TYPES OF TEA

                 TYPES OF TEA                  

INTRODUCTION TO TEA:

Tea dazzles us with its diversity. One plant, many dimensions. While the teas of the world reveal endless complexities and variations, all tea springs from a singular plant species: Camellia sinensis. The four varieties of tea include:

TYPES OF TEA:

The six different types of tea – Green tea, Yellow tea, White tea, Oolong tea, Black tea and Post-fermented tea – are all made from the same tea plant and its cultivars. The kind of processing a tea leaf is subjected to defines the type of tea.

GREEN TEA

Loosely-rolled green tea

Green tea is one of the least oxidized teas. To make green tea, freshly plucked leaves are “fixed” through the application of heat (via steaming or pan-firing) before being rolled and dried. Because these leaves undergo minimal withering and only a little bit of natural oxidation, they retain much of their green color and grassy, vegetal taste, similar to green vegetables.  

Yellow tea

Yellow tea is processed in much the same way as green tea. However, once “fixed”, the damp leaves are lightly “sweltered” for six to eight hours at a closed container, which turns them yellow. Yellow teas taste similar to black teas though they are milder.

White tea

Silver needle white tea from Darjeeling

White tea is made from young leaves that are simply wilted and dried. White tea is called so because of the presence of silvery-white pubescent hairs on the surface of young tea buds and also for the light cream-colored liquor. It’s quite floral and tastes incredibly light, and bright

Oolong tea

Indian oolong tea

Oolong tea is made from bruised and semi-oxidized tea leaves. Due to partial oxidation, the leaves tend to develop rich flavors but no briskness. Oolongs are made in a variety of styles and shapes, including semi-ball rolled, and strip and leafy styles.

Black tea

Darjeeling black tea

Well rolled, high fired and fully oxidized, black teas are distinct for their briskness and bold taste. It is the most widely consumed type of tea in the world.

NON - ALCOHOLIC BEVERAGES

      TYPES OF  NON - ALCOHOLIC BEVERAGES 

1. Arizona Sunset

This pretty thing even looks like a sunset. 

2. Coconut Lavender Lemonade

3. Millionaire Sour

A terribly classy thing to sip. The recipe advises using ginger ale instead of Irish whiskey to make it non-alcoholic. 

4. Mexican Limeade

Super refreshing, and super cute. 

5. Ginger Basil Grapefruit Spritzer

Zingy and fresh. .

F AND B BEVERAGES

                             TYPES OF ALCOHOLIC BEVERAGES 

Fermented Beverages

In order to carry out fermentation, we need to feed some kind of carbohydrates to the yeasts.  The choice of carbohydrates determines a great deal about the final product.

Beers

 are produced by fermenting grains -- usually barley, but also wheat, corn, millet, or rice.  (The Japanese drink sake, while usually described as "rice wine," is essentially a beer made from rice instead of barley.)

Pictured: Hops, a flower added to beer before fermentation to impart a bitter taste.


Wines 

are produced by fermenting fruits; generally, the word "wine" alone means "grape wine," while other wines will be referred to by the name of the fruit -- e.g. "plum wine," "blackberry wine," etc.  [1]  Grape wines come in two main types, red or white, depending on the type of grape used and whether the skin is left on.  Given that more has been written about these kinds of wines than all other beverages put together, I'll refrain from going into detail about this subject.

Pictured: Amarone, a wine made from raisins.
These are the two most common types of fermented beverages, but there are other types of high-carbohydrate foods that can be fermented.   Mead is made by fermenting honey.  It was very popular in Western Europe hundreds of years ago, then fell from favor for a long time, but is currently enjoying something of a resurgence.  Milk, too, can be fermented, although there is to my knowledge no common English word for this category of beverage; it's generally called something like koumiss in the local languages where it's drunk.  Some tree and plant saps can be fermented as well; again, I don't know of an English word for the category, but pulque is the most prominent example.

Pictured: Pulque, a drink made by fermenting the sap of the Maguey agave plant.


Distilled beverages

We can produce higher-alcohol beverages by distilling fermented alcohols. (Distillation is the chemical name for any process that separates particular chemicals out of a mixture.  In this case, we're removing water from a mixture of alcohol and water, resulting in a higher alcohol concentration).  There are different kinds of distillation processes, and they do matter, but I'll skip over them for the most part here.

Usually, you do not just drink these right after distilling them -- they'll often be aged in casks made of specific types of wood (where they pull flavor from the wood), or have additional flavors added to them after fermentation.  [2]

One example is brandy (short for brandywine, meaning "burnt wine"), which is made by distilling wine.  Again, there are all kinds of fruits, so there are all kinds of brandies; the word "brandy" alone usually refers to brandies made from (grape) wine which have been aged in casks.  Cognac and Armagnac are two types of this sort of brandy.  Unaged brandies may be known as eau de vie ( "water of life" in French), generally together with the name of the fruit, e.g. "eau de vie de framboise" would be an unaged raspberry brandy.  Other notable brandies include Pisco, an unaged grape brandy from South America; Calvados, a French apple brandy aged in oak casks; Kirschwasser, an unaged brandy made from cherries without the pits removed; and Grappa, an unaged brandy from Italy made from grapes with their skins and stems left intact.

Pictured: Poire William, a pear-based eau de vie.  (The pear inside the bottle is primarily decorative.)

WISKY

, on the other hand, is essentially distilled beer, though the sort of "beer" you distill to make whiskey is a bit different from the sort of beer you would normally drink; for instance, it doesn't contain hops (a flower added to beer to give it a bitter flavor).  Common types of cask-aged whiskey include Scotch (malted barley), Irish whiskey (malted barley or grain), Bourbon (corn), Rye (rye), Canadian whiskey (rye), and Tennessee whiskey (corn). [3]  Of course, these styles come down to more than just the grains used.  For instance, Islay Scotches -- my favorite of all alcoholic beverages -- use malt dried over a peat fire, which gives them a unique smoky taste that's not present in other whiskies, and Tennessee whiskies (of which there are exactly two, namely Jack Daniel's and George Dickel) are put through a charcoal mellowing process. The most common unaged whiskey is Corn Whiskey.  I personally do not recommend drinking this.

Pictured: A peat stack, used to dry and flavor the malt used in the type of Scotch whisky made on Islay and the outer Hebrides.

Let's pause for a brief tangent about styles of whiskey.  Scotch will tend to have the most complex flavors and less sweetness than other styles of whisky.  There are different regions of Scotland that make different styles of whiskey.  Islay (and the rest of the Hebrides), as mentioned above, make smoky-tasting malts.  Highlands and Speysides seem to be a bit more beginner-friendly.

For the longest time, rye was pretty much the official whiskey of America.  George Washington made his own at Mount Vernon.  It's sharper and less cloying than bourbon.  The Manhattan cocktail (whiskey, red vermouth, and bitters) would have originally been made with rye.  Prohibition changed all that by giving America a good sock right in the sophistication.  Coming out, we preferred sweeter and less subtle drinks like bourbon and Tennessee whiskey, which pretty much took rye out of the running.  Fortunately, it has been seeing something of a resurgence recently.

Pictured: Rye.

Rum

 is a liquor distilled from fermented sugarcane byproducts. [4]  The word "rum" alone usually refers to liquors made from molasses, which is a by-product of extracting sugar from sugarcane.  It can be cask-aged for varying amounts of time, resulting in light rums and dark rums.  Some types of rum, like Cachaça and Rhum Agricole, are instead made from sugarcane juice.  (Some people might just use "rum" to denote molasses liquors, and put the sugarcane juice liquors in their own category.)

Pictured: A Caipirinha -- the national drink of Brazil -- which is a cocktail of 
Cachaça, sugar, and lime.  A stick of sugarcane (for decoration or stirring) is visible in the glass.

Tequila is a liquor distilled from fermented agave hearts. (Agave is a plant in the same family as the asparagus and the yucca.)  Like rum it can be aged for different amounts of time.  The tequila you normally see is made from the blue agave plant; Mezcal is a tequila made from the Maguey agave.

Pictured: A blue agave plant.

Neutral spirits     are a bit different.  This term refers to alcohol produced by any method in such a way that any residual flavor is removed and the result is simply pure alcohol and water, or as close as can be efficiently achieved without undue burden.  Neutral spirits can be used as the base for a liqueur.  Some cheap gins and vodkas are also made from neutral spirits.

Vodka   is traditionally made by distilling fermented potato juice.  However, due to its neutral flavor, the term is also used nowadays for neutral spirits or similar products.   Gin is made by adding juniper berries to neutral spirits, running some kind of "re-distillation" process that I don't even pretend to understand, and then infusing with various herbs and botanicals.

Chinese liquor   or "baijiu" in Chinese, technically belongs to the whiskey family, as it's made by distilling fermented sorghum.  (Sorghum is a type of grain grown in China.)  Most westerners are not used to the flavor of sorghum, and when I've taken my white friends to Chinese bars in SF they often aren't able to stomach these, but I've developed a taste for at least some of them.  This is a very wide category, but I don't know anywhere near enough about it to do it justice.  The ones I've tried are Erguotou, an inexpensive, clear liquor, and Maotai, which is what they serve the President of the United States at formal dinners when he visits China.  [5]

Pictured: Maotai, a sorghum-based liquor of the "sauce-fragrance" type.

Hybrids: Liqueurs, fortified wines, etc.

The beverages above get their flavor primarily or even exclusively from the process by which the alcohol was produced.  When they do have additional flavors, they're usually in some sense a byproduct of the process used.  Hops are added to beer prior to fermentation, for instance; similarly, while casked liquors do pull a considerable amount of flavor from their casks, the aging is actually required for other reasons as well.

There are many classes of alcoholic beverages, however, which do not get their signature flavors primarily from the process which produces the alcohol, or which contain several types of alcohol made by different processes giving a composite flavor.  This is a very broad category and spans some of the best and worst kinds of beverage.

The oldest beverage of this type is probably fortified wine, which is made by mixing wine and liquor, possibly with additional herbs or spices infused.  Originally the liquor was added as a preservative, but the style has now evolved to the point that certain fortified wines are among the most valuable wines out there.  There are a few important types.  Desert wines like Port, Sherry, Madeira, and Marsala are barrel aged and fortified with brandy.  Vermouth is fortified with neutral grape spirits and infused with herbs and botanicals. (Sugar is often added as well.)  Vermouth is extremely important in cocktails, being integral to the Martini and the Manhattan, which are two of the oldest and best cocktails.

Another important class of beverage are flavored spirits.  These are made by infusing various flavors into neutral spirits (or, rarely, into other liquors).  Unlike liqueurs, flavored spirits do not have added sugar or juices.  Gin is probably the most important; it's made by adding juniper berries and other herbs and botanicals to neutral spirits.  (Gin is short for Genever / Jennifer / Guinevere, a name derived from the Juniper plant.)  Absinthe, too, was among the most important flavored spirits in its heyday, when it was roughly as popular in Paris as Coca-Cola in the U.S. today.  It's made by infusing neutral spirits with anise and a number of herbals and botanicals, including grand wormwood (artemisia absinthium) from which it takes its name.  Absinthe was for a long time banned in much of the world after a campaign that associated what were in retrospect effects of severe alcoholism with the wormwood in absinthe.  It's now known that drinking absinthe is perfectly safe, and the drink is once again available on store shelves and in bars

Pictured: a grand wormwood plant, used in flavoring absinthe.


Liqueurs 

 

 are made by adding flavorings and sugar to neutral spirit base (or, rarely, another liquor.)  This is an absolutely huge category in and of itself, comprising both the relatively obvious choices like creme de menthe (mint), creme de cacao (chocolate), coffee liqueur, amaretto (bitter almond and/or apricot kernel liqueur), raspberry liqueur, and so forth, as well as aperitif and digestif bitters such as Italian amaros, Campari , Cynar, Fernet, and Suze.

F AND B SERVICE

        TYPES OF FOOD AND BEVERAGE SERVICE

There are a number of service styles to be followed when it comes to how food and beverage should be served to the customers. The following are the most prominent styles −

Table Service

In this type of service, the guests enter the dining area and take seats. The waiter offers them water and menu card. The guests then place their order to the waiter. The table is covered in this service. It is grouped into the following types.

English or Family Service

Here, the host contributes actively in the service. The waiter brings food on platters, shows to the host for approval, and then places the platters on the tables. The host either makes food portions and serves the guests or allows the waiter to serve. To replenish the guests’ plates, the waiter takes the platters around to serve or to let the guests help themselves. This is a common family service in specialty restaurants where customers spend more time on premise.

 

American or Plate Service

The food is served on guest's plate in the kitchen itself in predetermined portion. The accompaniments served with the food, the color, and the presentation are determined in the kitchen. The food plates are then brought to the guest. This service is commonly used in a coffee shop where service is required to be fast.

French Service

It is very personalized and private service. The food is taken in platters and casseroles and kept on the table of guests near their plates. The guests then help themselves. It is expensive and elaborate service commonly used in fine dining restaurants. This service has two variants −

• Cart French Service − The food is prepared and assembled at tableside. The guests select food from the cart while sitting at their tables and are later served from the right. It is offered for small groups of VIPs.
• Banquet French Service − The food is prepared in the kitchen. The servers serve food on each individual’s plate from guest’s left side. For replenishment, the servers keep the food platters in front of the guests.

Gueridon Service

In this service, partially cooked food from the kitchen is taken to the Gueridon Trolly for cooking it completely. This partial cooking is done beside the guest table for achieving a particular appearance and aroma of food, and for exhibiting showmanship. It also offers a complete view of food. The waiter needs to perform the role of cook partially and needs to be dexterous.

Silver Service

In this service, the food is presented on silver platters and casseroles. The table is set with sterling silverware. The food is portioned into silver platters in the kitchen itself. The platters are placed on the sideboard with burners or hot plates. At the time of serving, the waiter picks the platter from hot plate and presents it to the host for approval and serves each guest using a service spoon and fork.

Russian Service

It is identical to the Cart French service barring the servers place the food on the platters and serve it from the left side.

Assisted Service

Here, the guests enter the dining area, collect their plates, and go to buffet counters and help themselves. The guests may partially get service at the table or replenish their own plates themselves.

Buffet Service

It this type of service, the guests get plates from the stack and goes to buffet counter where food is kept in large casseroles and platters with burners. The guests can serve themselves or can request the server behind the buffet table to serve. In sit-down buffet restaurants, the tables are arranged with crockery and cutlery where guests can sit and eat, and then replenish their plates.

Self Service

In this type of service, the guests enter the dining area and select food items. They pay for coupons of respective food items. They go to food counter and give the coupons to avail the chosen food. The guests are required to take their own plates to the table and eat.

Cafeteria Service

This service exists in industrial canteens, hostels, and cafeterias. The menu and the space is limited; the cutlery is handed over to the guests. The tables are not covered. Sometimes high chairs are provided to eat food at narrow tables. It is a quick service.

Single Point Service

In this type of service, the guest orders, pays for his order and gets served all at a single point. There may be may not be any dining area or seats. The following are the different methods of Single Point Service.

Food Court

This is an array of autonomous counters at which the customers can order, eat, or buy from a number of different counters and eat in adjacent eating area.

Kiosks

The customer enters the choice and amount of money physically and the machine dispenses what customer demanded accurately.

Take Away

Customer orders and avails food and beverage from a single counter and consumes it off the premises.

Vending

The customer can get food or beverage service by means of automatic machines. The vending machines are installed in industrial canteens, shopping centers, and airports.

Grill Room Service

In this type of service, various vegetables and meats are displayed for better view and choice. The counter is decorated with great aesthetics, and the guest can select meat or vegetable of choice. The guest then takes a seat and is served cooked food with accompaniments.

Home Delivery

Food delivered to a customer’s home or place of work. For example, home delivery of pizza or Meals on Wheels.

       

Room Service

Here food is served to guests in their allotted rooms in hotels. Small orders are served in trays. Major meals are taken to the room on trolleys. The guest places his order with the room service order taker.

The waiter receives the order and transmits the same to the kitchen. Meanwhile, he prepares his tray or trolley. He then goes to the cashier to prepare and take the bill. He then takes the bill along with the food order for the guests’ signature or payment. Usually clearance of soiled dishes from the room is done after half an hour or an hour. However, the guest can telephone Room Service for the clearance as and when he has finished with the meal.