Making Tea

[mishalak]

At work I have a two cup/½-liter pyrex measuring cup. Each day when I make tea I fill it up to the ½-liter mark with merely hot water. Then I put it in the microwave for two minutes thirty seconds. This produces full boiling water; boiling as in when disturbed by the addition of the tealeaves it will actually foam and bubble vigorously enough to actually spill over the side if I add them right away. I then let them steep for three minutes, more or less, and strain through fine wire mesh into another cup. This seems to produce better results than most other methods I have tried. I think putting in the wire basket directly lowers the temperature of the water reaching the tealeaves too much. Perhaps I am wrong about that and the reason it comes out slightly bitter when doing it with the tea basket directly is because fine bits of tea leaves are more apt to escape in soaking than in careful straining.

And now with a cup of tea slowly cooling to a drinkable temperature I will return to printing out bills and doing payrolls.

Comments

[bovil.livejournal.com]

If you stick a bamboo skewer in the cup while it's nuking, it won't superheat without boiling. This is a good thing, and will give you better tea. Having the water actually boil when you drop in the leaves isn't a good thing.

Straining after is a good thing, it gives the leaves more room to move in the hot water. The flavors extract better, and the leaves aren't compressed by their weight or an enclosing object.

[mishalak.livejournal.com]

I do not know about the not boiling the tea leaves thing. I've seen so many contrary opinions and I've yet to come across evidence, a blind taste test of the different techniques for example, that was utterly convincing. Maybe I'll do that next weekend.