leaves remember, especially depending on the type of tea, may
have been pressed so that the oils are trapped dehydrated
on the surface of the tea leaf. You chop those
things up and turn them into dust, you're gonna lose

(38:59):
a lot of that stuff. But if you have just
a dried tea leaf that is dehydrated and has the
moisture on the outside, and some water rehydrates that and
it just kind of stirs it up and gets into
the into the colloid and you drink that, Bam, you're
gonna get If there are health benefits which will explore,
you're gonna get them, you're more likely to get them

(39:20):
from that loose leaf tea than a bag tea, agreed. Uh.
And then of course you also have your iced tea
here in the South, sweet sweet iced tea. Yeah, which
is delicious to me because I grew up here. A
lot of people think it's weird. Uh. They had been
drinking iced tea before nineteen nineteen o four. The St.
Louis World's Fair was where it really took off because

(39:41):
the guy was selling hot tea named Richard block block Enden.
I know what a name, I know, and he was
even if you pronounce it the other way like bletchened in,
it doesn't matter. He sounds like a made up mad
magazine staff, right or something. Uh. He was serving free tea.
But it was hot, and it was really hot, and
so people were like, no, thanks, So he made it

(40:03):
cold and they said, this is delicious. Well, it was
hot out in St. Louis that year. That's summer. That
was where I think hot dogs, hamburgers and ice cream
cones came from. And apparently iced tea, man. Could you
imagine like the world changing after that in St. Louis.
Uh So, that's where they credit iced tea being born.
And of course here in the South, like I said,

(40:25):
you dump a cup of sugar in there while you're
brewing it. That makes it delicious and syrupy sweet. Did
you read the Slate article that was linked to in here?
I started to um, Scott Peacock features in it. Who's that?
Oh he used to cook at Watershed? I don't know.
He's good, yeah, good cook. And I got as far

(40:45):
as page two when they compared the hospitality of offering
sweet tea to passing a dub at a fish show,
and I was like, no, I'm done at this Slate
article forever. What Yeah, what a weird thing to link together.
It was that kind of article. It's so strange because
there's like a thousand hospitable things you can mention, you know,

(41:06):
out of nowhere. It's very strange. Um all right. So finally, Josh,
health benefits of tea true or not true? Jury's out, man.
So it's possible. If the free radical theory of aging
is correct, then it's it's got health benefits and ages.

(41:29):
So people hear these things a lot, like antioxidants free radicals,
and I don't think a lot of people have an
understanding what it is. And it's not super complicated. No,
it's not. And I will explain it on the um
on the basis of you agreeing to doing free radicals
episode whole episode. Sure, okay, cool, why would why would

(41:54):
you say it like that? I'm just teasing, so chuck
with free radicals, right, And we already mentioned oxidation. That's
what the free radicals are based on. So you breathe
oxygen and that O two molecule has two unpaired electrons,
while those electrons want to be paired, so they go
into your body and mess with your cells by searching

(42:17):
around for other molecules or atoms that they can steal
an electron from and repair repair get it. But it's
actually the opposite of pairing. It's damaging the cells because
those atoms that just got their molecules stripped are now
looking for their own electrons to pair with, right, and

(42:38):
it causes this chain reaction. Well, the whole free radical
theory of aging is that this is why we age,
This is where disease comes from. This is how our
system wears down and breaks down cellular destruction. Yeah, and
we know that this is a real thing. Sure, Like
that really happens the same thing as being exposed to radiation.
It's a chain reaction where um molecules and atoms just

(43:01):
go around charged looking to neutralize themselves by pairing their
electrons their charge electrons. Right. So what T is lousy
with is antioxidants. Yeah, and that's what people hear that
word a lot and don't even know what it is.
It basically it's just gonna slow down that oxidation process
because they can give up their electrons and still be fine,

(43:23):
exactly like vitamin C catekians which is um which is
found in high amounts, and tea, beta carotene, vitamin E.
Just basically anything that you see is an antioxidant probably
is an antioxidant. Again, the jury is just out now
based on some recent studies that have found we don't

(43:45):
know if this is actually a good thing. Well yeah,
and when it comes to t they people think basically
it's a certainly not gonna hurt you, um, and be
it's probably helping you. But we just don't know exact
actually how and it's not all super confirmed. But drink
tea and eat fruits and vegetables because any occidents we

(44:07):
think are pretty good for you, right, because it is
correlated with a bunch of health benefits. It's correlated with
a reduction in um uh, diabetes. Uh, It's correlated with
a reduction and I think every pressure. Yeah, lung cancer, um,
the lowered risk of lung cancer, heart disease, cholesterol, Yeah,
just tons of stuff. There's all these correlations down. They've

(44:29):
never proven definitively that it's not that people who drink
tea tend to also lead healthier lifestyles and that it's
something else. But there's a lot of evidence there that
drinking tea does have some sort of healthful benefits or
at the very least it's not gonna hurt you. Yeah.
When when they say it's they associate it with good health,
then that's a pretty good sign that you're doing the

(44:50):
right thing. They just can't say we can prove this
because this does this. Yeah, and we know it so. Right.
So if that free radical theory of aging is true
is correct, um, and antioxidants are actually good for you,
then the tea you want to go for the drink
is the Green Tea because that's the one that has

(45:11):
the highest concentrations of catkins, which include epicate akin, epicatekin galleate,
epic gallo catekin, epic gallo catekin galley, which is known
as E G C G and has a lot of
gall I thought that was kind of funny. But Black
Tea has these, but they actually convert to other stuff.

(45:32):
They're kind of like dumbed down version. So Green Tea again,
it sounds like if you really want health benefits, if
there are health benefits, you want to drink loose leaf
green Tea right with the Mata chaser exactly. T also
does contain caffeine. Um. I don't know why people some

(45:53):
people think it doesn't or that it contains very little. Uh.
I've heard people say that before, like, you know, he's
got caffeine. TA doesn't have caffeine. Yeah, he's got plenty
of caffeine. Um. But generally not as much of as coffee.
Um Coffee contains about eighty two twenty milligrams for a mug,
and he's gonna have twenty to sixty, with black being

(46:15):
the strongest at about thirty to forty milligrams, and green
tea and woolong between ten and twenty milligrams. White tea
has like one per cent of the caffeine of a
cup of coffee. I want to give a shout out
to my coffee too. By the way, you know what
we're on the CUSPUB, don't you know? The USDA advising
Americans to drink coffee, to drink up to five cups.

(46:38):
Five cups of coffee a day. In America right now
drinks less than two a day on average, and the
USDA is about to say you need to more than
double your coffee consumption because it's not only not bad
for you, it's good for you. Finally, on the CUSP,
everyone is realizing, well, the there's a there's a group
that's I can't remember the name of it, but it's

(47:01):
it's they come up with the guidelines for our diets.
And it's this panel that's the Star exactly, the Star
Chamber says, actually, we should start drinking a lot more coffee.
And the USDA rarely ignores the advice of the panels.
So we're on the cusp of the u s d

(47:22):
A saying go drink more coffee everybody, and everyone will
be like, Josh, what's right. Yeah, he's the only got
drinking coffee before this announcement. Even I don't drink five
cups a day on average, really not anymore. I'm trying
to step it up. I have started drinking more coffee lately,
actually because we got get a little machine here. Now
that that machine is dynamite. Yeah, what I do is

(47:43):
I hit the regular coffee button and then add a
shot of espresso because that makes it the right um
size and strength, right, because the regular cup of coffee
is it's not even the three quarters of my mug.
And it's not even a big mug. Yeah, it's not
like some giant mug. No, that's your tea mug. That's

(48:04):
my team mug. You can punch through a concrete wall
with that coffee with the espresso shot on top. Yeah,
it's good though. Uh. If you want to know more
about tea, go drink some tea. You can also type
T T E A into the search bar at how
stuff works dot com. Uh. And since I said search bar,
it's time for listener, ma'am. I'm gonna call this left

(48:28):
handed feedback. And boy did we get a lot of it.
I don't know why. I guess sometimes when you segment
a certain part of the population, they're gonna respond, especially
one that's been so mistreated for so many, so many years. Yeah,
because we heard from a lot of twins and redheads
when we covered that stuff. But boy, we heard from
a lot of lefties. Um, they're proud people. As it

(48:52):
turns out. Hey, guys, I am left handed. When I
was little, my mom made me use scissors with only
my right hand because of my aunt mothers sister, who
is also left handed. She's very into sewing and left
handed sewing scissors are crazy expensive. Um, or at least
they were back then. They're not. It's bad now. In
order to avoid the same ordeal, they thought it would
just be better to teach me to cut with my

(49:13):
right hand, to never buy the expensive left handed scissors
of any kind. I still have mixed feelings about this,
but I don't think it harmed me. We did hear
from a lot of people who were forced into right
handedness from parents or teachers or whatever. Yeah, it was
a thing to to It's so bizarre. I think like
there was a concerned, widespread effort to eradicate left handed people.

(49:37):
One thing you only mentioned briefly though, in the right
hand dominances with things like scissors and spiral bound notebooks.
I'd also like to point out less obvious ones, like
which side the papers on in bathrooms? You never thought
about that. Yeah, it's on the left though in most bathrooms,
isn't it? Yes it is, but that makes sense. But
I reach over with my right hand with tear the paper.

(49:58):
I know, but you're ah, you're different. Yeah. Um, door knobs,
computer mouse or mice and the smeariness of pens um
all can cause issues for lefties anyway. Love the podcast, guys,
especially ones about people like me. So Sharon and Sani

(50:21):
Tennessee what else about you can we talk about on
a podcast? Yeah, let us know. And if you have
something about you that you think would make a cool podcast,
a whole podcast, let us know. What If she wrote
back and I was like, oh gosh, I love lasagna
and I hate dogs, and I drive a dots and

(50:42):
to drive a dots and do a podcast on that
on the dots and dots and drivers. Uh well yeah,
let us know Sharon right, It was Sharon right. Share
and if and other people out there who aren't Sharon
let us know too. If you have any ideas, you
can tweet to us at s y s K podcast.
You can pos time Facebook dot com, Slade Stuff you
Should Know, You can send us an email to Stuff

(51:04):
Podcast at how stuff Works dot com, and you can
join us at our home on the web, Stuff you
Should Know dot com. For more on this and thousands
of other topics. Is it how stuff Works dot com