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Lewis Perin
 
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"Nigel" > writes:

> This is due to chemical oxidation of the green tea catechins into
> orange theaflavin - while the tea is sitting in your cup it reacts with
> oxygen dissoved in the water - same reaction as would happen to make
> black tea in a tea factory except that then it is catalysed by natural
> tea enzymes. Some green teas do this more than others: I suspect that
> using freshly drawn water also increases the rate of browning.


While I haven't noticed a color change as the cup cools, I have often
found that green tea liquor loses astringency and gains sweetness as
it cools. Could this be a catechin->theaflavin effect?

/Lew
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Lew Perin /
http://www.panix.com/~perin/babelcarp.html