Comment by xattt
9 days ago
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
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.
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.
One confounding factor is how much you want a cup of tea at that time.