61–70 of 219 posts
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
I agree for black tea, but for green it becomes overly bitter if I use boiling water.
TL;DR no, but it will make it bitter and astringent because more caffeine and catechins will be extracted.
See, that's where the "no" is actually a "yes" for me. For my palate, bitter tea = ruined tea.
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I always thought Sencha was different to green tea, steamed leaves, more subtle?
"green tea" is an English term which essentializes Asamushi, Chumushi, and Fukamushi versions of Sencha, Gyokuro, Matcha, Bancha, Genmaicha, Hojicha, Kukicha, Shincha, Tamaryokucha, Kamairicha, Konacha, Mecha, Guricha, Hentaigama, Batabatacha, Wakocha, Karigane, Tencha, Aracha, Yanagi, not to mention the regional specializations.
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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.
I always thought Sencha was different to green tea, steamed leaves, more subtle?
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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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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 f…
https://ourdailybrine.com/wp-content/uploads/our-daily-brine...
You’ll have to work pretty hard to make a credible cup of tea with viable salmonella in it.
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?
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.
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…
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?
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 drinkin…