Tea Chemistry (1997)(researchgate.net)
researchgate.net
Tea Chemistry (1997)
https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Matthew-Harbowy/publication/216792045_Tea_Chemistry/links/0912f4fb863f786725000000/Tea-Chemistry.pdf
38 comments
Worth mentioning that though tea does contain polyphenols and flavinoids which are good for us (and l-theanine and caffeine which we enjoy introducing to our nervous systems), it's had a much bigger impact on health historically because it required us to heat water to boiling (or near boiling, depending on what kind of tea you're making).
Also, can't miss a chance to spice things up with the mention of adding salt to brewed tea[1]. Which is heretical, but seems palatable to me, though I probably wouldn't do it to good tea.
1: https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-68085304
Also, can't miss a chance to spice things up with the mention of adding salt to brewed tea[1]. Which is heretical, but seems palatable to me, though I probably wouldn't do it to good tea.
1: https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-68085304
When I switched to black coffee I read that putting a tiny bit of salt in cuts the bitterness. It works and the amount of salt needed is so small that you don't taste it, less than a pinch.
Likewise, it enhances things like smoothies, martinis, and damn near anything with bitterness or sweetness in their profiles, generally added at levels that are not perceptible as "salty".
Salted black tea with butter is delicious (https://simplytibetan.com/2010/12/07/bho-ja/)
You can brew your tea extremely strong, and get a hallucinogenic prisoner's drink called "Chifir"
of possible interest
George Orwell's 11 rules of tea making
https://www.orwellfoundation.com/the-orwell-foundation/orwel...
George Orwell's 11 rules of tea making
https://www.orwellfoundation.com/the-orwell-foundation/orwel...
Lot's of red flags in his way of tea making, but what can you expect from a British born in India on foods or drinks.
> "First of all, one should use Indian or Ceylonese tea. China tea has virtues which are not to be despised nowadays—it is economical, and one can drink it without milk—but there is not much stimulation in it. One does not feel wiser, braver or more optimistic after drinking it. Anyone who has used that comforting phrase ‘a nice cup of tea’ invariably means Indian tea."
These are some of the worst tea-making tip I've ever seen. I get that taste is subjective and all, but come on... This is like saying:
"Al Pastor street taco in Mexico has its virtues - it is economical, and one can eat it without salsa - but there is not much stimulation in it. One does not feel wiser, braver or more optimistic after eating it. Anyone who has used that comforting phrase 'a great taco' invariably means Taco Bells"
CTC tea [1] is inferior in quality. They are mass-produced, brews quick, and tastes way too strong (hence the milk). Tea was invented in China and tea culture goes back thousands of years. India and Sri Lanka only started producing tea in the mid 1800s. Robert Fortune literally dressed up as a Chinese merchant, snuck into some rural village in Fujian, and smuggled some teas back so the British East India Company can cultivate it in and around India.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crush,_tear,_curl
These are some of the worst tea-making tip I've ever seen. I get that taste is subjective and all, but come on... This is like saying:
"Al Pastor street taco in Mexico has its virtues - it is economical, and one can eat it without salsa - but there is not much stimulation in it. One does not feel wiser, braver or more optimistic after eating it. Anyone who has used that comforting phrase 'a great taco' invariably means Taco Bells"
CTC tea [1] is inferior in quality. They are mass-produced, brews quick, and tastes way too strong (hence the milk). Tea was invented in China and tea culture goes back thousands of years. India and Sri Lanka only started producing tea in the mid 1800s. Robert Fortune literally dressed up as a Chinese merchant, snuck into some rural village in Fujian, and smuggled some teas back so the British East India Company can cultivate it in and around India.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crush,_tear,_curl
He's writing from a certain time, place, and culture, in reference to the teas that were available to him at that time. I'm not sure what you're arguing - that black tea didn't subjectively make him feel wiser, braver or more optimistic? And his tips for making black tea are perfectly sound.
If I remember correctly, he actually wrote that essay because there was a world event that his compatriots were getting outraged about, and this was his way of being provocative by not covering it. But I may have that wrong.
If I remember correctly, he actually wrote that essay because there was a world event that his compatriots were getting outraged about, and this was his way of being provocative by not covering it. But I may have that wrong.
6 heaping teaspoons of tea per quart of water seems like a lot of tea.
It depends really on the infusion time.
Gong Fu brewing method has "worse" ratio but on purpose, a good oolong is marvelous. So is a good Pu'Er or green tea.
Gong Fu brewing method has "worse" ratio but on purpose, a good oolong is marvelous. So is a good Pu'Er or green tea.
I guess they're making milk tea so it ends up being as strong as you want.
It depends on how much you want to sleep in the coming days..
You must be from USA. In Europe you give tea even to toddlers and they sleep just fine. You mistook tea for coffee lol (Americans...)
Coffee usually has about twice as much caffeine per cup as tea, but that depends a lot on the variety of tea and the brewing method/amount used.
Europeans have a tendency to not make the distinction between herbal infusion and tea...
No one is giving tea to toddlers, well I hope not.
Americans in the last century advocated giving whiskey to teething infants.
Your pearls are adequately clutched, but I guarantee someone somewhere has given "the devil brew" to innocent babes.
Your pearls are adequately clutched, but I guarantee someone somewhere has given "the devil brew" to innocent babes.
That's still somewhat common, but it generally entails rubbing whiskey on the gums, not feeding the babies shots of liquor.
quite interesting but I would have expected some insight into the preparation itself as how long do you have to steep, what temperature should the water have, etc
The BBC has come up with an excellent short documentary on how to perform proper tea preparation [1].
Essentially the hot water need to be boiling hot (100 degree celcius) and leave it brewing for a minimum 4 minutes after pouring into a cup of tea.
From personal experiences, if you want to make good chai masala (or spicy milk tea) you need to keep it in boiling water for considerable amount of time (like cooking on stove), with the ingredient of tea (generous amount), equivalent amount of evaporated and sweetened condensed milk (like half can of milk for medium pot), together with combination of your preferred different spices for examples cinnamon (Sri Lanka cinnamon not the fake ones), jeera, clove, star anise, etc. Since the condensed milk is already sweetened, no need to put sugar, but you can add pure honey for extra wonderful aftertaste.
In UAE, karak chai is their national drink that are sold in most of the restaurants and eateries. Fun facts, and heaven knows for whatever reason the default tea brand being used there is always Lipton.
[1] How you've been making tea WRONG your entire life - BBC:
https://youtu.be/Fhuc6qOGNPc
Essentially the hot water need to be boiling hot (100 degree celcius) and leave it brewing for a minimum 4 minutes after pouring into a cup of tea.
From personal experiences, if you want to make good chai masala (or spicy milk tea) you need to keep it in boiling water for considerable amount of time (like cooking on stove), with the ingredient of tea (generous amount), equivalent amount of evaporated and sweetened condensed milk (like half can of milk for medium pot), together with combination of your preferred different spices for examples cinnamon (Sri Lanka cinnamon not the fake ones), jeera, clove, star anise, etc. Since the condensed milk is already sweetened, no need to put sugar, but you can add pure honey for extra wonderful aftertaste.
In UAE, karak chai is their national drink that are sold in most of the restaurants and eateries. Fun facts, and heaven knows for whatever reason the default tea brand being used there is always Lipton.
[1] How you've been making tea WRONG your entire life - BBC:
https://youtu.be/Fhuc6qOGNPc
This is like claiming everyone is making coffee wrong and then describing how to make a cappucino with city roast Nigerian dry-process beans.
Yep, cool. That’s a recipe. For one type of preparation. With one type of bean. And one style of roast.
The ignorance of global tea culture in the west, including Britain, is very cringe.
Yep, cool. That’s a recipe. For one type of preparation. With one type of bean. And one style of roast.
The ignorance of global tea culture in the west, including Britain, is very cringe.
It’s funny to witness many British people being so much into tea, while they mostly drink poor quality tea with bad technique.
A bit like many French people having a shitty failed dark coffee as breakfast every morning.
A bit like many French people having a shitty failed dark coffee as breakfast every morning.
> cinnamon (Sri Lanka cinnamon not the fake ones)
My god, this thread has really brought out the virtue-signalling Anglophile snobs en masse!
There are no "fake" cinnamons. Three different species of the genus Cinnamomum are harvested, with slightly varying qualities and market values.
It's not like when Americans buy "Mexican saffron". That is open fraud, because Mexican "saffron" is neither related genetically (it is a thistle, not a crocus), nor in taste (it is essentially a food dye).
My god, this thread has really brought out the virtue-signalling Anglophile snobs en masse!
There are no "fake" cinnamons. Three different species of the genus Cinnamomum are harvested, with slightly varying qualities and market values.
It's not like when Americans buy "Mexican saffron". That is open fraud, because Mexican "saffron" is neither related genetically (it is a thistle, not a crocus), nor in taste (it is essentially a food dye).
Science has shifted, depending on the discipline, from a colonial universalism perspective to one that accepts that “the truth” varies and can be a local phenomenon.
I have a hard time buying into a prescriptive tea-making procedure. For example, you can heat up your temperature to boiling, but by the time you pour it, it will likely be down to the low to mid 90s.
There’s other factors such as the material of the mugs (which might be more or less conductive of temperature) and the delta between the water and air temps. The composition of the tea itself will also vary year-to-year and you have no idea of the vintage of the Lipton/Tetley tea bag dust stock you’re buying.
tl;dr Strict procedure = placebo
I have a hard time buying into a prescriptive tea-making procedure. For example, you can heat up your temperature to boiling, but by the time you pour it, it will likely be down to the low to mid 90s.
There’s other factors such as the material of the mugs (which might be more or less conductive of temperature) and the delta between the water and air temps. The composition of the tea itself will also vary year-to-year and you have no idea of the vintage of the Lipton/Tetley tea bag dust stock you’re buying.
tl;dr Strict procedure = placebo
One thing I noticed is that the water matters.
I noted that when visiting my sister down in the Bay Area, I had to steep for quite a bit less time before the bitter tannins would start creeping in. Like 1.5-2 mins tops for cheap PG Tips. But that same tea up north could sit for 3-4 minutes before the bitter tannins would creep in.
It was a marked difference so there are obviously some confounding factors. I suspect the water chemistry matters a fair amount.
I noted that when visiting my sister down in the Bay Area, I had to steep for quite a bit less time before the bitter tannins would start creeping in. Like 1.5-2 mins tops for cheap PG Tips. But that same tea up north could sit for 3-4 minutes before the bitter tannins would creep in.
It was a marked difference so there are obviously some confounding factors. I suspect the water chemistry matters a fair amount.
Other solutes in the water, like calcium chloride, can indeed greatly affect the solubility curves of the flavor compounds.
You can buy premixed packages of salts to dissolve into distilled water to precisely reproduce the composition of the well waters of some famous breweries, even though the result mostly still tastes like water.
You can buy premixed packages of salts to dissolve into distilled water to precisely reproduce the composition of the well waters of some famous breweries, even though the result mostly still tastes like water.
One confounding factor is how much you want a cup of tea at that time.
I'm not sure there's much real scientific research on preparation (at least when this was published in the 90s), especially as it can be quite subjective. There's a bit about factors affecting caffeine content on p.425:
> The quantity of caffeine that infuses into a tea brew is determined by infusion time and by leaf style. Longer infusion times lead to greater quantities of caffeine in a tea beverage. Smaller sized tea leaves give a more rapid and stronger infusion, whereas larger leaves and uncut leaves lead to weaker infusions. This results in more or less caffeine extraction, respectively. The caffeine content of a typical tea beverage will range from 20 to 70 mg per 170 ml of infusion, with a typical infusion being prepared from about 2 to 2.5 g of tea leaves. Coffee brews typically contain from 40 to 155 mg caffeine per 170 ml beverage. There has been little research done on the pharmacology of tea-beverage caffeine. One study suggests a dose of caffeine from tea has a different physiological effect than a pure dose of caffeine (Das et al., 1965). This has been attributed to the amino acid theanine, which is unique to tea. However, there are no well-designed clinical studies to support this position. The consensus among scientists today is that caffeine from all beverage sources has a similar physiological effect. The actual content of caffeine depends on many factors, particularly the method of brewing. A brew prepared by the Chinese "gong-fu" style is likely to have a different caffeine impact compared with the Western style of loose tea or to that from a tea bag (Hicks et al., 1996). Some reports have suggested that green tea contains significantly less caffeine than black tea. This may be influenced by the clone of leaf used to produce the tea or by the impact of different brewing techniques. No significant differences have been found when brewing green and black teas under similar conditions (Hicks et al., 1996), discrediting the theory that withering and fermentation have a significant impact on caffeine content (Sanderson, 1972).
> The quantity of caffeine that infuses into a tea brew is determined by infusion time and by leaf style. Longer infusion times lead to greater quantities of caffeine in a tea beverage. Smaller sized tea leaves give a more rapid and stronger infusion, whereas larger leaves and uncut leaves lead to weaker infusions. This results in more or less caffeine extraction, respectively. The caffeine content of a typical tea beverage will range from 20 to 70 mg per 170 ml of infusion, with a typical infusion being prepared from about 2 to 2.5 g of tea leaves. Coffee brews typically contain from 40 to 155 mg caffeine per 170 ml beverage. There has been little research done on the pharmacology of tea-beverage caffeine. One study suggests a dose of caffeine from tea has a different physiological effect than a pure dose of caffeine (Das et al., 1965). This has been attributed to the amino acid theanine, which is unique to tea. However, there are no well-designed clinical studies to support this position. The consensus among scientists today is that caffeine from all beverage sources has a similar physiological effect. The actual content of caffeine depends on many factors, particularly the method of brewing. A brew prepared by the Chinese "gong-fu" style is likely to have a different caffeine impact compared with the Western style of loose tea or to that from a tea bag (Hicks et al., 1996). Some reports have suggested that green tea contains significantly less caffeine than black tea. This may be influenced by the clone of leaf used to produce the tea or by the impact of different brewing techniques. No significant differences have been found when brewing green and black teas under similar conditions (Hicks et al., 1996), discrediting the theory that withering and fermentation have a significant impact on caffeine content (Sanderson, 1972).
Well, depending on what you drink there are articles about that: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35658412
It depends on the tea you’re brewing, what you want to make with it, and your personal taste. How could there possibly be an objective answer?
Perhaps not, but there are very objective, erm, pathways.
Want to avoid dissolving the more bitter flavor components? Steep at a lower temperature. Solubility curves are quasi-exponential with temperature, and a reduction from 95 to 85 C can spread out the time before tannins are strongly dissolved. You could get the exact same flavor at 95, perhaps, if you used a stopwatch. But objectively, the tea will get much more bitter a few seconds later. Objective lesson: to allow for ease in steeping timing, use a lower temperature. It's especially true for green teas, which (objectively) have more bittering compounds than fermented teas.
But: many Chinese people enjoy their green teas at a saturation (color) that I would call barely-not-water. Many Brits enjoy black breakfast teas brewed to levels I would only use to dye cloth. Plenty of subjectivity.
Want to avoid dissolving the more bitter flavor components? Steep at a lower temperature. Solubility curves are quasi-exponential with temperature, and a reduction from 95 to 85 C can spread out the time before tannins are strongly dissolved. You could get the exact same flavor at 95, perhaps, if you used a stopwatch. But objectively, the tea will get much more bitter a few seconds later. Objective lesson: to allow for ease in steeping timing, use a lower temperature. It's especially true for green teas, which (objectively) have more bittering compounds than fermented teas.
But: many Chinese people enjoy their green teas at a saturation (color) that I would call barely-not-water. Many Brits enjoy black breakfast teas brewed to levels I would only use to dye cloth. Plenty of subjectivity.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lady_tasting_tea