What is in your cup?

[TW]

In the thread about making up sins, the RAzEr posted.

The RAzEr wrote:

While in college I studied a course on alcoholism. There was a list of alcoholic beverages. Tea was on the list. It seems there is a fermentation process in order to get the tea leaves where they need to be in order to have proper tea. I had to let a few people who were 'total abstainers" and also tea drinkers, know that they were committing mortal sin.

That got me to thinking. How much did I actually know about the processes involved in producing tea? I had to admit that I didn't know anythig about the cultivation and production of tea other than the names of the regions where the best teas are grown. I decided to do some research to fill in this void in my knowledge base. The process is very simple. First the tea is harvested from the tea bush, only the top two leaves and the accompanying bud are picked. next they are spread out and allowed to wither. At point on the process for green tea and black tea differ. With green teas the next step is to heat the tea, with stops the action of the enzymes in the tea leaves. In black teas these enzymes are allowed to continue acting upon the leaves, thus altering the color and flavor of the tea. This is enhanced by "pressing" the leaves to expose the inner leaf structure to the oxygen in the air. After this step the teas follow similar paths again, they are dried, then sifted to sort the leaves by size and then prepared for the market.

There is no fermentation involved! Only the action of the natural enzymes in the tea leaves.

Enzyme -
Any of numerous proteins produced in living cells that accelerate or catalyze the metabolic processes of an organism. Enzymes are usually very selective in the molecules that they act upon, called substrates, often reacting with only a single substrate. The substrate binds to the enzyme at a location called the active site just before the reaction catalyzed by the enzyme takes place. Enzymes can speed up chemical reactions by up to a millionfold, but only function within a narrow temperature and pH range, outside of which they can lose their structure and become denatured. Enzymes are involved in such processes as the breaking down of the large protein, starch, and fat molecules in food into smaller molecules during digestion, the joining together of nucleotides into strands of DNA, and the addition of a phosphate group to ADP to form ATP. The names of enzymes usually end in the suffix -ase.

Fermentation -
The process by which complex organic compounds, such as glucose, are broken down by the action of enzymes into simpler compounds without the use of oxygen. Fermentation results in the production of energy in the form of two ATP molecules, and produces less energy than the aerobic process of cellular respiration. The other end products of fermentation differ depending on the organism. In many bacteria, fungi, protists, and animals cells (notably muscle cells in the body), fermentation produces lactic acid and lactate, carbon dioxide, and water. In yeast and most plant cells, fermentation produces ethyl alcohol, carbon dioxide, and water.

By examining the two definitions the key difference is the presence of oxygen, thus no alcohol is produced.

The RAzEr needs to repent! He has passed on a "false witness" to the saints, although unknowingly. He needs to make amends and reparations.


Setting the record straight,
TW

[Tracy]

I am not reading the sin thread, but my curiosity is peaked now.

Do some people think that eating fermented food products is wrong?

I'm just thinking--I make several fermented products, such as sourdough bread, sourkraut, yogurt, keifer, and I also like to slightly ferment some flours before using them, because it is so much healthier.

Just curious.

[RamboPreacher]

it was, if I recall correctly - a make up sins - thread. not a list of sins thread.

edit:
yup - http://www.jude2.com/viewtopic.php?t=20057
Let's Make Up Some Sins

so in fact, his context was about faux, or made up sins. and could have been making it up on purpose.

[TW]

Rambo is correct, the thread was light hearted fun. To which the RAzEr added his post, and I believe that it was meant in jest. It still piqued my curiosity, how little I knew about one of the things that I enjoy most. I knew where the best teas were grown, how to brew tea to get the best flavor. But yet, I knew virtually nothing about tea production.

One of my personality quirks is that I cannot resist learning about things, even if that knowledge is totally useless for most people. I am a walking encyclopedia of useless trivia! If it's unimportant, inconsequential, or nonessential I probably will want to learn about it.

I thought that I would have a little fun with the RAzEr about his tea drinking is a mortal sin post.


TW