It definitely will. After a couple years of experimentation and testing I've found anything over ~200F is basically undrinkable. It took me so long to figure this out because there were a lot of confounders -- I drank a lot of tea over the holidays back home, and while my parents' town is on the same water source I swear their florination is different, in a way that changes the mouth feel of the tea. I also had a new faucet installed and the galvanization in the new fixture left a strange aftertaste that took some time to track down. It was so bad that I seriously wonder how people can drink things that come out of Kohler faucets. Finally, I had some new mugs that were also causing problems...turns out the were only fired once? I'm not really sure how to describe it but it was kind of like drinking tea out of a soda can. Anyway, I eventually controlled for all this stuff and about 190F is the sweet spot. It's kind of embarrassing how much of an odyssey this all turned out to be, What works for other HNers?
In some places, most of your instruments will likely be in Fahrenheit and Fahrenheit is what you use daily for most tasks. It only makes sense that you use Fahrenheit as your reference point.
A home in other places is more likely to have Celcius, and you'll likely use it.
Unfortunately, a lifetime in the U.S. has left me with poor intuition for Celsius. The conversion isn't difficult to do in ones head and for laboratory work, naturally, it's just as easy to read one thermometer scale as another. For everyday life, weather reports, fever thermometer readings, thermostats and such, it is just a nuisance to convert from Fahrenheit and back. If someone tells me it's 15 degrees C outside I have to do mental arithmetic to know if I should take a sweater. Furthermore, from a purely logical perspective perhaps we should even consider using Kelvin.
It's a completely different story for distance, weight and volume. Metric measurement in these cases are more intuitive for me, and they are clearly superior too. Millimeters are so much easier to use than fractions of an inch (7/32 inch -- that's a ridiculous system). In the U.S., an ounce of flour weighs less than an ounce of gold. Who even knows how much a grain of gunpowder is in units anyone else uses (one grain is approximately 1/16 gram). There are three teaspoons in one tablespoon, but only two cups in a pint, 2 pints in a quart and 4 quarts in a gallon.
I'd be happy to switch from imperial to SI units for length, mass, and volume. I'll gladly switch slugs to kilograms and pounds to Newtons, but I will miss Fahrenheit.
As much as I prefer Celsius and have no idea what temperatures are in Fahrenheit, it seems quite obvious why people will use it - because it’s what one knows and what is used where one live.
Even as an Aussie I have to disagree with you here. The commenter at least put Fahrenheit in the degree.
People are allowed to communicate in a way that they're familiar with. If they have used F their entire life and so has everyone around them, then its fine.
The US demographic represents roughly 41% of Hacker News, I think its fine if they use their own measurement system.
This reads like someone copypasted a post from some audiophile forum, then replaced words to make it tea-themed :)
"The basically unlistenable hdmi cable has been only gold-plated once, and the direction of the signal is wrong". Haha, no offence, just made me smile
I got into green tea around 2014 (my how time flies) and I've had a lot of experiences.
Depending on how sensitive you are everything can change the taste, but IMO the big three are:
- water (huge, huge differences)
- type of tea (cultivar, when/ where it was harvested, steam time)
- brew temp and time
I eventually settled on a system where I heat filtered water in a regular pot with a meat thermometer to the right temp (this is usually between 155-170F depending on the specific tea), pour over tea into a glass pot (through stainless steel basket), brew from 30-60 seconds (again depending on tea), serve. I also measure the water, and weigh the tea on a scale.
It might sound convoluted and compared with like, brewing a kettle and dumping over a bag it is. I mostly drink earl grey now, probably as a result. In the summers it's a lot easier, I just dump tea in a pitcher of water and put it in the fridge overnight.
Also, I wholeheartedly recommend o-cha.com for tea and peripherals.
I read that soft and low mineral water makes the best tea and tried to use water with such values bought from market. It was trash. Tap water where I live is very hard and have a good taste and the tea is much better with it - so my experience contradicts what I found about the topic on the net.
Are there any objective parameters of water which makes a better green tea?
If we're talking japanese green tea, 50C for a very gentle taste、70~80C for a full taste are the basic directions, same as you'll get recommended by the tea makers themselves (an english site [0])
190F(85C) requires more timing control and get out the tea after less than a minute, while lower temperatures are more forgiving.
Caution is advised here. Teas can vary wildly from producer to producer, fixing methods and even from year to year and the extraction vessels, brewing methods and even the water heating and temp measuring methods play a significant role.
Anecdotal evidence:
The temps for my daily drinker (a deep steamed sencha) this year are 10°C lower (57) than last year. This is after keeping everything else constant.
Have you considered writing a blog or posting your thoughts about your experience and journey in finding the “perfect” tea brew? I’m sure your thoughts would save many amateurs a lot of frustrations. I, myself, am intrigued how nuanced the process is
It's still highly dependent on the specific tea. Definitely 190 I'd say is an absolute ceiling for green, but I have green teas I let nowhere near that - some even 170 max.
the german tea expert Ernst Janssen recommends to also use boiling water to prepare green tea as most of the teas are contaminated with germs and other things. different green tea brands including organic tea brands were tested by the renowned German test.de magazine and they confirmed that, also most of organic teas are contaminated. and since this is nothing you can easily check at home, better use boiling water.
That seems paranoid considering that I have never heard anyone getting food poisoning from tea, no matter how it was brewed.
edit: Reading the linked article, it seems mostly concerned about contaminants and not germs. Intuitively thinking, I'd imagine higher temps would end up extracting more of those from leaves to the drink than lower temps?
The germ thing seems to go back to this 2005 press release by the BfR, which does indeed urge people to use boiling water to kill Salmonella particularly when preparing herbal tea. It doesn't cite any known cases or numbers: https://mobil.bfr.bund.de/de/presse/presseinformationen/2005...
Searching further, there were a couple of cases of Salmonella in infants in 2003 that were traced to fennel anise tea. The timing fits. I couldn't find anything more recent, but I didn't look very hard.
Here's more data from government sources. They tested tea and herbal tea in 2008, and found traces of Salmonella or E.coli in 2-3% of prosecute products, and mold in 20%. Doesn't differentiate between herbal and real tea.
I'm not worried. But then I usually use boiling water, or almost boiling water, which should be enough to kill micro organisms. And I'm sure I get more mold toxins from various other food sources without noticing it, cereals, nuts, processed foods etc. Tea is a dilution, after all.
A person I know had to get tested for toxins at work regularly and at some point showed really high arsenic levels. At which point they had to figure out what poisoned him. He worked in material science but no materials he handled would have given off arsenic to his body. After some investigating, they found out that the Pu'Erh tea he consumed was the culprit. They tested the tea in a lab and after he stopped drinking it, his levels became normal.
So that might not kill.you but I guess having these toxins in you body cannot be good either.
Since then I try to only buy teas which are lab-tested. When I lived in Germany I bought my teas at sunday. Tbey tell you harvest, growing conditions and many more things and they also claim to lab test the tea badges.
I haven't found anything comparable in the US yet.
Yeah it seems so dried out you wouldn't have too much to worry about.
As for boiling tea for sanitation, I took a wilderness first responder class and they taught us that you could bring water to a boil at any altitude a human can breath at (without holding it at a boil for 15 minutes as some claim) and it's considered sterilized. In Cusco, that would be around 191F/89C (humans can breathe quite a bit higher up than Cusco). Not a bad tea-brewing temp!
Also, I suggest trying kukicha. It's high in l-theanine and lower in caffeine. Tasty too.
> Intuitively thinking, I'd imagine higher temps would end up extracting more of those from
> leaves to the drink than lower temps?
If we're discussing non-volatiles such as heavy metals, boiling acually concentrates them by removing some of the water. This is more of a concern with the water than with the tea, however if one is already bringing up the health aspects then obviosly neither can be ignored.
It’s not a matter of food poisoning, it’s a matter of do you really want to ingest contaminants. Regular consumption of contaminants such as pesticides, herbicides, and antibiotics (all present in the water supply especially at lower elevations) has an impact on long term health.
Yes this doesn’t really make sense unless it would denature any toxins which doesn’t seem that likely and will do nothing for any pesticide or heavy metal contamination except possibly extract more.
All foodstuffs are contaminated with germs, unless you go to extraordinary effort to prevent it (e.g. intense gamma radiation.) Unless there is some particular reason to care (you're a hospital feeding people who had their bone marrow nuked by cancer/chemo), then the correct solution is to stop caring. Who ever heard of people dropping dead because they brewed their tea with sub-boiling water? This isn't happening, it's not something you should worry about.
This is faulty reasoning. The typical "almost boiling" temperature of 185F for 3 minutes will sterilize the tea just as well as boiling water would. There's absolutely no benefit in terms of safety. The only consideration would be flavor.
While I get the logic, it feels a lot like a "cook your salad to get rid of potential pathogens" strategy. Sure it's safer, but did you really want to boil your salad ?
There surely must be other ways to get probably safe food than boiling everything you drink.
Boiling doesn't even kill most things. I worked in a biolab for a while and used an autoclave to sterilize objects. It basically means we pressure cooked stuff at 130°C for 45min or so. And even that doesn't destroy some dangerous stuff like prions.
I think one questions that people here might be having is how is the water of correct temperature is actually prepared. Do people just know how to heat water to 60C? That sounds unlikely, doesn't it?
In traditional tea ceremony, known amount of tap water is added to boiling water. Comes out okay if protocol is punctually followed.
In more casual situations, there are buttons and lamps on electric kettles to cycle through common temperatures. That works if you are going to serve dozen guests at once.
There's a lot of factors to it. The way the leaves are processed, the quality/freshness of the leaves, ratio of leaf to water, steeping time.
I think in general it's safest to brew green teas at 175f. But I'm doing quick gongfu brewing sessions with a late-march sichuan green tea, and it tastes great at 205f. Less intense at the usual 175f, but picks up more subtle flavors.
Varities of Chinese and Japanese green teas differ in their processing techniques so much that they require different preparation techniques as well. They possess distinctly different flavours, too.
Most Japanese green teas are steamed past the harvest time – lightly (gyokuro), or more thoroughly (sencha), or anywhere in between depending on the grade – and some varieties can also be roasted (e.g. yabukita). Japanese green tea generally requires milder water temperatures for a preparation. Typically, the higher is the grade, the lower is the temperature, e.g. from 60ºC for gyokuro and high grade matcha to 80ºC for sencha. Gyokuro and matcha, prepared at the right or slightly lower temperature, has a lot umami flavour with a little bit of sweetness in it.
Varieties of the Chinese green tea is either lightly roasted (without being steamed nowadays) or lightly fermented. They need higher water temperatures, typically in a range between 80ºC and 90ºC. High grade Dragon Well prepared at the 80ºC temperature has a unique flavour that I don't know describe, but it will have almost no flavour is a lower temperature is used.
Matcha started out on the mainland and came to Japan. As my Taiwanese dealer once said to an audience, she was grateful the Japanese still do matcha or she worried the technique and style would have been lost.
Not to say they make it exactly the same, I wouldn’t know, but the origin is China.
And 65-75°C is a safe bet for almost all greens. Germs won't survive on dried herbs with no access to water.
Bacterial spores can survive on dry stuff and these can be inactivated by high temperatures, but 65°C should do. Also, we humans have this cool ability to raise body temperature to kill unwelcome stuff, so we're good until cordyceps evolves.
Toxins on the other hand, may be able to survive even boiling.
Go for 65-75°C and don't ever taste bitter green tea.
Just in case you wanted to optimize your extraction technique: "The optimal conditions for extracting theanine from green tea using water were found to be extraction at 80 °C for 30 min with a water-to-tea ratio of 20:1 mL/g and a tea particle size of 0.5-1 mm."
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/21735551/
It all depends so much on the tea. There are many, many varieties of green tea.
My goto for an "average" green tea is a maximum of 70C and for most other teas (Oolong, Red etc.) it's 95C but the temperature is only one variable. Leaf to water ratio and steeping time are the other two. I usually brew Gongfu style (more leaf, shorter steeping times). For a nice Gyokuro on the low end of the temperature scale, I usually go with 50C and 6g/100ml of water/120 seconds steep and then increase the time in 30 second increments for the next two brews. After that I increase the temperature to about 70 degrees to squeeze out another brew or two but it's the first three that I'm really after :)
My goto "lazy" green is a Long Jing which can take hotter water (I usually go to around 80C) and it's just my daily tea so I usually brew it "western" style 0.6g/100ml, 2min first brew, 3min second brew.
It's a lot of fun to experiment with different teas and do comparison tastings (I did this quite a bit for white tea with the same tea brewed at different temperatures, steeping time etc.). But beware, it can turn into a bit of an obsession :)
And don't forget to smell the tea and leaves after brewing. It's one of the nicest things about a good cup of tea.
I don't think their analysis about caffeine is correct and doesn't cite sources. I've seen a lower temperature for a longer time more often being ideal for maximizing caffeine vs other components in pubmed research on teas, I.e.:
If one does a lower temperature for a longer time it is often also equivalent to boiling for a very short time a.f.a pathogens. I think the relative bitterness is probably higher for higher temperature brews after normalizing on caffeine.
All teas have "optimal" temperatures and brew times. A lot of green teas do not work well being boiled into bitter disappointment. Before I had to give up caffeine, I recall Gunpowder green tea being less tricky to get right. :)
> A common myth regarding green tea is that it shouldn’t be prepared with boiling water. This is absolutely false[...]
Seems to contradict the rest of the article...
> So the best way to prepare gyokuro, a green tea with a high amino acid content, is with lukewarm or even cold water.
> Sencha can be prepared with hot water for best results. Using boiling water would make it too bitter and astringent.
> Lower grade teas like bancha, genmaicha and houjicha, have a light taste and don’t have much amino acids anyway. Thus, they can be prepared with boiling water.
I guess it's saying that this isn't always true, but the headline would probably mislead people into ruining high-end tea with boiling water. And I don't see any upside to using it for low-end green tea.
Re-read the article. Different teas require different preparations for "best results". Some teas work better with boiling water, others with lower temperature water.
What I took from the article was that there appears to be a rule (I am imagining because I'm not a green tea expert) that green tea should never be prepared using boiling water when in fact, as the writer states, is false. As in "it depends".
And near the end of the article they state:
"However, you should prepare tea in the way that works best for you. If you want to boil your sencha because you want it to be very bitter and astringent, by all means go ahead."
I don't see any contradictions.
It's like coffee, different beans, different roasting of those beans, different grinding of those beans will mean there is no one true way to get the best extraction, and your preferred extraction might differ from another's extraction method.
No, it's absolutely false because those teas are completely legit because in this case lower grade doesn't mean crappy. If it did that would be reasonable advice to give.
If you tell someone never to drink those lower grade teas you're doing them a disservice and that's the only situation in which the advice about never using boiling water would apply.
But does non-boiling water not work well with lower-grade tea? I drink that stuff all the time and find it best with ~180˚F water. Seems like it's reasonable to just never use boiling water for green tea.
I drink ridiculous amounts of English Breakfast tea with 1% milk every day. The water HAS to be boiling when it hits the tea. You cn really tell the difference if the water is less than boiling. Same but more subtle with green tea imo
British teas tend to select blander batches of tea (said the retired British tea consultant who did a workshop at a tea festival years ago).
If you’re making Earl Grey, the bergamot is a lot of your cost per serving. A bold tea requires more bergamot for the same flavor balance. So bland tea, bergamot-forward flavor.
what does absolutely awful mean to you? i've made green and black tea in the same way and don't have a problem with either, but i've learned in my years that i'm much less averse to bitter than most people.
Do you actually drink not-bottom-of-the-barrel sencha? If not, your experience is not applicable, respectfully. With even middle-of-the-road sencha the difference is far from subtle.
15% of people don't taste bitterness in the same way. Hops taste floral and a bit sweet to me and I like to chew on Artemisia species my family finds hideously bitter. I could put cheap gunpowder green tea in a percolator for an hour and it wouldn't taste bitter to me. Perhaps the gp has the same trait?
Even most bottom-of-the-barrel sencha taste awful in boiling hot water, and this is vice versa; bottom-of-the-barrel black tea in not-boiling hot water tastes just as awful.
You're my spirit animal now. I drink massive amounts of strong black tea with milk and I agree, has to be absolutely boiling and I preheat the teapot.
At work I put a teabag in hot water and zap it in the microwave for 20-30s, key to driving out the flavor into the water.
I don't like green tea but I would think that you should experiment with whatever temp gives you the extraction you need. Don't listen to experts is rule #1 when it comes to brewing.
As I get older I notice my senses get less refined and weaker, especially smell and taste, and especially after a couple covid infections. This on top off constant distraction and stress makes it nearly impossible for me to taste any subtlety in things like coffee and tea and wine. To be frank I'm jealous of these people that can dedicate all this time and passion to various techniques and flavors.
From experience, if it’s not a passion or priority, it helps externalize the decision process. Have a friend (or online service) who does the research for you. Then you buy the minimum equipment (a temperature controlled kettle and a strainer) and a few teas. When you get time, brew them to the instructions. If you have some free time, you can start it with a cup of tea.
There no need to get massively invested.
This is how I learned to paint minis. All I did was buy some unpainted ones and drop by a friend’s place. He has all of the supplies and equipment. All of my unpainted minis are in his closet. :)
Edit: By having a friend, I mean if you have a friend who is into tea/coffee/wine/etc. I enjoy hanging out with people who have hobbies I wouldn’t pick up on my own.
Yep. There's one guy at work who's kinda quiet, but one day he noticed me drinking tea. Turns out he knows a lot about Chinese tea and buys it online (helps that he's from China and familiar with the provinces), so he's given me a lot of recommendations and it's become a fun topic to discuss.
Just be cognisant that it is entirely optional to care. And it is a free choice to care in whichever way you want (you might simply have a preferred supermarket tea brand).
The article misses the other very important points - brewing time, and water:leaf ratio.
The taste of your tea depends a lot on the quality of the leaves. I've used a wide range of Sencha leaves, some of them absolutely hate high temperatures beyond 70℃ while some others happily brew in 85℃.
Brewing times can drastically affect the bitterness of the tea even at lower temperatures because of how the catechins are extracted. In my experience, the first 30-60 seconds can make or break the taste - this is when the temperature must be just right.
I've got a variation to tweak my tea's taste by starting to brew at a slightly lower temperature for about 60-90 seconds and then adding some water at 85-90℃ at this point and letting it brew a bit longer. Some types of sencha teas respond well to this approach, and I feel this brings out a little more of its caffeine content and a hint of bitter / astringent flavours while not overwhelming the overall taste.
It also depends on what you're trying to achieve with the tea. Using the exact same leaves, I sometimes like to brew a very mild warm tea, and at other times the same leaves can be brewed at a higher temperature for a more full bodied tea.
My approach is to experiment with a new batch of leaves to quickly identify its boundaries re: temperature and time, and that gives me a lot of room to play with and experiment :)
I am a tea worm, I use to consume several kg of tea annually. I have often saw recommendation to not overheat tea over some degree of Celsius but when I try this I found the tea not ready. In fact I use to do opposite: I preheat the cup or teapot before throw some tea in it for making the tea even hotter.
> I am a tea worm, I use to consume several kg of tea annually.
Is it japanese green tea? Because that's what the article is about, if you're drinking black tea, or chinese teas, that is utterly irrelevant: they are different cultivars, selected and grown differently, with different harvesting and processing, and different brewing methods and temperatures.
You might well be Spiff and still have no useful input.
When I’ve had loose leaf tea poured for me, the first steep went down the drain. That achieves much the same thing, also gets rid of the little bits that can get stuck in your teeth.
Japanese green teas are not usually steeped multiple times (though most will allow for a few steepings, and a few are designed for that).
This sounds a lot more like chinese teas, which are designed for multiple short steepings (gongfu ceremony) and more or less require a rinsing first steep.
Temperature, length of brewing, water hardness all affect the taste.
Boiling water gives the tea a bitter taste. Trying brewing gyokuro with boiling water in front of a Japanese. Both the Japanese and the tea grow bitter because of it. The effect is very prominent.
Houjicha and bancha are low end tea. (Btw, are they even considered green tea?) Do whatever you want with them. It's like choosing the best glass for a table wine, it doesn't really matter.
Black tea, on the other hand, is more forgiving in brewing.
Tangentially, how popular is green tea in the UK? It seems quite niche?
Try brewing yerba mate in front of an Argentinean/Paraguayam, using using a thermal bottle. Also, boil the water in an electric kettle and pour a bit of cold water on the bottle to bring back the temperature to 80°C
They'll go bananas on how mate isn't served like that, on how you ruined it, etc.
But you can do it like that just fine. And it can be perfectly brewed like that and the taste will be the same.
People just like treating their ceremonies like shaolin kung fu.
Green tea in the UK isn’t a staple like black tea is but it is still quite common. All supermarkets tend to carry a good range of teas including green, jasmine, mint and chamomile.
I once read about a japanese method for green tea. The first cup is for the enemy, brewed with boiling water for a few seconds to pull out the bitterness and discarded. The second is for a good friend and the third is for you.
My brother once told me, that a japanese professor measured how much of the healthy substances gets drawn out at all temperatures. He found 60°C to be optimal.
I used 80°C for 2nd & 3rd brewing though, since i really dislike the taste at 70°C and lower.
I tried this over the weekend, different temperatures worked better for different teas which is frustrating, also I found the best tea was to prepare two pots, one boiled and one on the cooler side of lukewarm and then mix together the results, favouring slightly the cooler prepared tea.
I am EXTREMELY disappoint that the Caffeine produced by the plant to defend itself from pests, and also alters my brain chemistry such that hormones emitted by tired neurons are ignored... doesn't kill the bacteria :'(
For all lazy matcha makers, I’d recommend getting a milk frother: it heats up water and also mixes matcha powder. For those who like matcha lattes, I think it’s even more essential as frothing milk makes it more sweet and fluffy.
It depends on the green, though. Good-quality green tea from China can often withstand higher temperatures or long brewing, to the point where it's normal to just pinch some tea in a mug and refill with hot water throughout the day.
I wouldn't say it is matter of quality; or rather lot of high-quality teas can still be quite sensitive to high temps. Gyokuros mentioned in the article are good example
I've always read that you don't use boiling water because it destroys the catechins which provide the majority of the health benefits of drinking green tea.
I've always enjoyed the bite of bitter, astringent green tea. The tannin flavor just grabs my palate. Probably not for everyone, but it doesn't ruin it for me.
The title is misleading. It has nothing to do with boiling, but rather with temperature. Where I live, boiling water is well below 90°C and does not ruin green tea.
I think I am loosing my taste buds - my preference is for gunpowder tannin flavor, which I get by pouring whatever the hottest water setting is on my pot ~208F.
There are so many blog posts about green tea being healthy.
Every time I tried some its taste was revolting (like drinking dirty feet water), and it created a rough feeling in my throat.
I usually drink peppermint and/or camomile. If not solo, the mix must be 50/50 or it also tastes like old socks.
I also like various fruit teas, or blends like orange and curcuma, rose hip/hybiscus.
As a European I don't understand the green tea hype.
I’m not sure why that would have been your experience. Decent, well-prepared green tea should have a very mild grassy flavor and aroma. Possibly, as far as the rough feeling in your throat, the tea was prepared with too hot water or steeped too long, which releases astrigent chemicals as described in this fine article.
Maybe? It’s like blooming coffee, it makes a difference, but how much does that matter to the specific drinker? The same goes for water temp.
I found that I could tell the difference but for tea I regularly drink I couldn’t be bothered to break out a thermometer. But if it’s the good stuff I totally would be doing more of the ritual.
I think you're confusing boiling with searing. I guess anything could be a carcinogen at the right dosage but generally the advice is not to sear meat because that results in carinogenic particles. There is a similar process in deep frying.
But boiling is a different process, especially with tea where even if the water is boiling when poured it will rapidly cool down below the boiling point. As the article explains, boiling water extracts different substances to different degrees than warm/hot water. Specifically it will extract more of the bitter-tasting compounds and can break down others.
I meant that the matcha powder probably has pollutants which might get decreased by boiling it, as the article suggests, but that would ruin the flavor.
tl;dr: YES. Mostly. A few varieties are alright or maybe even good with boiling water. Houjicha is one that you're fairly likely to encounter (the kinda-roasty / toasted tasting tea you get in many restaurants).
But for the vast majority of green teas: heck no, it'll taste awful.
On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity."
It definitely will. After a couple years of experimentation and testing I've found anything over ~200F is basically undrinkable. It took me so long to figure this out because there were a lot of confounders -- I drank a lot of tea over the holidays back home, and while my parents' town is on the same water source I swear their florination is different, in a way that changes the mouth feel of the tea. I also had a new faucet installed and the galvanization in the new fixture left a strange aftertaste that took some time to track down. It was so bad that I seriously wonder how people can drink things that come out of Kohler faucets. Finally, I had some new mugs that were also causing problems...turns out the were only fired once? I'm not really sure how to describe it but it was kind of like drinking tea out of a soda can. Anyway, I eventually controlled for all this stuff and about 190F is the sweet spot. It's kind of embarrassing how much of an odyssey this all turned out to be, What works for other HNers?
200F = 93.3C, 190F = 87.8C. Really, we're talking about boiling, why would one even consider using Fahrenheit?
In some places, most of your instruments will likely be in Fahrenheit and Fahrenheit is what you use daily for most tasks. It only makes sense that you use Fahrenheit as your reference point.
A home in other places is more likely to have Celcius, and you'll likely use it.
It isn't like it is difficult to convert.
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Unfortunately, a lifetime in the U.S. has left me with poor intuition for Celsius. The conversion isn't difficult to do in ones head and for laboratory work, naturally, it's just as easy to read one thermometer scale as another. For everyday life, weather reports, fever thermometer readings, thermostats and such, it is just a nuisance to convert from Fahrenheit and back. If someone tells me it's 15 degrees C outside I have to do mental arithmetic to know if I should take a sweater. Furthermore, from a purely logical perspective perhaps we should even consider using Kelvin.
It's a completely different story for distance, weight and volume. Metric measurement in these cases are more intuitive for me, and they are clearly superior too. Millimeters are so much easier to use than fractions of an inch (7/32 inch -- that's a ridiculous system). In the U.S., an ounce of flour weighs less than an ounce of gold. Who even knows how much a grain of gunpowder is in units anyone else uses (one grain is approximately 1/16 gram). There are three teaspoons in one tablespoon, but only two cups in a pint, 2 pints in a quart and 4 quarts in a gallon.
I'd be happy to switch from imperial to SI units for length, mass, and volume. I'll gladly switch slugs to kilograms and pounds to Newtons, but I will miss Fahrenheit.
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As much as I prefer Celsius and have no idea what temperatures are in Fahrenheit, it seems quite obvious why people will use it - because it’s what one knows and what is used where one live.
Even as an Aussie I have to disagree with you here. The commenter at least put Fahrenheit in the degree.
People are allowed to communicate in a way that they're familiar with. If they have used F their entire life and so has everyone around them, then its fine.
The US demographic represents roughly 41% of Hacker News, I think its fine if they use their own measurement system.
This reads like someone copypasted a post from some audiophile forum, then replaced words to make it tea-themed :) "The basically unlistenable hdmi cable has been only gold-plated once, and the direction of the signal is wrong". Haha, no offence, just made me smile
I got into green tea around 2014 (my how time flies) and I've had a lot of experiences.
Depending on how sensitive you are everything can change the taste, but IMO the big three are:
- water (huge, huge differences)
- type of tea (cultivar, when/ where it was harvested, steam time)
- brew temp and time
I eventually settled on a system where I heat filtered water in a regular pot with a meat thermometer to the right temp (this is usually between 155-170F depending on the specific tea), pour over tea into a glass pot (through stainless steel basket), brew from 30-60 seconds (again depending on tea), serve. I also measure the water, and weigh the tea on a scale.
It might sound convoluted and compared with like, brewing a kettle and dumping over a bag it is. I mostly drink earl grey now, probably as a result. In the summers it's a lot easier, I just dump tea in a pitcher of water and put it in the fridge overnight.
Also, I wholeheartedly recommend o-cha.com for tea and peripherals.
I read that soft and low mineral water makes the best tea and tried to use water with such values bought from market. It was trash. Tap water where I live is very hard and have a good taste and the tea is much better with it - so my experience contradicts what I found about the topic on the net.
Are there any objective parameters of water which makes a better green tea?
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If we're talking japanese green tea, 50C for a very gentle taste、70~80C for a full taste are the basic directions, same as you'll get recommended by the tea makers themselves (an english site [0])
190F(85C) requires more timing control and get out the tea after less than a minute, while lower temperatures are more forgiving.
[0] https://www.theteamakers.co.uk/blogs/news/japanese-tea-brewi...
Caution is advised here. Teas can vary wildly from producer to producer, fixing methods and even from year to year and the extraction vessels, brewing methods and even the water heating and temp measuring methods play a significant role.
Anecdotal evidence: The temps for my daily drinker (a deep steamed sencha) this year are 10°C lower (57) than last year. This is after keeping everything else constant.
> Finally, I had some new mugs that were also causing problems...turns out the were only fired once?
The mugs were causing problems because they were only fired once? There is supertasting, and then there's this. I am glad I don't have these problems.
Have you considered writing a blog or posting your thoughts about your experience and journey in finding the “perfect” tea brew? I’m sure your thoughts would save many amateurs a lot of frustrations. I, myself, am intrigued how nuanced the process is
It's still highly dependent on the specific tea. Definitely 190 I'd say is an absolute ceiling for green, but I have green teas I let nowhere near that - some even 170 max.
the german tea expert Ernst Janssen recommends to also use boiling water to prepare green tea as most of the teas are contaminated with germs and other things. different green tea brands including organic tea brands were tested by the renowned German test.de magazine and they confirmed that, also most of organic teas are contaminated. and since this is nothing you can easily check at home, better use boiling water.
https://www.ernst-janssen.com/tee-almanach https://www.n-tv.de/ratgeber/Stiftung-Warentest-bewertet-gru...
That seems paranoid considering that I have never heard anyone getting food poisoning from tea, no matter how it was brewed.
edit: Reading the linked article, it seems mostly concerned about contaminants and not germs. Intuitively thinking, I'd imagine higher temps would end up extracting more of those from leaves to the drink than lower temps?
The germ thing seems to go back to this 2005 press release by the BfR, which does indeed urge people to use boiling water to kill Salmonella particularly when preparing herbal tea. It doesn't cite any known cases or numbers: https://mobil.bfr.bund.de/de/presse/presseinformationen/2005...
Searching further, there were a couple of cases of Salmonella in infants in 2003 that were traced to fennel anise tea. The timing fits. I couldn't find anything more recent, but I didn't look very hard.
https://www.ernaehrungs-umschau.de/news/16-07-2003-salmonell...
Here's more data from government sources. They tested tea and herbal tea in 2008, and found traces of Salmonella or E.coli in 2-3% of prosecute products, and mold in 20%. Doesn't differentiate between herbal and real tea.
https://www.lgl.bayern.de/lebensmittel/warengruppen/wc_47_te...
I'm not worried. But then I usually use boiling water, or almost boiling water, which should be enough to kill micro organisms. And I'm sure I get more mold toxins from various other food sources without noticing it, cereals, nuts, processed foods etc. Tea is a dilution, after all.
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A person I know had to get tested for toxins at work regularly and at some point showed really high arsenic levels. At which point they had to figure out what poisoned him. He worked in material science but no materials he handled would have given off arsenic to his body. After some investigating, they found out that the Pu'Erh tea he consumed was the culprit. They tested the tea in a lab and after he stopped drinking it, his levels became normal. So that might not kill.you but I guess having these toxins in you body cannot be good either.
Since then I try to only buy teas which are lab-tested. When I lived in Germany I bought my teas at sunday. Tbey tell you harvest, growing conditions and many more things and they also claim to lab test the tea badges.
I haven't found anything comparable in the US yet.
https://www.sunday.de/long-jing-shi-feng-tee/
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Yeah it seems so dried out you wouldn't have too much to worry about.
As for boiling tea for sanitation, I took a wilderness first responder class and they taught us that you could bring water to a boil at any altitude a human can breath at (without holding it at a boil for 15 minutes as some claim) and it's considered sterilized. In Cusco, that would be around 191F/89C (humans can breathe quite a bit higher up than Cusco). Not a bad tea-brewing temp!
Also, I suggest trying kukicha. It's high in l-theanine and lower in caffeine. Tasty too.
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If we're discussing non-volatiles such as heavy metals, boiling acually concentrates them by removing some of the water. This is more of a concern with the water than with the tea, however if one is already bringing up the health aspects then obviosly neither can be ignored.
It’s not a matter of food poisoning, it’s a matter of do you really want to ingest contaminants. Regular consumption of contaminants such as pesticides, herbicides, and antibiotics (all present in the water supply especially at lower elevations) has an impact on long term health.
Yes this doesn’t really make sense unless it would denature any toxins which doesn’t seem that likely and will do nothing for any pesticide or heavy metal contamination except possibly extract more.
> I'd imagine higher temps would end up extracting more of those from leaves to the drink than lower temps?
that is actually an interesting aspect.
All foodstuffs are contaminated with germs, unless you go to extraordinary effort to prevent it (e.g. intense gamma radiation.) Unless there is some particular reason to care (you're a hospital feeding people who had their bone marrow nuked by cancer/chemo), then the correct solution is to stop caring. Who ever heard of people dropping dead because they brewed their tea with sub-boiling water? This isn't happening, it's not something you should worry about.
People mostly get by fine without boiling their salads but they do occasionally get e coli or something.
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Do they really use gamma, or just electron beams like in a TV tube?
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they even found salmonella in tea. to kill them one would need to heat the tea constantly above 70 degree Celsius over a period of ten minutes.
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> "germs and other things"
This is faulty reasoning. The typical "almost boiling" temperature of 185F for 3 minutes will sterilize the tea just as well as boiling water would. There's absolutely no benefit in terms of safety. The only consideration would be flavor.
While I get the logic, it feels a lot like a "cook your salad to get rid of potential pathogens" strategy. Sure it's safer, but did you really want to boil your salad ?
There surely must be other ways to get probably safe food than boiling everything you drink.
If you are paranoid about salmonella in tea, 185F for 15 seconds is enough, and it won't ruin teas that taste better at lower temps.
Or you can top your drink up with very hot/boiling water after brewing
No need to boil. 80 or 90 degrees is enough to kill germs nearly instantly, 70 degrees takes a little longer.
Boiling doesn't even kill most things. I worked in a biolab for a while and used an autoclave to sterilize objects. It basically means we pressure cooked stuff at 130°C for 45min or so. And even that doesn't destroy some dangerous stuff like prions.
Without buying the test, looks my tea vendor (Tee Gschwender) once again was at the top, so I think I’m good ;)
This seems extremely paranoid.
I cold brew green (and black) tea and drink multiple cups a day.
This is an extremely German world view.
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Dreck reinigt den Magen. Stellt Euch nicht so an, Ihr Weicheier!
Obligatory reference: "You are all diseased" by Geoerge Carlin: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X29lF43mUlo
I think one questions that people here might be having is how is the water of correct temperature is actually prepared. Do people just know how to heat water to 60C? That sounds unlikely, doesn't it?
In traditional tea ceremony, known amount of tap water is added to boiling water. Comes out okay if protocol is punctually followed.
In more casual situations, there are buttons and lamps on electric kettles to cycle through common temperatures. That works if you are going to serve dozen guests at once.
Yeah my kettle as a 140F setting. Works for me. I also use 170F for Yerba mate.
There's a lot of factors to it. The way the leaves are processed, the quality/freshness of the leaves, ratio of leaf to water, steeping time.
I think in general it's safest to brew green teas at 175f. But I'm doing quick gongfu brewing sessions with a late-march sichuan green tea, and it tastes great at 205f. Less intense at the usual 175f, but picks up more subtle flavors.
Varities of Chinese and Japanese green teas differ in their processing techniques so much that they require different preparation techniques as well. They possess distinctly different flavours, too.
Most Japanese green teas are steamed past the harvest time – lightly (gyokuro), or more thoroughly (sencha), or anywhere in between depending on the grade – and some varieties can also be roasted (e.g. yabukita). Japanese green tea generally requires milder water temperatures for a preparation. Typically, the higher is the grade, the lower is the temperature, e.g. from 60ºC for gyokuro and high grade matcha to 80ºC for sencha. Gyokuro and matcha, prepared at the right or slightly lower temperature, has a lot umami flavour with a little bit of sweetness in it.
Varieties of the Chinese green tea is either lightly roasted (without being steamed nowadays) or lightly fermented. They need higher water temperatures, typically in a range between 80ºC and 90ºC. High grade Dragon Well prepared at the 80ºC temperature has a unique flavour that I don't know describe, but it will have almost no flavour is a lower temperature is used.
Matcha started out on the mainland and came to Japan. As my Taiwanese dealer once said to an audience, she was grateful the Japanese still do matcha or she worried the technique and style would have been lost.
Not to say they make it exactly the same, I wouldn’t know, but the origin is China.
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Yep, roasting the leaves for the kill-green process will leave you with nuttier flavors. Steaming it keeps the umami vegetal/seaweed flavor.
Dragon's Well tea sort of reminds me of sweet corn.
I appreciate the connoisseur vernacular
Becoming a tea snob helped me stay away from alcohol during quarantine :/
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Related: ProZD's skit "before and after you discover the subreddit for a hobby" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ZK8Z8hulFg
L-theanine is a hell of a drug!
And 65-75°C is a safe bet for almost all greens. Germs won't survive on dried herbs with no access to water.
Bacterial spores can survive on dry stuff and these can be inactivated by high temperatures, but 65°C should do. Also, we humans have this cool ability to raise body temperature to kill unwelcome stuff, so we're good until cordyceps evolves.
Toxins on the other hand, may be able to survive even boiling.
Go for 65-75°C and don't ever taste bitter green tea.
Just in case you wanted to optimize your extraction technique: "The optimal conditions for extracting theanine from green tea using water were found to be extraction at 80 °C for 30 min with a water-to-tea ratio of 20:1 mL/g and a tea particle size of 0.5-1 mm." https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/21735551/
Funny thing, botulism toxin does not survive boiling temps, but its spores do.
Don't the spores only matter for babies and the severely immunocompromised?
It all depends so much on the tea. There are many, many varieties of green tea.
My goto for an "average" green tea is a maximum of 70C and for most other teas (Oolong, Red etc.) it's 95C but the temperature is only one variable. Leaf to water ratio and steeping time are the other two. I usually brew Gongfu style (more leaf, shorter steeping times). For a nice Gyokuro on the low end of the temperature scale, I usually go with 50C and 6g/100ml of water/120 seconds steep and then increase the time in 30 second increments for the next two brews. After that I increase the temperature to about 70 degrees to squeeze out another brew or two but it's the first three that I'm really after :)
My goto "lazy" green is a Long Jing which can take hotter water (I usually go to around 80C) and it's just my daily tea so I usually brew it "western" style 0.6g/100ml, 2min first brew, 3min second brew.
It's a lot of fun to experiment with different teas and do comparison tastings (I did this quite a bit for white tea with the same tea brewed at different temperatures, steeping time etc.). But beware, it can turn into a bit of an obsession :)
And don't forget to smell the tea and leaves after brewing. It's one of the nicest things about a good cup of tea.
That scene from fearless comes to mind: https://vimeo.com/15687220
Enjoying tea is more to do with the individual, than the tea itself.
I don't think their analysis about caffeine is correct and doesn't cite sources. I've seen a lower temperature for a longer time more often being ideal for maximizing caffeine vs other components in pubmed research on teas, I.e.:
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/21339166/
If one does a lower temperature for a longer time it is often also equivalent to boiling for a very short time a.f.a pathogens. I think the relative bitterness is probably higher for higher temperature brews after normalizing on caffeine.
All teas have "optimal" temperatures and brew times. A lot of green teas do not work well being boiled into bitter disappointment. Before I had to give up caffeine, I recall Gunpowder green tea being less tricky to get right. :)
> A common myth regarding green tea is that it shouldn’t be prepared with boiling water. This is absolutely false[...]
Seems to contradict the rest of the article...
> So the best way to prepare gyokuro, a green tea with a high amino acid content, is with lukewarm or even cold water.
> Sencha can be prepared with hot water for best results. Using boiling water would make it too bitter and astringent.
> Lower grade teas like bancha, genmaicha and houjicha, have a light taste and don’t have much amino acids anyway. Thus, they can be prepared with boiling water.
I guess it's saying that this isn't always true, but the headline would probably mislead people into ruining high-end tea with boiling water. And I don't see any upside to using it for low-end green tea.
Re-read the article. Different teas require different preparations for "best results". Some teas work better with boiling water, others with lower temperature water.
What I took from the article was that there appears to be a rule (I am imagining because I'm not a green tea expert) that green tea should never be prepared using boiling water when in fact, as the writer states, is false. As in "it depends".
And near the end of the article they state:
"However, you should prepare tea in the way that works best for you. If you want to boil your sencha because you want it to be very bitter and astringent, by all means go ahead."
I don't see any contradictions.
It's like coffee, different beans, different roasting of those beans, different grinding of those beans will mean there is no one true way to get the best extraction, and your preferred extraction might differ from another's extraction method.
but houjicha isn't even considered green tea in Japan. it's brown...
No, it's absolutely false because those teas are completely legit because in this case lower grade doesn't mean crappy. If it did that would be reasonable advice to give.
If you tell someone never to drink those lower grade teas you're doing them a disservice and that's the only situation in which the advice about never using boiling water would apply.
But does non-boiling water not work well with lower-grade tea? I drink that stuff all the time and find it best with ~180˚F water. Seems like it's reasonable to just never use boiling water for green tea.
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I took the simple precaution of moving a mile above sea level.
I drink ridiculous amounts of English Breakfast tea with 1% milk every day. The water HAS to be boiling when it hits the tea. You cn really tell the difference if the water is less than boiling. Same but more subtle with green tea imo
English teas are very much bred and selected for boiling water - this is definitely the right choice for them.
For most greens though (particularly the more fragile ones), oh heck no. They taste absolutely awful at high temperatures.
British teas tend to select blander batches of tea (said the retired British tea consultant who did a workshop at a tea festival years ago).
If you’re making Earl Grey, the bergamot is a lot of your cost per serving. A bold tea requires more bergamot for the same flavor balance. So bland tea, bergamot-forward flavor.
what does absolutely awful mean to you? i've made green and black tea in the same way and don't have a problem with either, but i've learned in my years that i'm much less averse to bitter than most people.
so is bitter what you mean by absolutely awful?
Do you actually drink not-bottom-of-the-barrel sencha? If not, your experience is not applicable, respectfully. With even middle-of-the-road sencha the difference is far from subtle.
15% of people don't taste bitterness in the same way. Hops taste floral and a bit sweet to me and I like to chew on Artemisia species my family finds hideously bitter. I could put cheap gunpowder green tea in a percolator for an hour and it wouldn't taste bitter to me. Perhaps the gp has the same trait?
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Even most bottom-of-the-barrel sencha taste awful in boiling hot water, and this is vice versa; bottom-of-the-barrel black tea in not-boiling hot water tastes just as awful.
I always thought Sencha was different to green tea, steamed leaves, more subtle?
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You're my spirit animal now. I drink massive amounts of strong black tea with milk and I agree, has to be absolutely boiling and I preheat the teapot.
At work I put a teabag in hot water and zap it in the microwave for 20-30s, key to driving out the flavor into the water.
I don't like green tea but I would think that you should experiment with whatever temp gives you the extraction you need. Don't listen to experts is rule #1 when it comes to brewing.
The article is about good Japanese teas. You're talking about black tea in bags.
I agree for black tea, but for green it becomes overly bitter if I use boiling water.
This also applies to mate and is very easy to do a comparison test with.
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As I get older I notice my senses get less refined and weaker, especially smell and taste, and especially after a couple covid infections. This on top off constant distraction and stress makes it nearly impossible for me to taste any subtlety in things like coffee and tea and wine. To be frank I'm jealous of these people that can dedicate all this time and passion to various techniques and flavors.
From experience, if it’s not a passion or priority, it helps externalize the decision process. Have a friend (or online service) who does the research for you. Then you buy the minimum equipment (a temperature controlled kettle and a strainer) and a few teas. When you get time, brew them to the instructions. If you have some free time, you can start it with a cup of tea.
There no need to get massively invested.
This is how I learned to paint minis. All I did was buy some unpainted ones and drop by a friend’s place. He has all of the supplies and equipment. All of my unpainted minis are in his closet. :)
Edit: By having a friend, I mean if you have a friend who is into tea/coffee/wine/etc. I enjoy hanging out with people who have hobbies I wouldn’t pick up on my own.
Yep. There's one guy at work who's kinda quiet, but one day he noticed me drinking tea. Turns out he knows a lot about Chinese tea and buys it online (helps that he's from China and familiar with the provinces), so he's given me a lot of recommendations and it's become a fun topic to discuss.
Just be cognisant that it is entirely optional to care. And it is a free choice to care in whichever way you want (you might simply have a preferred supermarket tea brand).
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The article misses the other very important points - brewing time, and water:leaf ratio.
The taste of your tea depends a lot on the quality of the leaves. I've used a wide range of Sencha leaves, some of them absolutely hate high temperatures beyond 70℃ while some others happily brew in 85℃.
Brewing times can drastically affect the bitterness of the tea even at lower temperatures because of how the catechins are extracted. In my experience, the first 30-60 seconds can make or break the taste - this is when the temperature must be just right.
I've got a variation to tweak my tea's taste by starting to brew at a slightly lower temperature for about 60-90 seconds and then adding some water at 85-90℃ at this point and letting it brew a bit longer. Some types of sencha teas respond well to this approach, and I feel this brings out a little more of its caffeine content and a hint of bitter / astringent flavours while not overwhelming the overall taste.
It also depends on what you're trying to achieve with the tea. Using the exact same leaves, I sometimes like to brew a very mild warm tea, and at other times the same leaves can be brewed at a higher temperature for a more full bodied tea.
My approach is to experiment with a new batch of leaves to quickly identify its boundaries re: temperature and time, and that gives me a lot of room to play with and experiment :)
I am a tea worm, I use to consume several kg of tea annually. I have often saw recommendation to not overheat tea over some degree of Celsius but when I try this I found the tea not ready. In fact I use to do opposite: I preheat the cup or teapot before throw some tea in it for making the tea even hotter.
> I am a tea worm, I use to consume several kg of tea annually.
Is it japanese green tea? Because that's what the article is about, if you're drinking black tea, or chinese teas, that is utterly irrelevant: they are different cultivars, selected and grown differently, with different harvesting and processing, and different brewing methods and temperatures.
You might well be Spiff and still have no useful input.
When I’ve had loose leaf tea poured for me, the first steep went down the drain. That achieves much the same thing, also gets rid of the little bits that can get stuck in your teeth.
Japanese green teas are not usually steeped multiple times (though most will allow for a few steepings, and a few are designed for that).
This sounds a lot more like chinese teas, which are designed for multiple short steepings (gongfu ceremony) and more or less require a rinsing first steep.
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Temperature, length of brewing, water hardness all affect the taste.
Boiling water gives the tea a bitter taste. Trying brewing gyokuro with boiling water in front of a Japanese. Both the Japanese and the tea grow bitter because of it. The effect is very prominent.
Houjicha and bancha are low end tea. (Btw, are they even considered green tea?) Do whatever you want with them. It's like choosing the best glass for a table wine, it doesn't really matter.
Black tea, on the other hand, is more forgiving in brewing.
Tangentially, how popular is green tea in the UK? It seems quite niche?
Sometimes native doesn't mean right.
Try brewing yerba mate in front of an Argentinean/Paraguayam, using using a thermal bottle. Also, boil the water in an electric kettle and pour a bit of cold water on the bottle to bring back the temperature to 80°C
They'll go bananas on how mate isn't served like that, on how you ruined it, etc.
But you can do it like that just fine. And it can be perfectly brewed like that and the taste will be the same.
People just like treating their ceremonies like shaolin kung fu.
Green tea in the UK isn’t a staple like black tea is but it is still quite common. All supermarkets tend to carry a good range of teas including green, jasmine, mint and chamomile.
It will make it taste bad (bitter). It’s similar to overcooked pasta. Not ruined, but not good either.
I once read about a japanese method for green tea. The first cup is for the enemy, brewed with boiling water for a few seconds to pull out the bitterness and discarded. The second is for a good friend and the third is for you.
My brother once told me, that a japanese professor measured how much of the healthy substances gets drawn out at all temperatures. He found 60°C to be optimal.
I used 80°C for 2nd & 3rd brewing though, since i really dislike the taste at 70°C and lower.
I tried this over the weekend, different temperatures worked better for different teas which is frustrating, also I found the best tea was to prepare two pots, one boiled and one on the cooler side of lukewarm and then mix together the results, favouring slightly the cooler prepared tea.
I am EXTREMELY disappoint that the Caffeine produced by the plant to defend itself from pests, and also alters my brain chemistry such that hormones emitted by tired neurons are ignored... doesn't kill the bacteria :'(
For all lazy matcha makers, I’d recommend getting a milk frother: it heats up water and also mixes matcha powder. For those who like matcha lattes, I think it’s even more essential as frothing milk makes it more sweet and fluffy.
TL;DR no, but it will make it bitter and astringent because more caffeine and catechins will be extracted.
It depends on the green, though. Good-quality green tea from China can often withstand higher temperatures or long brewing, to the point where it's normal to just pinch some tea in a mug and refill with hot water throughout the day.
IIRC, Chinese green tea is a completely different beast from Japanese green tea like sencha.
I wouldn't say it is matter of quality; or rather lot of high-quality teas can still be quite sensitive to high temps. Gyokuros mentioned in the article are good example
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>TL;DR no, but it will make it bitter...
See, that's where the "no" is actually a "yes" for me. For my palate, bitter tea = ruined tea.
Just do it like everyone else and drown it in sugar and milk.
I've always read that you don't use boiling water because it destroys the catechins which provide the majority of the health benefits of drinking green tea.
I've always enjoyed the bite of bitter, astringent green tea. The tannin flavor just grabs my palate. Probably not for everyone, but it doesn't ruin it for me.
The title is misleading. It has nothing to do with boiling, but rather with temperature. Where I live, boiling water is well below 90°C and does not ruin green tea.
I think I am loosing my taste buds - my preference is for gunpowder tannin flavor, which I get by pouring whatever the hottest water setting is on my pot ~208F.
I've been making my mint tea with only-almost-boiling water since forever. Just tastes better, even if it may not technically count as “green tea”.
Yes. I've tried it - makes it obviously more bitter.
There are so many blog posts about green tea being healthy. Every time I tried some its taste was revolting (like drinking dirty feet water), and it created a rough feeling in my throat.
I usually drink peppermint and/or camomile. If not solo, the mix must be 50/50 or it also tastes like old socks. I also like various fruit teas, or blends like orange and curcuma, rose hip/hybiscus.
As a European I don't understand the green tea hype.
This is why I've never drank dirty feet water or tasted old socks. Europeans have some strange food habits.
I’m not sure why that would have been your experience. Decent, well-prepared green tea should have a very mild grassy flavor and aroma. Possibly, as far as the rough feeling in your throat, the tea was prepared with too hot water or steeped too long, which releases astrigent chemicals as described in this fine article.
Yes.
And so will following a strict recipe. You need to tune it yourself. Below boiling is better.
Use. Your. Tounge.
As if you need to be told, or can't tell.
This is neat. I always knew that hot water made my green tea taste too bitter for me, but never knew why.
Next question is whether the ritual washing of tea and warming of cups is necessary
Maybe? It’s like blooming coffee, it makes a difference, but how much does that matter to the specific drinker? The same goes for water temp.
I found that I could tell the difference but for tea I regularly drink I couldn’t be bothered to break out a thermometer. But if it’s the good stuff I totally would be doing more of the ritual.
Afaik not using boiling water is because it burns and that causes cancer
I think you're confusing boiling with searing. I guess anything could be a carcinogen at the right dosage but generally the advice is not to sear meat because that results in carinogenic particles. There is a similar process in deep frying.
But boiling is a different process, especially with tea where even if the water is boiling when poured it will rapidly cool down below the boiling point. As the article explains, boiling water extracts different substances to different degrees than warm/hot water. Specifically it will extract more of the bitter-tasting compounds and can break down others.
Sadly, boiling water will absolutely ruin matcha. But I'm too hooked.
If you like it so much, it's probably worth buying a kettle with temperature control.
Oh I don't need it, I have an eye for it.
I meant that the matcha powder probably has pollutants which might get decreased by boiling it, as the article suggests, but that would ruin the flavor.
I can confirm. Matcha tastes like crap when made with boiling water.
“Shit people who actually drink green tea don’t care about”
There was someone on YouTube showing elevated radiation levels in Japanese green tea after the Fukushima incident.
tl;dr: YES. Mostly. A few varieties are alright or maybe even good with boiling water. Houjicha is one that you're fairly likely to encounter (the kinda-roasty / toasted tasting tea you get in many restaurants).
But for the vast majority of green teas: heck no, it'll taste awful.
HN DDoS'd...
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I sorta knew this from experience, that high temperature would make the tea bitter. But why is this on HN?
Are you familiar with the Hacker News Guidelines (https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)?
“What to Submit
On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity."
Wouldn't you have this reaction to at minimum 50% of all HN submissions?
Because coders drink tea?
Coders like <T>
Except for the Marxist coders who only drink herbal infusions
Because proper tea is theft