Charlie Baden: Hi! I am Charlie Baden, Senior Blend Master, Celestial Seasonings. We have been talking about tea and what a healthy beverage it is and how good it is for you. Now we are going to talk about the proper brewing methods for the different type of teas. First thing that is very, very important is your water source. If you use tap water that is high in chlorine, your tea is going to taste like chlorine. So my recommendation is to make sure that you start with the purified water. For the White Tea, you don't want the water to boil; you want it to be just before boil. So if you use boiling water in White Tea, it is going to make it taste more like a cooked vegetable and the tea leaves are too delicate to have that happen to it. Okay, our water is ready for the White Tea, so we are going to go ahead and pour over the tea bag. And to get a good brew time I am starting the timer at 2 minutes with the cup half-full and now I will fill it all the way. If you pour the water directly over the tea bag and over the tea leaves, it gives a better infusion rate. Okay, 2 minutes is up. One thing that is important also with the White Tea is that when you are removing the tea bag, it is nice to use two spoons or other utensils out there that you can use to squeeze the bag. But you want to have just a minor gentle squeeze of the tea bag, give it a little stir and you are ready to go.

Let's go ahead and go to the Green Tea now; very, very similar to the White you are going to use water just before boiling. Pour the water in, brew time is the same, 2 minutes. Brew too long and you are going to get a negative flavor impact, more astringent, more bitter; very, very similar to what we did with White. 2 minutes is up. Once again, like we did with the White Tea, you want to have a gentle squeeze, has a little more of a color, little darker color. It's going to have a little more full flavor than the White Tea, but still you are going to get the great antioxidant probably polyphenol value out of it for a healthy cup of tea.

Let's look at the Herbal teas. Now we happen to have a nice cup of Red Zinger here. One thing different with the water is the water temperature should be at a rapid boil and you are going to brew for 4 minutes. So we will go through the same process here. And that's a good boil so we are going to go ahead and pour in half a cup, go through that process again of starting the timer. There we go, fill the cup, nice color, brew for 4 minutes. Okay, there goes 4 minutes. The ingredients in the Herbal Teas are a little harder, so you want a nice hard squeeze to get all of the flavor out of the tea bag. Smell that aroma, it is really good. We will stir, and it is ready to go. Okay, the last type of tea we will be brewing today or in the Wellness category. Once again the water needs to come to a full boil, pour over, start timer. One thing about this tea is to bring out the efficaciousness or the maximum Wellness benefit is we have a 6 minute brew time. Okay, 6 minutes, we want to make sure that we squeeze this tea bag thoroughly to bring out all the flavor and the efficaciousness of the tea. We will stir and we are ready to go. Okay, one thing you may have noticed is that our tea bag has no string and tag. And not having the string and tag on there, we save three and a half million pounds of waste going into our landfill every year. So it is a very environmental and green format of packaging. Now that we have learned how to brew the tea properly. Next, we are going to get into why tea has its benefits and it is so good for you.