Welcome to student life and the inevitable mass of stress, work and late nights that come with it. By the time you leave your first round of midterms, most of you will have settled into a solid modus operandi to get you through the day. Comfortable habits can sometimes be the only aspects of a day which keep you sane, such as waking up at a certain time or getting an Uppercase cookie before class.
When it comes to drinks though, students tend to default to the two preferences of tea or coffee. They are the perfect study drinks — warm, soothing and thoroughly satisfying. Coffee often gets preference over tea because it is more convenient to buy on campus and usually of better quality. Though it is probably true that in all the history of its existence, the words "quality," "satisfying," or "tasty" have never been synonymous with UBC Food Services, most people can probably agree that their coffee far outstrips their tea for enjoyment. You could soak one of their Earl Grey teabags in water for hours and you would never get anything remotely close to a strong or enjoyable brew — just a sad, lukewarm cup of off-coloured water with all the flavour of a plain wafer cracker. If done right, tea drinking can be an immensely rewarding experience and the cornerstone of your getting-through-exams-alive routine. Tea comes in more varieties and combinations than you can comprehend and many of them have unique benefits which can be put to use when writing papers, getting to sleep or waking up in the morning.
Bag versus loose leaf
Tea bags are convenient and can be of a good enough quality that they seem like a good option. However, over the past few years, several studies have emerged citing health risks posed by prolonged usage. This is down to the materials used to make the bags and prevent them from deteriorating when they are submerged in water. These materials range from the largely innocuous bamboo or paper, to ones like PVC, rayon, nylon, thermoplastic and polypropylene. The reasoning is that when you submerge your teabag and let the flavours leach into the water, you are also letting all of those wonderful chemicals also leach in.
It is always best to go with loose leaf tea. No only can you avoid the potentially harmful chemicals in tea bags, but you can also ensure a higher quality tea with better flavour and enjoyment. As a replacement for your teabag, there are a large variety of metal or silicone tea strainers to brew your tea with and lots of thermoses come with built in strainers.
Buying tea
Finding tea is never that difficult. Every grocery store will have at least a few boxes and tins on its shelf, and on-campus places such as Starbucks, Boulevard and Murchie's offer a reasonable selection in a pinch.
Boulevard is fine with a handful of types in stock — each very different from the next and of a pretty high standard of quality. A standout would be their Lily tea, which is a herbal blend comprising of hibiscus flowers, apples, lemon liqueur, cardamom and rose petals. It is immensely satisfying. Brews with a strong flavour can be re-brewed a second time to make an almost equally as good cup of tea. Their main issue is that they do not have straight Earl Greys, peppermints or others. If you go in looking for something specific, the odds are you will not find exactly that.
Starbucks’ tea is generally hit or miss. Being sourced from Teavana, it occupies an uneasy place, in that it is better than the stuff UBC Food Services sells, dollar store tea bags and mildly sanitary rainwater that just rolled off your roof with some dead leaves, but it fails to be anywhere near good. Sure it tastes fine and the variety is not bad, but Teavana teas are inevitably over-processed and sometimes sweetened with artificial flavours, virtually eliminating any health benefits. With places like this or a DavidsTea, it is a good idea to stick to simple teas with few if any added ingredients and no flavour additives. Drinking DavidsTea’s cupcake brew is about as far as you can get from a serene drinking experience. It is, at the least, sacrilege and at the worst, the equivalent of having a cupcake shit in your mouth.
Your best bet, without going too far, is Murchie's in Westbrook Village, which offers an impressive variety high quality teas with offerings in both the high and low price ranges. They also stock a fine range of tea cups and pots if you fancy classing up your tea game.
Going further afield, Granville Island Tea is pretty solid and even has some organic options, though they fail to meet the general quality of Victoria-based Silk Road tea which has a new location on West 4th near Arbutus. Their products are all organic and as fresh as possible, without increasing drastically in price. In addition to the usual selection of products, they have a wellness section whose blends are especially designed to combat things like the flu or stress.
If you want to order online, Tea Farm is a perfect supplier to choose. Based in the Cowichan Valley, they have honed a reputation for quality products to even rival Silk Road. They are also the first actual tea farm in Canada whose first batch of island-grown leaves sold out before they were even harvested, at a price upwards of $50 per 10 grams.
Brewing tea
Everyone has their own special way of making tea. The British will furiously debate whether you put the milk in before the tea or vice-versa, even questioning the superiority of ceramic teapots versus metal ones and metal ones versus glass. George Orwell even devoted countless hours and pots of tea in the attempt of making a definitive guide to brewing the best cup.
Really, at a certain point you just have to throw your hands in the air and say "fuck it!" We are students with busy lives and responsibilities. Who cares about whether or not the milk will evenly warm better if it goes in the cup first? As an amateur tea brewer, there is only one thing that matters in the process and that is time.
Time makes all of the difference and will dictate the enjoyment of your brew. Too much time in the water and the drink gets bitter. Too little time and the tea is bland. The rule is one minute for green tea, three minutes for black tea and five for herbal. Whether or not you add milk to black tea is down to you. Rooibos teas can also have milk but otherwise it is generally good to drink it as is, so that you can better appreciate the ingredients on their own.
Different types and their uses
For studying not all teas are created equal. Caffeine has been shown in studies to improve focus, making stronger black teas like Assam and Irish Breakfast excellent candidates for your drink of choice when studying. If you want something that will not keep you wired late into the night, peppermint teas are immensely beneficial.
If you are staring down the barrel of an impending exam, feeling that knot of anxiety in your chest as hours creep by and panic begins setting in, then a lavender tea will bring some relief. Similarly, Camomile teas have also been shown to be a useful aid in coping with anxiety, depression and sleeping disorders. Though there has not been conclusive, scientific evidence to support this claim, both ingredients are commonly prescribed in natural medicine as a supplement or aid to more conventional treatment. Though it is harder to find, blends with St. John's Wort is also a useful ingredient to use for such purposes.
Tea is a remarkably forgiving drink which can be as involving and rewarding as you want it to be. It can become a ritual, a pastime and even a benefit to your overall health, which can make all the difference in carrying you through the best and worst times of the semester. Just, for the love of god, don't buy the stuff that UBC Food Services brew. You would be better off drinking from a stagnant pond.
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