Making a Better Cup of Tea

[jesse_the_k]

I love tea—I drink a gallon a day. I drink from a thick, 16-oz, glass, better to warm my hands with. I use a tablespoon of loose tea in a single-use paper tea filter bag.

I'm lucky my local co-op carries many delicious loose teas. I adore Rishi tea (from Milwaukee)¹, particularly their Iron Goddess of Mercy Oolong, Jade Green, and Mahgreb Mint Green, as well as my own special mix².

I've discovered that tea tastes so much better when it's brewed at the right temperature. Oolong brewed at 175° or Green at 165° is delicious. (Boiling water is the right temp for mint tea and other herbals.)

This blog post explains how to judge water temperature by evaluating the bubbles in the pot:

https://www.thespruce.com/how-to-brew-tea-water-temperatures-766316

and since I have a clear glass kettle, I followed those rules for a while.

Then I realized there was a simpler way: pouring the hot water between glasses until it's cooled to the right temp. You'll have to get an accurate thermometer to develop the right technique, but from then on it's something even I can do in my pre-caffeinated morning stupor.

With my tall glasses and kitchen temperature, I need to pour once from the boiling kettle, into a glass, then four more times between glasses, and then finally pour the cooled water on the (wet) teabag and steep for a minute. Six pours results in 175° tea for my Oolong. One more pour cools it down enough for Green tea.

Why do I use a tablespoon? Short brewing times and more tea provide a more delicate flavor. I can also get four full glasses of tea from that bag.

Are you a tea drinker? What kind do you like, and why?

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1. https://www.rishi-tea.com ↩︎
2. details in another post ↩︎

Comments

[redbird]

Mostly I'm drinking a black Assam—either a specific golden Assam I get from a place in Greenwich Village, or an Irish breakfast if I'm not home or want the convenience of teabags. (I like Twinings' and MEM's Irish breakfast blends; I think MEM is Boston-area local.) I'm steeping it at very close to boiling temperature (probably about 95 C/just over 200 F), by just pouring boiling water over tea leaves and letting that sit for about four minutes before removing the tea leaves.

I'll drink any of those with milk and sugar; the loose Assam I'm also happy to drink black, which is what I do when I want to take a thermos of tea with me.

I'm drinking it partly for the caffeine, meaning I drank quite a bit of the Tazo "Awake" blend (an English breakfast with slightly more subtlety than a Pan-galactic gargleblaster) when that was the Starbucks house brand, because for all its flaws, Starbucks can be counted on to actually boil the water, unlike many restaurants and fast-food joints. Interestingly, there's no correlation between how fancy a place is, and whether they know the basic of how to make tea: I get annoyed at places that expect me to be impressed by a box of different teabags next to a pot or even cup of no-longer-boiling water.

I could go on further, but am trying to spare my fingers right now.

[jesse_the_k]

Oh you're so right about the tepid water issue. given up ordering anything but plain peppermint at mundane restaurants. They have no clue!

[redbird]

I've found that some do: the diner nearest my home back in New York, for example, usually kept a pot of water at the boil, and poured the water over the tea bag before bringing it to me. It wasn't remotely fancy tea, but plain Lipton's made that way is at least drinkable. My favorite ice cream place (in Cambridge, Mass.) also gets it right, and has a choice of good teas. Tosci's isn't a mundane restaurant, but the coffee, tea, and pastries are a sideline: they're mostly an ice cream parlor. So there's a certain amount of trial and error involved.