re: Tea Recommendation

> I am less concerned about taste and more concerned about how the tea makes me feel.

You want to look into raw puer and possibly oolong. Do not obsess over “organic.”

Definitely ‘green tea’ rather than just green/fresh/not roasted teas?

I get a lot of focus & clarity from jade/green oolongs, with no jitters, and whites. – Yunnan sourcing does pesticide tests on their teas.

I dont have much knowledge of ‘green teas’, like the japanese kind, or chinese senchas, long jin etc.

Yunnan Sourcing and Teavivre posts all their compliance and testing certificates. I believe one or two of the ebay vendors do as well.

Also make sure to check both yunnan sourcing and their US site if you arent fond of long waits.

Look up kuchika which is stem tea. High in ltheanine and lower in caffiene. No jitters.

Puerh both raw and ripe is a possibility as the fermentation removes a bit of the caffeine.

And if you do get Jitters, make a cup of chamomile, it will calm it right down.

For organic/eco friendly teas I would recommend arbor teas. http://www.arborteas.com

Honestly Jackie, it is very difficult to find companies who sell organic tea. From my experience most will label them as organic, but they will never actually test them. Instead they test a selection of teas from their massive collection randomly and then label the rest as organic. This is a very bad method.
We actually ran into a similar problem this year. We finally found the ‘anji bai cha’ of our dreams. It was perfect and delicious. It had been grown in high mountain tea fields, and as the tea farmers told us ‘had been grown without pesticides’ and he even told us about the “organic” methods which had been used. Of course we tested the tea (which we can afford to do as we only have 6 teas in our collection) and found that it had inadvisable levels of pesticide or heavy metal in it (I can’t remember which, but you can checkout the info on our website). We chose not to sell the tea. But bearing in mind that these test are far from cheap, most companies with large selections of tea do not test the vast majority of their teas.
Always be weary of firms that don’t openly advertise the fact that they test ALL of their teas. So although some companies will be able to offer lower prices, this will often come at the expense of your health (in the long term atleast). Sorry to sound a little spamy, but this was an issue I encountered again and again, and is one of the main reasons why I chose to start my own tea company.

As for the shipping, I think that will depend on the country you are currently in?

Finally, I would recommend a white tea, maybe a bai hao silver needle (depending on your tastes). My brother had a similar problem, as some teas would make him jittery when he was going through an anxious patch a while back. I know he chose to switch out his breakfast keemun for a baihao during that time.

Hope this helped a little.

Yulia x

p.s.

Here is a link to our website;
https://www.eastcottandburgess.co.uk/online-tea-store

have a look if you are in the UK, if not, the shipping will cost quite a bit so probably try to find someone local (but make sure they are open about testing). However we will be offering free international shipping on orders over $50 soon, so if you are interested we can let you know when this becomes available :)

Energy and relaxation reactions to tea are pretty unique to the individual and can even change (I have teas that used to relax me that don’t anymore) but recommend matcha and gyokuro for greens that are high in theanine (and thus relaxing). I am the same way…care way more about the relaxing energy than the taste.

Personally, I find some sheng and shou puers to be the most energetically relaxing but puer is a pretty overwhelming area that can take a fair bit of research. I’ve had some puer that had tons of energy but not that much relaxation so you step in the wrong direction. By contrast, I’ve never heard anyone say matcha or gyokuro made them jittery. Added bonus of matcha is that you drink the whole leaf.

I’m a big believer in organic (when it is well researched and I don’t just believe “organic” on its face) but tea I don’t really bother with it…there’s not a lot of good choices. Most of my puer comes from yunnan sourcing brand and I trust Scott and his pesticide testing. If you are buying Japanese teas I think you can feel pretty good about the quality.

If you are concerned about high caffeine look for a seller who will tell you about caffeine content in their tea. I am not sure which sellers do this other than Teavana. Teavana tells you the caffeine content on all of their teas within a range. Unfortunately, their teas are also in my opinion overpriced and sometimes lower quality than you should look for. I still sometimes buy from them as they are local, just down the road from me. I find if you are going to buy from them because you can confirm the caffeine content, get on their mailing list so they will email you about sales. It would be nice if sellers from China did this but caffeine is just not a big deal to the Chinese. In fact I don’t think I have ever seen a decaf tea on a Chinese website. I would imagine that Scott at Yunnan Sourcing might have a general idea of which of his teas are lower in caffeine content if you email him.

Try organic tea from https://www.tealyra.com
Over 500 premium Leaf Tea

Essence of Tea has fair amounts of good raw puerh + they do test their puerh if chemicals concern you. They will supply lab reports as well.