Also, can't miss a chance to spice things up with the mention of adding salt to brewed tea[1]. Which is heretical, but seems palatable to me, though I probably wouldn't do it to good tea.
George Orwell's 11 rules of tea making
https://www.orwellfoundation.com/the-orwell-foundation/orwel...
These are some of the worst tea-making tip I've ever seen. I get that taste is subjective and all, but come on... This is like saying:
"Al Pastor street taco in Mexico has its virtues - it is economical, and one can eat it without salsa - but there is not much stimulation in it. One does not feel wiser, braver or more optimistic after eating it. Anyone who has used that comforting phrase 'a great taco' invariably means Taco Bells"
CTC tea [1] is inferior in quality. They are mass-produced, brews quick, and tastes way too strong (hence the milk). Tea was invented in China and tea culture goes back thousands of years. India and Sri Lanka only started producing tea in the mid 1800s. Robert Fortune literally dressed up as a Chinese merchant, snuck into some rural village in Fujian, and smuggled some teas back so the British East India Company can cultivate it in and around India.
If I remember correctly, he actually wrote that essay because there was a world event that his compatriots were getting outraged about, and this was his way of being provocative by not covering it. But I may have that wrong.
Gong Fu brewing method has "worse" ratio but on purpose, a good oolong is marvelous. So is a good Pu'Er or green tea.
Essentially the hot water need to be boiling hot (100 degree celcius) and leave it brewing for a minimum 4 minutes after pouring into a cup of tea.
From personal experiences, if you want to make good chai masala (or spicy milk tea) you need to keep it in boiling water for considerable amount of time (like cooking on stove), with the ingredient of tea (generous amount), equivalent amount of evaporated and sweetened condensed milk (like half can of milk for medium pot), together with combination of your preferred different spices for examples cinnamon (Sri Lanka cinnamon not the fake ones), jeera, clove, star anise, etc. Since the condensed milk is already sweetened, no need to put sugar, but you can add pure honey for extra wonderful aftertaste.
In UAE, karak chai is their national drink that are sold in most of the restaurants and eateries. Fun facts, and heaven knows for whatever reason the default tea brand being used there is always Lipton.
[1] How you've been making tea WRONG your entire life - BBC:
Yep, cool. That’s a recipe. For one type of preparation. With one type of bean. And one style of roast.
The ignorance of global tea culture in the west, including Britain, is very cringe.
For proper tea, you should probably look at Asian sources.
My god, this thread has really brought out the virtue-signalling Anglophile snobs en masse!
There are no "fake" cinnamons. Three different species of the genus Cinnamomum are harvested, with slightly varying qualities and market values.
It's not like when Americans buy "Mexican saffron". That is open fraud, because Mexican "saffron" is neither related genetically (it is a thistle, not a crocus), nor in taste (it is essentially a food dye).
I have a hard time buying into a prescriptive tea-making procedure. For example, you can heat up your temperature to boiling, but by the time you pour it, it will likely be down to the low to mid 90s.
There’s other factors such as the material of the mugs (which might be more or less conductive of temperature) and the delta between the water and air temps. The composition of the tea itself will also vary year-to-year and you have no idea of the vintage of the Lipton/Tetley tea bag dust stock you’re buying.
tl;dr Strict procedure = placebo
> The quantity of caffeine that infuses into a tea brew is determined by infusion time and by leaf style. Longer infusion times lead to greater quantities of caffeine in a tea beverage. Smaller sized tea leaves give a more rapid and stronger infusion, whereas larger leaves and uncut leaves lead to weaker infusions. This results in more or less caffeine extraction, respectively. The caffeine content of a typical tea beverage will range from 20 to 70 mg per 170 ml of infusion, with a typical infusion being prepared from about 2 to 2.5 g of tea leaves. Coffee brews typically contain from 40 to 155 mg caffeine per 170 ml beverage. There has been little research done on the pharmacology of tea-beverage caffeine. One study suggests a dose of caffeine from tea has a different physiological effect than a pure dose of caffeine (Das et al., 1965). This has been attributed to the amino acid theanine, which is unique to tea. However, there are no well-designed clinical studies to support this position. The consensus among scientists today is that caffeine from all beverage sources has a similar physiological effect. The actual content of caffeine depends on many factors, particularly the method of brewing. A brew prepared by the Chinese "gong-fu" style is likely to have a different caffeine impact compared with the Western style of loose tea or to that from a tea bag (Hicks et al., 1996). Some reports have suggested that green tea contains significantly less caffeine than black tea. This may be influenced by the clone of leaf used to produce the tea or by the impact of different brewing techniques. No significant differences have been found when brewing green and black teas under similar conditions (Hicks et al., 1996), discrediting the theory that withering and fermentation have a significant impact on caffeine content (Sanderson, 1972).
Want to avoid dissolving the more bitter flavor components? Steep at a lower temperature. Solubility curves are quasi-exponential with temperature, and a reduction from 95 to 85 C can spread out the time before tannins are strongly dissolved. You could get the exact same flavor at 95, perhaps, if you used a stopwatch. But objectively, the tea will get much more bitter a few seconds later. Objective lesson: to allow for ease in steeping timing, use a lower temperature. It's especially true for green teas, which (objectively) have more bittering compounds than fermented teas.
But: many Chinese people enjoy their green teas at a saturation (color) that I would call barely-not-water. Many Brits enjoy black breakfast teas brewed to levels I would only use to dye cloth. Plenty of subjectivity.
