Comment by hot_gril
3 years ago
> 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.
But your take is exactly the right one: Use the tea you prefer, prepared with the water temp that gives it your favored taste.
That's what it's suggesting, but it may be that a preference for boiling water is assumed when all other things are equal.