| The
English word says it all - brew tea,
do not cook tea. Tea or coffee preparation is an art and science. China is the largest tea producer in the world and the Chinese have thousands of years of experience in preparing teas. Whether you are preparing a cup of tea for pleasure or for health, the following basics will apply the same. |
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| Water A trace amount of impurities (chlorine, salt, minerals or whatever), however small, will change the taste of tea. Good quality CLEAN water is essential to make a good tea. Ideally distilled water should be used if you are serious. The same tea should taste exactly the same regardless where you make it - the reality is you enjoyed a cup of Dragonwell tea at home, the next day you travel to a nearby town and make another cup of tea off the same can, it tastes awful ? It is the water that changes the taste. Exceptions : Some fountain or well water may contain certain minerals that actually improves the flavor of certain teas, or gives a 'different' taste that pleases you - this is a different story. In China many popular teas acquired their names not because of the teas, but the particular water property in the region that made them special. |
Heat Heard of the term 'boiling point' ? 100 degree C ? This is a misterious number created by God (or if you are not so religious, NATURE). Water boils at this temperature forever and never goes above this point under normal circumstances (pressure). This is the temperature that tea can get close to but should never reach. When you let teas boil on a stove for a minute, the flavor WILL impair, and if it is a leaf tea (c.f. flower tea), caffeine will come out from the tea. That is why we BREW tea, we pour boiling water onto the tea in a container and let it sit for some time depending on the way you like it. By doing this the water temperature begins at close to boiling point to drop slowly but never goes up; you get the flavor, the essence but not the caffeine. Exceptions : Some herbal and medicinal teas need larger temperature and time factors in order to extract the essence from the herbs/teas, then steaming or clay pot is used to 'cook' the herbs/teas for much longer time to get the stubborn essence out of the berbs. Theory : clay pot has the material which has a much poorer conductivity of heat than metal (not because the herb will react with the metal !), then the clay pot wall will create a temperature gradient which prevents the inside of the pot from actually reaching boiling point as long as there is enough water in the pot. Besides, most of the medicine herbs do not contain caffeine by nature so boiling does not bring out caffeine. |
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| Thoughts : Do you know that a cup of watery coffee from a fast food store makes you more nervous than a proper quick brew expresso ? It is because the coffee is usually made and let to sit for a long time on a hot plate, this allows the caffein to be extracted from the coffee grains - this is cooking. The cup of expresso is made from a much higher amount of coffee grains, but there is very little time in the heating process - caffeine does not have a chance to leave the grains. |
