What does color suggest about the quality of tea?!
What does color suggest about the quality of tea?
I expected Lipton tea to come out dark brownish-black, but it's a deep shade of red, which brought me to wondering: Does color mean anything? Why does tea sometimes turn out a different color than the teabag?
Answers:
I don't think color can tell you a whole lot about the quality... probably the best indicator is taste. Lipton, as commercially produced as it is, is not a high quality tea. I have found more organic teas to taste better and seem to have a much higher quality.
There are lots of varieties of tea and how they have been prepared before packaging will affect color and taste. Teas may be smoked, (black tea) fermented for varying lengths of time and then dried, or not fermented at all (green tea), have flowers or other additives included to affect their flavors. Lipton tea is a fermented tea using low quality tea called orange pekoe (means the small broken leaves that are little more than tea dust that is leftover after the everything else is packaged) in their tea bags.
Generally, darker is stronger (without adding milk)