"Sara Hawk" > wrote in
news:Lfswb.295275$Fm2.311652@attbi_s04:

> Hi all,
> I don't want to open yet another debate on tea. Please, if you feel
> the need to flame, select another topic. I just need answers to a
> couple of questions.

The questions you ask are important, and have indeed been discussed here
before with a great deal of vigor. :-)

>
> As a long time black tea / tisane drinker, tea to me meant boiling
> some water, pouring it over tea leaves / herbs and decanting after
> some time. Only within the last 5 years have I been introduced to
> other kinds of tea and other methods of preparation. And even though
> I've done it for some time now, I don't feel that I've mastered those
> techniques either. I still use a thermometer and I often start over.
> I have several questions about this:
>
> 1. What happens to tea if the water isn't hot enough? I understand
> that if the water is too hot, it 'burns off' some of the compounds so
> they evaporate quickly and the taste changes. So, by this logic,
> wouldn't a longer brew time in cooler water result in similar brew? I
> tried this with some greens that I have, and it was about the same.
> I've really not got any expensive greens yet (waiting for my order) so
> I can't tell whether it's like that with them too. What is your view?

The flavors in tea come from various compounds in it. Some compounds
dissolve at lower temperatures, some need higher temperatures. Some
dissolve quickly, others slowly. So, a long steep at a low temperature
is not necessarily the same as a short steep at a higher temperature.
See below.

> 2. Several of the greens that I've tried have a sort of a spinach
> taste to them. Is this a desirable taste in greens? If not, what am
> I doing wrong to produce this kind of a taste?

There are strong opinions on this. I belong to the faction that believes
that the "spinach" taste (sometimes called "grassy") comes from steeping
at too high a temperature. Try steeping the same tea at a lower
temperature and see if the taste is different.

> 3. Do you prefer to heat the water to the desired temperature or to
> boil it and let it cool to that temperature? If you have a preference,
> why?

I heat and then cool (a method I have seen on some Japanese tea
websites). One might argue that there will be more dissolved air (a good
thing) in water that is heated to the target temperature and no more, but
if there is a difference it might not be noticable to (any? some? most?)
palates.

>4. Do you like your tea strong or weak? I seem to prefer weak, I
> usually disagree with amounts of tea recommended. This has also
> changed once I started to get some better quality leaves - they don't
> brew the same way that grocery store loose leaf tea brews. With those
> I used to brew only about 1/4 of recommended amount but with whole
> leaves I tend to brew about 1/2 amt recommended. I've also heard of
> people using a scale to weight the leaves so they get an exact amount.
> Where does one find such a scale? (It'd have to be able to weigh
> grams accurately, right?)

Strength of tea is a matter of personal taste. The tea in tea bags is
like dust. Very fine tea like that is called fannings. It gives up its
flavor very quickly. As you observe, if you brew similar weights of
fannings and whole-leaf tea for the same amount of time in the same
amount of water, the tea made with fannings will be much stronger,
because more surface area is exposed to the hot water. Rather than using
more or less tea, you might want to try varying the amount of time that
you brew the tea. Overbrewing tea can make it bitter. You may find that
you prefer a larger amount of tea brewed a shorter period of time
compared with a lesser amount of the same tea brewed for a longer period.

There has been much controversy about scales. There are two questions,
really. One is how accurate you have to be. The other is whether it is
easy to judge the right amount of tea using a spoon. As for the first
question, while some people may claim to be able to tell the difference
that a 1/10 of a gram of tea can make, that amount of accuracy may be
(probably is) overkill. Typically, brewing recommendations by weight are
about 2.25 or 2.5 grams per 6 ounces of water. (Talk about mixed
measurements!) If you are measuring normal whole-leaf tea that is not
particularly fluffy, the weight of a teaspoon's worth of tea is in or
close to that range. OTOH, CTC tea and other teas that are broken leaves
(or smaller) weight more per teaspoon. For me, scales are most useful
for fluffy teas. I'm completely at a loss when judging the right amount
of fluffy tea by eye. Using a scale I know I am in the zone and I can
get repeatable results, even if the tea has been fluffed up even more or
compacted. The scale that I use (a Tanita 1479 if memory serves) was
purchased online. It is small, easy to use, and reasonably priced.


>
> Thanks for all your help,
>
> ~sara
>
>
>

Good luck, and happy tea explorations!

Debbie

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