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Will boiling water ruin green tea?

myjapanesegreentea.com

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Re: Will boiling water ruin green tea?

#31

Post by morsch »

zokier wrote: post #13
taraparo wrote: post #8

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. h…

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.

Re: Will boiling water ruin green tea?

#32

Post by LargoLasskhyfv »

taraparo wrote: post #8

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. h…

Dreck reinigt den Magen. Stellt Euch nicht so an, Ihr Weicheier!

Re: Will boiling water ruin green tea?

#33

Post by brianwawok »

StrangeATractor wrote: post #21
zokier wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

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…

> Yeah it seems so dried out you wouldn't have too much to worry about.

How about the people touching / sneezing on it in the packaging factory?

Re: Will boiling water ruin green tea?

#35

Post by punnerud »

taraparo wrote: post #27
stametseater wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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, i…

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.

71°C for 1/2min to kill salmonella, instantly with 74.

10min is around 64°C.

Remember that the cup often cool down the water 10-15 degrees. So the water should not be under 90°C from the boiler to be safe.

Re: Will boiling water ruin green tea?

#36

Post by nijave »

StrangeATractor wrote: post #21
zokier wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

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…

I think it's a halflife/timing thing. Once it hits boiling, it's instance death for most microbials.

You can keep it a lot lower for longer but it's also potentially difficult to tell the temperature (easier to say, bubbles? It's hot enough)

Re: Will boiling water ruin green tea?

#38

Post by nijave »

brianwawok wrote: post #33
StrangeATractor wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> Yeah it seems so dried out you wouldn't have too much to worry about. How about the people touching / sneezing on it in the packaging factory?

Not sure about most things transferred via touch/sneeze but I imagine lack of moisture would cause anything living to die fairly quickly.

Re: Will boiling water ruin green tea?

#39

Post by Vecr »

stametseater wrote: post #24
taraparo wrote: post #8

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. h…

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, i…

Do they really use gamma, or just electron beams like in a TV tube?

Re: Will boiling water ruin green tea?

#40

Post by dima55 »

PuppyTailWags wrote: post #16
zokier wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Please re-read my post that I said from China specifically. Gyokuro, a green tea primarily of japanese make and style, does not apply to what I said. I'm thinking of gan lu or mao jian style teas.

The article this thread is commenting on is about Japanese green tea, hence the confusion.
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