Size Does Matter

Teapot-wise, that is.

Think about it. The more water you put into a pot, the hotter it will stay. A smaller amount of water will cool faster, even if you warm the pot first. This will affect the way that the tea brews when you put it into the pot. Even if a tea is meant to be brewed with water that has just come to a full boil, it is not meant to be kept at that temperature but to cool gradually as it steeps. This is why it is not recommended to place a tea cosy over your teapot while the leaves are still in there; the tea will stew.

I also think it is why some teas do not taste as good when brewed in a larger pot (much as I love my 6-8 cup London Pottery teapot, seen here coyly wearing its tea-cosy [tea-leaf free], it is better suited to herbal and robust black teas rather than anything more delicate).

Sometimes even brewing a two-cup pot rather than a single-cup pot can make a difference; I feel that the delicious Keemun from SanTion tastes better only brewed a single cup at a time, for example. Have you had a similar experience with the teas that you drink?

A Little Chemistry with your Cup?

I'm not a particularly scientifically-minded person, but I was fascinated to read this simple introduction to some of the chemistry that affects the way tea tastes. I came across it thanks to a re-tweet by Nigel Melican (@teacraftecm on Twitter), who is a fount of knowledge of all things tea-related and definitely one of the go-to people for tea-myth-busting and accurate information.

Tea is a complex thing. In fact, given all the variables associated with the manufacture of different kinds of tea, it is actually many, many complex things. One thing I've learned to appreciate, especially where complex things are involved, is that it really DOES make a difference if you know WHY - even the most simplified version of why - a particular action has a given effect. For example: cold-brewing green tea over a longer period is more likely to produce a sweeter cup. Why? Because caffeine is extracted at higher temperatures, and caffeine is a bitter-tasting component of tea. Ah. Now I understand.

But reader beware: a little knowledge can be a dangerous thing. According to the 'Gourmet Tea' article, spring-picked (ie. early season) leaf is lower in catechins, the potent antioxidants in tea, than summer leaves. So does this mean that white teas, made from leaves picked in the early spring, are actually not the richest tea source of antioxidants (despite being heavily marketed as such)?? Hmm. Now I'm confused...

King Hsuan Oolong by JustMake Taiwan Tea

I bought a sample of this tea (and a couple of others) from the Serenity Teahouse in Box Hill a few weeks ago. I heard about the place from fellow-Melbournite Eric of Tea Finely Brewed; aside from the teas which they carry, Serenity Teahouse has a great range of gaiwans, Yixing and gong-fu tea wares, all of which are difficult to come by in Melbourne, so I'm very glad to have found somewhere that stocks them, and at what appear to be reasonable prices as well.

I found time this morning (between feeding Pippin, doing laundry and eating breakfast) to try the King Hsuan sample. On the packet the tea is described thus:

King Hsuan, also named Formosa Tea No. Twelve, is one of the revolutionary new varieties of tea plants formulated in 1981. It has become famous for its uniquely smooth, sweet, fragrant flavor married with a traditional refreshing aroma. Semi-fermented and unscented, King Hsuan draws an extraordinarily refreshing flavor. It is a masterful integration of modern cultivation and nature.

The aroma of the tightly-rolled, light green leaves was sweet and fruity. I decided to use the whole sample (ten grams) in my small Beehouse teapot, about 300ml of water. There were no particular brewing guidelines that I could access on the site itself, so this was basically a guess. Following a brief rinse of the leaves, I steeped them in water just off the boil for approximately a minute (possibly a little more; I missed the timer).

This was possibly a mistake. The brewed tea was a lovely bright straw colour, with a wonderful spicy aroma, a touch of cinnamon to it - but the tea was really quite bitter, and tasted nothing like it smelt. It wasn't undrinkable, and after a little while a nice sweetness came through on the aftertaste, but it certainly was not what I was expecting.

Water too hot? Steeping too long? Could have been either or both these things, I guess - or perhaps this is actually what the tea is meant to taste like? To keep things relatively simple I decided to do the second and third infusions at the same temperature - just off boiling - but for shorter amounts of time.

A second infusion of 30 seconds yielded a tea with a fruitier, less spicy aroma, and some fruity flavour with minimal bitterness or astringency, but not a particularly strong tasting brew overall. Third infusion at 45 seconds retained the fruity aroma but the taste was also overall quite bland.

Being out of time by this point, I did a fourth infusion with cold water, sticking the pot in the fridge for about 6 hours while I was out and about, and came home to find that this was the best of the lot; a sweeter, more complex tea with fruit and spice.

Hmm. So I reckon I pretty royally stuffed this one up, a humbling experience. I'll have to go back and get another sample of the King Hsuan at some point and try again. I am such a novice with oolongs; many of them smell and taste extremely alike to me (I've been working my way through a number of samples from Tea From Taiwan as well) and I was actually quite excited to find that I could detect spicy notes, rather than just flowery/fruity ones, in the King Hsuan. Lots more to learn and look forward to!

Experimenting

It is downright freezing in my house today despite being the middle of October , so I am happy to be experimenting with some new tea blends (using as a base the Sri Lankan green that I wrote about here) and drinking lots of hot tea.

This photo was taken in Daylesford about 6 weeks ago, but the weather's not much different today!

As I have discovered over the last six months or so it is not actually that simple to create green tea blends using only natural herbs and spices (as opposed to flavourings/essences, whether natural or artificial in origin). This is primarily because of the different brewing temperatures and times of the different components: green teas generally yield the best results from short steeps at a lower temperature (around 80 Celsius), but herbs and spices need higher temperatures and longer steeping times to release their flavours properly. So it's not as easy to create a really lovely tasting green tea blend as it is to create a black one where the temperature and time factors are more similar.

My first trial batch this morning is a Moroccan mint-type blend (using dried herbs obviously, instead of fresh ones as I did the other day) of green tea, peppermint and spearmint. In the interest of scientific curiosity (and not freezing to death) I decided to try brewing two separate pots, one with water straight off the boil (yes, I know... I shuddered merely thinking about it but I did it anyway; that's just how intrepid I am) and another with water cooled for 3 minutes or so to about 75-80 Celsius. Unfortunately I don't have two teapots of exactly the same type and dimensions, but I did my best to keep the proportions of tea and water the same - 2 rounded metric teaspoons to about 400ml water, steeped for about 2 minutes.

Both teas were quite tasty (I think at least partly owing to the fact that the mints are powerfully flavoured in their own right and so probably relatively well-suited to brewing at different temperatures) but I preferred the one brewed at the cooler temperature. I'm hoping this isn't just my innate prejudice regarding the 'proper' way to brew tea; I really did try to keep an open mind and was even sort of hoping that the boiling water one might turn out better. But it had a strange kind of metallic taste to it that wasn't present in the other... not very pleasant. So once I get this blend up in my shop I will definitely be recommending that it be brewed with cooler water.

Temperature, continued

Just a brief update on my experiments with temperature… Over the weekend I decided to boil some water on the stove in a saucepan (not having a stovetop kettle) to make tea with and see what the temperature came to that way – because at least I could then see that the water was boiling, rather than just rely on the electric kettle to turn itself off at the right time.

When I placed the thermometer in the rapidly boiling and bubbling water, it promptly registered 95°C… so clearly I think there must be some issues with the electric kettle, because I don’t see how the water could cool down by twenty degrees while I pour it into a teapot or jug.

Still, I will conduct more experiments as time goes on, and I think I will also be boiling my water on the stovetop more often over the next little while… Might be time to invest in one of those non-electric stovetop kettles, perhaps? A glass one would be cool, if I could find such a thing…

Temperature

The temperature of the water you use to make tea is all-important, particularly for the more delicate green and white teas (black ones and herbals are more robust so can withstand boiling water). Too hot and the tea will swiftly become bitter and astringent, too cool and the leaves won’t release their flavour and colour properly, particularly if they are tightly twisted or rolled varieties like jasmine pearls, for example.

I’m not generally too fussed about measuring temperature exactly; usually what I do is bring my water to a full boil in the kettle and then decant it into something else, like a jug or my glass teapot, to cool. Sometimes (if I’m feeling adventurous) I will pour it from cup to cup a few times - this has the advantage of cooling it more quickly and also warms the cup or mug I’ll be drinking from, but the disadvantage of making it slightly more likely that I will scald myself. I think I might have read somewhere also that this method ‘aerates’ the water, restoring some of the oxygen that got lost in the boiling process, but who knows whether this is actually the case – certainly not me! Could well be one of those urban tea legends…

So I don’t normally resort to using a thermometer to determine when my water has reached the right temperature for the tea I’m brewing. However, last night I decided to brew up a new green tea that I had waiting in the cupboard (more about the tea itself in another post) and thought I would take the scientific approach instead of the slapdash haphazard one.

I was surprised, when I poured out the amount of freshly-boiled water (just under a metric cup) and then placed the thermometer in it a few seconds later, that the temperature that registered was only about 75°C* (that’s about 170°F for all you imperial readers out there). I didn’t think that the water would cool that much in the short interval – space- and time-wise - between the kettle and the jug. I placed a second thermometer in the water and it registered only up to about 60°C while the other was still on about 70°C.

So I am rather confused. Is my kettle not actually reaching boiling point? Is one of the thermometers wrong, or are they both inaccurate? Does a relatively small volume of water cool much more rapidly than I would have expected?

More experiments will have to be conducted, and more tea drunk. Mmm… need more data.


* serendipitously, this was just about the exact temperature of water that I needed for this tea.