Orthodox black tea

Where it grows

Inherited from its components A manufacturing grade rather than a tea. Orthodox tea is made across most of the producing world, and a packet sold simply as orthodox black is assembled from whichever of it the blender had.

How it is made, in order

Read top to bottom: the list is the production sequence, and the sequence is what makes this tea its category rather than a neighbouring one. The same leaf from the same bush becomes a green tea or a black tea depending on where the heat falls relative to the bruising, so reordering these steps would not vary the tea — it would produce a different one.

1. 1. Withering — Reduces water content, softens the leaf for later handling, and permits early enzymatic and aromatic development.
2. 2. Orthodox processing — Twists and presses the leaf to rupture cells without severing it, preserving leaf integrity through oxidation and drying.
3. 3. Oxidation — Allows polyphenol oxidase to act on leaf polyphenols after cell rupture, converting them into the larger coloured compounds that give oxidised tea its colour and body.
4. 4. Drying — Reduces residual moisture to a level at which enzymatic, microbial and oxidative change effectively stops, stabilising the leaf for storage.

The route it is made by

A blend of lots — This record is the manufacturing grade rather than a tea: orthodox is how a great many single-origin teas are made, and a packet sold simply as orthodox black is assembled from whichever of them the blender had. The route itself is documented — it is the one every orthodox tea on this site links to.

What its chemistry turns on

Every true tea contains caffeine, catechins and amino acids, so listing them would say nothing about this one. What differs is what the processing above does to them — and that is the same list of steps, read for its chemistry instead of its craft.

The compounds that substantially decide what this tea is: Tea cream.

• Withering
  • creates Geraniol
  • creates Linalool
  • creates Linalool oxides
  • creates Theasinensins
  • raises Methyl salicylate
  • raises Nerolidol
  • raises Soluble sugars
  • lowers cis-3-Hexenol
  • lowers Green-leaf volatiles
  • lowers Leaf lipids
• Orthodox processing
  • lowers Tea cream
• Oxidation
  • converts Carotenoids
  • converts Catechins
  • converts ECG (epicatechin gallate)
  • converts EGC (epigallocatechin)
  • converts EGCG (epigallocatechin gallate)
  • converts Epicatechin
  • converts Linalool
  • creates Beta-damascenone
  • creates Beta-ionone
  • creates GABA (gamma-aminobutyric acid)
  • creates Linalool oxides
  • creates Tea cream
  • creates Theaflavins
  • creates Thearubigins
  • raises 2-Phenylethanol
  • raises Geraniol
  • raises Nerolidol
  • lowers Anthocyanins
  • lowers Theogallin
• Drying
  • creates Strecker aldehydes
  • raises Beta-damascenone
  • raises Thearubigins

These are statements about the leaf and the cup. What any of these compounds does in a body is a different kind of question and is not answered here or on the pages linked from it.

History

Orthodox manufacture was the only method until the 1930s, when CTC was developed in Assam to raise yield and meet demand from the teabag trade. Orthodox survives as the route for anything sold as a single origin.

TeaHQ synthesis — TeaHQ's own reading of well-attested general knowledge, with no single source behind it.

Brewing

• Western brewing (teapot or mug)

  1–1.5 g/100 ml · 90–100 °C · 1 authored infusion

  Needs: Western teapot

  Open in the brew assistant

• Samovar service

  4–8 g/100 ml · 95–100 °C · 1 authored infusion

  Needs: Samovar, Podstakannik (glass holder), Tea glass

  Open in the brew assistant

• Çaydanlık brewing (Turkish double pot)

  5–8 g/100 ml · 88–96 °C · 1 authored infusion

  Needs: Çaydanlık (Turkish double kettle), Tea glass, Tea strainer

  Open in the brew assistant

• Sweet tea (American Southern style)

  4–6 g/100 ml · 95–100 °C · 1 authored infusion

  Needs: Brewing saucepan, Kettle, Cold brew bottle

  Open in the brew assistant

Vessels this tea suits

Recorded against the tea rather than against a brewing style, because the vessel does not always follow from the method — a whisk needs lateral room whatever the schedule says, and compressed leaf needs a pick before any method applies at all.

• Samovar — A large water urn with an internal flue running up its centre and a tap at the front, with a small teapot resting on the crown. The flue is the design: heat rises through the middle of the water rather than being applied beneath it, so a large volume stays near boiling for hours at low fuel cost while the pot above is warmed indirectly.
• Tasting spoon — Used in the same professional setting, where the judgement is made across many bowls in sequence.

Common mistakes

• Using an infuser too small for the leaf to expand, which under-extracts it badly
• Reading a long grade abbreviation as a quality score

When the cup goes wrong

Written against black tea as a category rather than against this tea in particular, and worked back from the symptom to the likely causes in order. 19 apply to the category; the first 6 are shown.

• My chai catches on the pan or boils over — A scorched note runs through the finished drink, or the pan foams over the moment your back is turned.
• My chai is harsh and drying rather than rich — The drink is strong enough but unpleasant with it: a rough, drying grip on the tongue and a flat cooked note, rather than the round sweetness a good chai has.
• My chai tastes of hot spiced milk rather than tea — The drink is pleasant and sweet and the tea is nowhere in it — no colour to speak of, no briskness, and nothing that would tell you tea had been involved.
• My iced tea has gone cloudy — Tea that was clear when hot turns hazy or milky once chilled.
• My iced tea tastes watery once the ice melts — The tea is good for the first mouthful and thin by the bottom of the glass.
• My milk curdles or separates in the tea — Flecks or threads appear when the milk goes in, or the surface breaks into small islands, and the drink looks grainy rather than smooth.

Every diagnosed brewing problem

If you like this

Grouped by why they were suggested, strongest reason first. Nothing here is a blended score — a suggestion appears under the best reason that exists for it, and never under a weaker one as well.

Compare this tea with another

Written comparisons

Where TeaHQ has set this tea against another in full, rather than deriving the comparison. Each one is a written page with the points of difference argued out.

• CTC vs orthodox black tea — Two manufacturing routes for the same leaf, built for different jobs. Reading them as a quality ranking is the most common error in black tea. Put the two side by side

Where this tea is drunk

Documented practices that name this tea. Each page describes what is done and by whom, and separates what is recorded from what is repeated.

• Afghan tea customs — Green tea with cardamom as the everyday default, black tea in the north and east, a pink cream tea for celebrations, and a hospitality convention in which the pot arrives before anything is discussed.
• Azerbaijani armudu service — Tea in a pear-shaped glass whose waist is a handling device, served with spoonfuls of whole-fruit preserve eaten alongside — and, at a marriage proposal, used to deliver an answer without anyone having to say it.
• Central European tea customs — Tea in a glass with lemon across Poland and its neighbours, a word for tea that comes from Latin rather than Chinese, and the post-1989 Czech teahouse — one of the most unusual tea institutions in Europe.
• Georgian tea: a producer that stopped — Georgia supplied a vast internal market with tea for most of the twentieth century, lost it almost overnight, and now has abandoned plantations reverting to forest, a small revival of hand-made leaf, and a domestic market drinking imported tea.
• Iced tea in the United States — Most tea drunk in the United States is cold, and most of it is drunk with a meal in a very large glass with free refills — a national default so complete that hot tea reads as a foreign or medicinal choice, and an origin story about a world’s fair that is not true.
• Iranian tea and qand — Dark unsweetened tea in a small glass, drunk through a sugar lump held in the teeth rather than sweetened in the cup — served constantly, from a samovar, and grown on the Caspian coast since the end of the nineteenth century.
• Kazakh tea hospitality — Black tea with milk or cream poured into a small handleless bowl and never filled to the top, served by one designated person from the head of a laden table, for as long as the guests are there.
• Russian railway tea and the podstakannik — A glass in an engraved metal holder, a coal-fired boiler at the end of the carriage, and a conductor who sells tea to the compartment — the one place where Russian tea drinking has a fixed, uniform, instantly recognisable form.
• Samovar tea culture — A concentrate-and-dilute system built around a heated urn, shared across Russia, Iran, Turkey, the Caucasus and Central Asia, and organised around prolonged sitting rather than a single cup.
• The Central Asian chaikhana — The Uzbek and Tajik tea house — raised platform beds, green tea in handleless bowls, and a pouring convention in which the host deliberately returns the first pours to the pot before serving anyone.
• The Turkish tea garden and the tea run — Turkey drinks tea in specific places and by a specific logistics: the outdoor tea garden, the all-male tea house with its backgammon boards, and the tray-carrying boy who delivers glasses to every shop on a street all day.
• Turkish çay culture — Tea served in small tulip glasses throughout the day, from a stacked double kettle, in one of the highest per-capita tea-drinking countries in the world — and grown domestically rather than imported.

Prepared drinks built on this tea

A drink is a recipe rather than a leaf: the tea above is one ingredient in it, and the method, the additions and the ratios belong to the drink rather than to this page.

• Southern sweet tea — Strong black tea sweetened heavily while still hot, then chilled and served over ice. A staple of the American South, where the sugar is dissolved into hot tea rather than stirred into cold — which is the technical difference between it and iced tea with sugar added.
• Turkish çay — Black tea brewed in a stacked double kettle — a çaydanlık — where concentrate is made in the upper pot and diluted to taste with water from the lower. Served in small tulip-shaped glasses, it is drunk in very large quantities throughout the day in Turkey.
• Zavarka (Russian samovar tea) — A strong tea concentrate kept in a small pot on top of a samovar and diluted in the cup with hot water from below. The system solves the same problem as Turkish çay by the same logic, and the two traditions are closely related historically.

Guides covering this tea

• Orthodox and CTC are two industries, not two qualities
• Commodity tea and speciality tea are two different industries