Holy shit, tea.

[Soln]

Lianka and I have a staggering amount of tea. So I've been thinking about a special kettle for awhile, but need a BPA water cooler in terms of priorities first.  And I need to read the thread.

Derp: BPA free cooler.

[CmdrSlack]

This thread now has legs.

Since there is no watch and learn emoticon in the library, I will go with this: 

I already employ digital thermometers for home brewing. If an IR thermometer can help me with loads of other temping tasks AND help me perfect the boiling water w/ ice method, then so be it.

Any other tea prep methods are merely useful R&D for my own fun/slaking of thirst.

[Trippy]

Lianka and I have a staggering amount of tea. So I've been thinking about a special kettle for awhile, but need a BPA water cooler in terms of priorities first.  And I need to read the thread.

Do you mean BPA free?

[MisterNoisy]

I'm a bit more manual.

For tea, I use a french Press and a 2 cup Pyrex measuring cup in the microwave to heat the water.  With a $20 infrared thermometer from Newegg and a bit of trial and error, I've discovered that 2c of water hits the correct temperature for green teas in 2:45 in my microwave, while making coffee with the AeroPress or the french press requires 3:10.  Added bonus is that the IR thermometer is handy for all sorts of things.

Ha, geek.  That's an awesomely nerdy way to make drinks.  You just need to find some way to involve some beakers and glass tubes.

I'll take that as the highest of compliments.  The funny thing is that both coffee and tea are faster and easier for me since I switched to my low-tech(French press/AeroPress + microwave) methods.  the AeroPress in particular has made it so that I can have fairly amazing coffee with no more than 5 mins total brew/cleanup time and the only waste being a paper towel and a highly compressed puck of pressed out coffee in the trash.

I admit that my coffee ritual also involves a $30 Costco burr grinder my brother got me a few Christmases ago.  :)  What I love most about my brewing setup is that the tools are either useful for other things or at least fit in a drawer and thus don't take up a ton of (very scarce) counter space.

If anyone wants to try out the AeroPress, you may want to pick up the Coava steel disk filter, since it frees you from any recurring expense and lets the oils in your beans pass freely.

[Draegan]

I'm a bit more manual.

For tea, I use a french Press and a 2 cup Pyrex measuring cup in the microwave to heat the water.  With a $20 infrared thermometer from Newegg and a bit of trial and error, I've discovered that 2c of water hits the correct temperature for green teas in 2:45 in my microwave, while making coffee with the AeroPress or the french press requires 3:10.  Added bonus is that the IR thermometer is handy for all sorts of things.

So you think you're better than me?

[Kitsune]

I'll take that as the highest of compliments. 

It was definitely a compliment.  Anything involving pyrex and infrared sensors gets bonus points in my book!  I loved chemistry and it shows in the kitchen in how much precision I strive for when mixing drinks or baking.  One of my roommates laughed at me once for reading a measuring cup like a graduated cylinder to make sure I was adding the right amount of water to a cake mix and I was all, "No fuck you, this is BAKING.  It is SCIENCE.  This isn't your wishy-washy Emeril bam! bullshit where you just throw whatever into a bowl and call it a day.  These proportions exist in the recipe for a goddamned reason."

[Jobu]

I am a complete and utter coffee snob, but my wife is equally attuned to tea. A good place/brand I would recommend looking into is Mariage Freres. She imports a few ounces once in awhile and it is fantastic. Incredibly fragrant, and the leaves are whole and fresh, not all crushed and dusty like some other "fine" teas she has tried in the past. Sometimes you see it at places like Williams Sonoma, but importing it from their website you get a huge list of choices and it seems fresher (according to her). As for Teavana, I found they have a very good green tea. It smells and tastes like a bag of fresh lawn mower clippings, if you are into that kind of green tea. When steeped it almost looks like Mountain Dew it's so green.

[Mosesandstick]

English tea.

It really should be milk before water. Water doesn't need to be that hot to start curdling milk.

[lamaros]

When I went to india the fancy hotels had tea timers: three small hourglass timers of different length, for your different types of tea and preference.

Also microwaves are evil, why the hell would you heat water that way?

[apocrypha]

Wow. America is weird.

Boil kettle. Put teabag in mug. Pour boiling water on from kettle. Stir. Remove teabag, throw it in the compost bin (they compost great). Add milk. I probably drink 3-6 cups a day.

If you wanna get fancy you can use jug-filtered water and/or use fancy teabags. Twinings English Breakfast were nice but a couple of a years ago they changed something about them and they got really, really weak. We use Yorkshire Gold, lovely strong, brick-red tea.

I had no idea that having a kettle was a rarity in the US!

[MisterNoisy]

Also microwaves are evil, why the hell would you heat water that way?

Because it's fast, 100% repeatable (as long as the volume of water remains the same each time) and free - it came with the apartment.  :)

[Lantyssa]

This thread reminded me of an internet classic: Rip it, Dip it, Sip it!  (Warning, language not work safe.)

[Jimbo]

We took a group of scouts from Germany @ our AFB, to a camp near Sheffield, England, wow we stayed near the smaller town North of Sheffield and the local food and tea and beer/cider was incredible.  I wish I could brew some of how you all did, plus fresh food is awesome.  I'm not big on hot tea that is sweet or creamy, but the way you all had different types was great!.  I imagine that making a good strong tea is a fine line like making strong coffee, you want flavor and richness, not burnt and over saturated from too much beans/leaves.

[Selby]

I imagine that making a good strong tea is a fine line like making strong coffee, you want flavor and richness, not burnt and over saturated from too much beans/leaves.

It really is.  Some restaurants that serve tea really botch it in how burnt they make it.  It's strong, but MAN does it taste bad.  My ex was a tea expert and she used a French press and a nice kettle and all sorts of exotic types of tea, they always came out great.

[Teleku]

Also microwaves are evil, why the hell would you heat water that way?

Does boiling water in a microwave really make the water taste different than heated on a stove?

[taolurker]

No boiling water in the microwave can cause the water to get too hot, and can not only cause issues with cooking or steeping tea, but can also be explosive.

Microwave cooking can ruin food because it over cooks, and water itself can become volatile if over-hot and you add sugar, cold liquid or other things to it. Tea is temperature sensitive so microwave water is something you have to get the timing perfect for a measure to become a specific degree, but as MisterNoisy said easily repeatable.

[Sheepherder]

Only distilled water has volatility problems.

[taolurker]

Only distilled water has volatility problems.

Nope not only distilled water, any water. Depends on conditions, and also exaggeratedly over cooking, but yes it can happen with any water, any microwave, and is possible as a science experiement. The FDA even has a warning about it.

[Kitsune]

I've never experimented, but the fact that water heated on a heating element is going crazy bubbly and water heated in a microwave is doing absolutely nothing makes it easy for me to believe that the non-microwaved water is better oxygenated.  And not in the stupid new agey 'the molecules are specially aligned' pseudoscience way, but in the sense that water that's been splashed around tastes better than water that's been sitting still.  If you put the microwave water into a thermos and gave it a good shake you'd probably get the same end result as the water you brought to a rolling boil on a stove.

[Mosesandstick]

The term for what happens when water is heated without boiling it is superheating. I doubt how you heat water affects it's oxygen content, when you microwave a substance you don't agitate the molecules, making it more difficult to change phase.

This is also why you should be careful when adding any powdered drink to microwaved water.

[Ingmar]

Also microwaves are evil, why the hell would you heat water that way?

Does boiling water in a microwave really make the water taste different than heated on a stove?

Only if the container isn't impervious to being microwaved - a ceramic mug or something should produce no difference at all.

[Furiously]

We took a group of scouts from Germany @ our AFB, to a camp near Sheffield, England, wow we stayed near the smaller town North of Sheffield and the local food and tea and beer/cider was incredible.  I wish I could brew some of how you all did, plus fresh food is awesome.  I'm not big on hot tea that is sweet or creamy, but the way you all had different types was great!.  I imagine that making a good strong tea is a fine line like making strong coffee, you want flavor and richness, not burnt and over saturated from too much beans/leaves.

Had some lamb in England a few years back. Was discussing how delicious it was with the tavernkeep and his comment was, "we've had a few extra hundred years to work on the recipe."

[Ingmar]

Rrrrgh, don't even get me started, in most of this country lamb is considered a "weird" meat and people haven't even tried it.

[Furiously]

That's cause it tastes funky here.

[MisterNoisy]

The term for what happens when water is heated without boiling it is superheating. I doubt how you heat water affects it's oxygen content, when you microwave a substance you don't agitate the molecules, making it more difficult to change phase.

This is also why you should be careful when adding any powdered drink to microwaved water.

Alton Brown - patron saint of food geeks - covered this in an episode of Good Eats.  Basically, microwaving water too long in a vessel without sufficient nucleation sites for bubbles to form (glass, etc.) results in nowhere for the excess energy to go - as soon as you either disturb it or add something to it, it all basically boils at one time explosively.  This can be avoided by either not heating it for too long or simply adding nucleation sites prior to turning the microwave on - he suggested simply dropping a wooden chopstick into the water before nuking.

[Merusk]

Rrrrgh, don't even get me started, in most of this country lamb is considered a "weird" meat and people haven't even tried it.

Mmmmm.. Gyro.

[Sheepherder]

Nope not only distilled water, any water. Depends on conditions, and also exaggeratedly over cooking, but yes it can happen with any water, any microwave, and is possible as a science experiement. The FDA even has a warning about it.

I just did some browsing.  You're right with one caveat - distilled water is really fucking bad news because it's already been boiled once, which will tend to purge the dissolved gas from it.

[apocrypha]

Most molecular biologists will experience this regularly when making agarose gels for DNA/RNA separation. A common method of making them is to melt powdered agarose in an aqueous buffer in a conical flask in a microwave. When you take the flask out and swirl it around to mix the molten agarose in you regularly get a sudden boiling over as the layers of superheated liquid mix.

Many a newbie mol. bio. burns themselves doing this.

[Bunk]

I grew up near an English family, so for me tea was always: preheat the pot, four teabags per pot, use the cozy, milk in the cup first (never cream).
They always looked at me funny though when I wouldn't heap sugar in to it - never liked any amount of sugar in my tea or coffee.

Now, it's English Breakfast tea (leaves from a local shop) in a tea ball, use the kettle to boil the water, steep the tea in the mug, add milk.

Local sushi shop does a green tea with brown rice that tastes amazing, but oddly the tea shop had no idea what I was talking about when I asked them about it.

[Kitsune]

That tea with rice is genmaicha.  I'd be a little surprised if a tea shop didn't carry any, maybe the person working the counter just didn't know it by the description of the contents.  Try again with the tea's name and you'll probably have better luck.

[Bunk]

Cool, thanks.

[Lantyssa]

As long as the water is not superheated, all water is at 100 C if it is boiling.  Low boil or fast, it makes no difference.

Stoves can superheat water as well, it's just less common than with microwaves.  Agitation or nucleation sites as mentioned are how you avoid this.  (Anyone remember boiling sticks in chem lab?)  Plus microwaves would actually cook the tea leaves if you heat a cup of water with a bag in it.

The point?  Boil your water, then add your tea.

[Fordel]

There's another way to do it?


I'm so fucking confused by this thread. Boil Water, Add Bag, Profit? 

[Engels]

There's another way to do it?


I'm so fucking confused by this thread. Boil Water, Add Bag, Profit? 

[Furiously]

There's another way to do it?


I'm so fucking confused by this thread. Boil Water, Add Bag, Profit? 

There is this way....

http://www.enema-web.com/green_tea_enema.htm