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Will boiling water ruin green tea?

myjapanesegreentea.com

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Re: Will boiling water ruin green tea?

#121

Post by devilsabvocate »

voytec wrote: post #48

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…

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/

Re: Will boiling water ruin green tea?

#122

Post by Shaanie »

Broken_Hippo wrote: post #119
gpvos wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

On the contrary Fahrenheit and Celsius is one of the harder units to convert. Can't just "halve and remove 10%" in your head like you can for pounds. Though I agree with you that you can't expect Americans to use SI units.

Re: Will boiling water ruin green tea?

#124

Post by masklinn »

amluto wrote: post #66
morsch wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

You don’t need to boil salmonella to kill it: 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 more sensitive "proper" teas are well into the danger zones e.g. gyokuros tend to be brewed between 50C and 60C, and with brewing times under 3mn.

Never really heard of hard thermal limits for herbals though, in my experience they're more resilient and less caring, and you can long-boil most of them like you'd do a middling black tea.

Re: Will boiling water ruin green tea?

#125

Post by ykonstant »

chunksthree wrote: post #101

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…

> 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.

Re: Will boiling water ruin green tea?

#126

Post by theK »

makeitdouble wrote: post #117
chunksthree wrote: post #101

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…

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.

Re: Will boiling water ruin green tea?

#127

Post by masklinn »

prophesi wrote: post #116
brewdad wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you get to sleep? I’ve tried tea at various times as a substitute for an evening alcoholic beverage but the caffeine hinders my sleep. I already drink too much coffee before 10am, so adding more caffeine later in the evening has been a problem when I’ve tried it.

Kukicha (though it still has some caffeine), hojicha, rooibos, various other tisanes. Though, the caffeine content of anything that isn't red tea / puerh doesn't effect me much, and there are a lot of good decaf options.

I would also assume multiple brewings will see caffeine levels drop off sharply.

I suffer from chronic insomnia, and I certainly didn't notice the afternoons and evenings spent on a pot of good oolong to be any worse than the same with herbal or rooibos.

Re: Will boiling water ruin green tea?

#128

Post by gpvos »

Broken_Hippo wrote: post #119
gpvos wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

No, it is very hard to convert.

The US has about 4% of the world population. Adapt. It's not worth the communication problems.

Re: Will boiling water ruin green tea?

#129

Post by nibbleshifter »

shostack wrote: post #61
hot_gril wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I've found it depends on the mate.

The current bag I have, Rosamonte brand, seems to require freshly boiled, right out of the kettle water to get a good extraction.

The last bag I had was bitter if you used just boiled water, you had to let it go down in temp a bit to get a good brew.

I should probably buy a bunch of mates and check the dates to see if that's a variable I've not accounted for. Usually I know how to deal with a bag of it after making the first drink.

Re: Will boiling water ruin green tea?

#130

Post by kriro »

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.

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