Features To Consider For Mint Tea
When buying mint tea, there are many factors to consider. For example, the different leaf origins and health benefits that come from drinking peppermint tea. Let’s explore these below:
Mint tea and tisanes
Since you don’t actually get tea leaves of camellia sinensi, they end up being called tisane. It means any other type of infusion with water, usually herbal, but does not include true and real tea leaves. Most herbs and all mint leaves tend to be caffeine-free and provide a drink when you don’t need a pick-me-up.
Although most tisanes tend to be brewed with boiling water, peppermint and other mint teas taste better if the temperature is a little bit lower. This is because they have delicate leaves instead of flower heads or other herbs which can result in a bitter flavor if they’re boiled at too high a temperature.
If you mix mint leaves with true tea, you can have an exciting blend, much like the Moroccan mint tea that combines spearmint with green gunpowder tea. And if you add some sugar in the pot during steeping, you can enjoy a deliciously minty drink that has just the right amount of sweetness to make it feel like a treat.
Peppermint vs. spearmint
Mint tea usually contains peppermint, with Americans going as far as to only add peppermint leaves in their mint tea, mixed with nothing else. Since it is so unique and comes with easy extraction from leaves, it does come with a sharp, kicking menthol flavor that happens to be an acquired taste for many. And if you miss this flavor with true tea leaves, then you get a concoction that works well standing up to black tea.
Now, spearmint, on the other hand, has a mild, sweet sort of a natural calming effect. It’s not as easy to get the flavor out of the leaves with just water, which is why spearmint is usually used as an addition or blend— not the main ingredient. You can mix it with green, white, or light oolong tea leaves to freshen up the flavor.
When you look at the origins of both of these mints, you understand where their similarity and even differences stem from. Peppermint happens to be a hybrid of a plant that is a mixture of spearmint and watermint. Watermint has an extremely strong flavor and smell and is not cleared for eating or making tea without being heavily blended with other flavors.
Health benefits
Peppermint has been used for decades for simple daily tasks, like adding freshness to your breath or adding unique and subtle flavors to your chocolate. But it’s not only the flavor that it is known, for but also its health benefits, including:
- Helping an upset stomach.
- Helping digestion.
- Fresh breath.
- Loosening clogged sinuses.
- Improving concentration.
