Kenya vs Tanzania

In my last tea order, I decided to get a bag of tea from Kenya's southern neighbor Tanzania. Long ago, I asked an employee of the tea shop what the difference was. I was told that they tasted about the same. I think maybe they said one was a little stronger than the other, but I've always stuck with the familiar Kenyan tea, until now. I still have some traditional cut tear curl Kenyan black tea, so I thought it would be the perfect opportunity to compare the two. 

As you can tea, the Kenyan tea leaves are bigger, the Tanzanian tea leaves are more like the style of leaves for Indian tea.

I noticed right away that the Tanzanian tea smelled stronger than the Kenyan leaves. Here are their close ups:



Each sample was one teaspoon of leaves, and I boiled 6 oz each of water in separate containers for a true side by side comparison. 


The Tanzanian tea was darker, and as I found when I looked at the containers, and later decanted them, that there was more water in the Tanzanian cup. Of course there could also be more tea used because it is such a compact leaf. 


The color differences are evident. The Tanzanian tea was definitely stronger, It reminded me a bit of coffee. Strong black teas tend to do that for me. 


The Kenyan tea was the old familiar. I found their scents and flavor profiles to be very different. Perhaps that is speaking from trying then straight up side by side, or the fact that I drink A LOT of tea these days. Either way, they both have their own merits, and certainly are not interchangeable. 


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Equatorial Guinea

Image
Equatorial Guinea Today we go to Equatorial Guinea , which consists of "Rio Muni" - Continental Equatorial Guinea, and 5 small islands known collectively as Insular Equatorial Guinea. When researching this country, I found "osang" tea. I found the name only, no instructions on how to make it. Mystery tea Upon doing some research, osang is a generic name for African milk tea. I couldn't pin down any specific flavors used for this region, just a general description of how people all over Africa make this tea. The base is black tea with milk. The suggested add ins are shown below. Tea Masala (thank you Indian food store), ginger, cardamom, or lemongrass. No, don't use them all together. Today I'm in the mood for cardamom, so that's what I used. The one blog I found about making this suggested a 1:1 ratio of milk and tea. I used 3/4 cup (about 200 ml) of each, with 3 cardamom pods. As usual, you can add sugar to taste. I decided to add the c...
Read more

Have a cup of Christmas

Image
I'm skipping ahead just a little bit because of a Central American holiday tradition. The hibiscus flowers are in bloom, and it's tea season. In this part of the world, hibiscus tea is known as "sorrel" instead of " bissap ". While my research on the tea of North America is not complete, I found that several countries make sorrel for Christmas. Trinidad and Tobago , the southern most Caribbean islands. They gained their independence from the UK in 1962. They are a continuation of the Andes mountains from Venezuela. They have a tropical climate, and temperatures vary widely between day and night. They used to grow a lot of sugarcane, but the last of the sugarcane estates was closed. Cocoa and coffee are also export crops. Most of the population is rural, and is made up of people from Africa, East Indian, and mixed race.  Saint Vincent and the Grenadines , are part of the Lesser Antilles in the eastern Caribbean Sea. These islands gained their independen...
Read more

Ataya/Waraga/Tuareg Tea

Image
"Berber Whiskey" What do you make on a Saturday afternoon when you're tired? I mean really tired. Like you just woke up from a 3 hour nap, and all you want to do is go back to sleep. I will admit I was a bit leery of this one when I found out how it was made, but this is wildly popular so I had to try it. This version of tea has many names, and some sources say that this is used like alcohol in cultures that forbid drinking and using drugs.  Ataya (or attaya - I've seen it spelled both ways), also known as Tuareg tea (so named for the Tuareg tribe), is a very social tea ceremony in West Africa. Most reviews say to expect to take at least 3 hours and have several rounds of tea. Over time, each round of tea is supposed to get milder and sweeter. Sometimes instructions say that mint is added. It is popular in many countries: The Gambia, Guinea-Bissau , Senegal (The Gambia is actually inside Senegal with a small border on the Atlantic), Sierra Leone , Mali , Mau...
Read more