Is it true that a batch of tea leaves can be reused (re-steeped) at least once?
I use a Chatsford teapot. I put the loose leaves in, add boiling water, set the timer, then pour it through a strainer into a cup or thermos.
To make a second steep, can I just dump the leaves back into the pot and go again? I just tried that with a batch of Earl Grey. The second steep was slightly weaker than the first, but still fairly good.
Is the second steep the same time as the first? Perhaps I should have steeped it a bit longer the second time.
Is the second steep likely to be bitter? This one wasn't. It was actually a bit milder on both the taste scale as well as the bitterness scale. Everyone keep saying that steeping too long causes the tea to be bitter. How come two 3-minutes steeps are not bitter but one 6-minute steep is?
If you use a Chatsford, why don't you use the basket? Then you could just lift the leaves out.
Some teas will stand a second steep, some won't. In general, oolongs and greens and pu ers will give you a nice second steep, but black teas won't. Of course, you may like the way your Earl Grey comes out on a second steep where other people wouldn't. But then you come up against the one abolute rule about making tea: If you like the results, you're doing it right.
I used to use the basket, but the leaves seemed all bunched up. Now they seem free to float around better. I have a great little strainer and it is actually a little easier than using the basket.
it's true leaves can circulate better without the strainer, but I defy anyone to be able to tell the difference in a cup of tea from one that had the strainer to one that didn't by taste alone. I think the concept of "cramping" the tea is a little overwrought.
OK, but where do you draw the line? I also doubt that most people could tell the difference from a cup of tea brewed with a tea bag vs the basket give the same amount of the exact same tea.
My main point was that I find the strainer easier to use than the basket.
So, is it OK with you if I continue to use the strainer even if I can't tell the difference in the taste? Or even if I just think that the leaves are less cramped? ;-)
So much to say, so few actual facts, so much mythology unshakably installed in uninquiring minds... Here are two propositions that may be useful (or not):
Reciprocity. In an arithmetically linear system, twice the (x) for half the (y) gives the same (z). Twice the wattage added to a fixed mass of water for half the time gives the same rise in temperature. And it doesn't matter how fast, or in what order, or what kind.
The only problem is that nothing in real life is linear. Not only is arithmetic commutativity rare, but there is often a strong history dependence. For one small example, that second steep is generally made on a pot and contents at higher temperature than the first. And extraction of some components probably rises rapidly with temperature, while others may actually decline. (Yes, inverse temperature coefficient of solubility really happens. It usually results from entropy-driven changes in structure and/or hydration.) It is most improbable that one long steep at any chosen temperature will produce the same results as even a mix of sequential steeps, much less any one of them individually.
My attitude is that if one enjoys the blend effect, then go for it. Many of us prefer to attend and appreciate the sequence of (often dramatic) changes that occur through four to twenty steeps of tea that was made for this. (I.e., almost anything but dust/fannings and CTC reds that are bruised to put the juice within easy reach.) It means more involvement, which can be soothing ritual, amusing experimentation or a big inconvenience. No judgment; just choice. When I want a jolt, it's red tea and milk, one long and very hot steep every time. For enjoying the tea, much lower temperatures and rarely fewer than 8~10 small steeps.
Flavor masking, balancing and other non-scaling experiential factors. If life is non-linear generally, sensory systems are much more so. Lots of things saturate or change significantly in perceived qualities at high concentrations. Hydrogen sulfide is famously dangerous because, already much more toxic than cyanide, it numbs the nose below the danger threshold. Durian, conversely, is pretty vile even to most of us aficionados. But at nasal saturation, it's not much worse than at lower levels, and the wonderful flavor takes over.
Not having seen (or sought) any scientific publications on the subject, I wouldn't know for sure. But my personal experience is consistently that many notes in tea reach saturation quickly, while others scale monotonically. So where short, repeated steeps of some oolongs and green Pu-erhs come out sweet, fragrant and smooth, slightly longer ones are bitter, tannic, harsh. One might infer that the "nice" notes saturate while the "nasty" ones just keep building. Good argument for gong-fu brewing.
There is a great deal more one could say about both of these points. But who cares, other than for idle curiosity or sententious argument? Why not just find your preferred way to make tea, and enjoy it? The main value of such understanding, even to those who have (which is far fewer than pretend to it, or have been told they have it by others who also don't) is probably to point experimentation in directions most likely to be personally fruitful.
And speaking of myth, just to raise the stakes: a cake of my best Pu-erh to anyone who can provide some convincing science to support the oft-cited "fact" that oxygen in water is critical to making good tea.
In general, non-aqueous solvent extractions of plant materials will produce a very different product. However, there are two small but significant categories of materials that often do what water can, and sometimes even better: the so-called "super-solvents" that are both highly polar and aprotic, and close homologues to water. The former include hexamethylphosphoramide, dimethylformamide and dimethylsulfoxide; the latter ammonia, hydrogen fluoride and hydrogen sulfide. The former all contain oxygen.
Please let me know when you have confirmed that NH3, HF and H2S do not make good tea, and the cake is yours. Come to think of it, better include hydrazine. (Or you can just buy one from Eric at Pu-erhtea.com; it's under $50, unlabeled but about 14 years old, and absolutely delicious. Thanks to Mike P. for letting me know about it.)
The oxygen he is referring to is dissolved oxygen, not the oxygen that is part of the water molecule. If you remove the O from H2O, you no longer have water, it's just H2 (and you better not be smoking). If you remove the dissolved oxygen (according to some) you get a flat tasteless water.
But then maybe you knew that are were just playing.
Hello, Dogma, thanks for the education. I look forward to seeing a demonstration of tea brewed with dimethyl sulfoxide or hydrogen fluoride. But for the latter, what pot? A teflon gaiwan?
I restrict my tea-related solvents to water. Given that admittedly harsh limitation, what can be done? For one thing, water's ionic properties can be altered with dissolved solids, right? Remember that Lu" Yu, in his _Classic of Tea_, condemns those who add spices, butter, and onions to tea as barbarians but demands that we add salt. No hint of how much though. Because it is added during "the first stage of boiling", and water drawn from the kettle during the second stage, it will raise the temperature of the brew. I'll let Dogma do the calculation of how much - my Handbook of Chemistry and Physics is gone.
Bold words! Presumably, you wouldn't argue that boiling the living daylights out of a pot of water (let's say five minutes of hard boiling, to reduce dissolved oxygen) will alter the taste of subsequent tea brewed using it, in comparison with brewing once the water just reaches the temperature appropriate for your leaves? Definitely worth taking the taste challenge with, methinks!
Most importantly, small differences in temperature near boiling can produce a large difference in taste, especially given the usual step-drop transferring from hot kettle to cooler pot. So the comparison only makes sense if both tests are done at the boil, one immediately and one after extended boiling - or after cooling the long-boiled water to the same "appropriate" temperature as the other sample.
Secondly, extended boiling does a lot more than remove dissolved oxygen. By forcing equilibria per Le Chatelier's principle, it enhances the dissociation of carbonates. With CO2 gone, divalent salts that strongly affect flavor tend to fall out of solution. The importance of this is easy to demonstrate.
Finally, there's the putative oxygen effect. A better test for this one would be to degas samples of nice brewing water by nitrogen sparging, then recharge one with oxygen. This is not a completely trivial experiment, requiring careful scrubbing of compressor oil and other contaminants from both gases among other precautions.
Establishing meaningful controls that can help to isolate a small target effect amid much larger noise signals is a key element in doing meaningful research, and one very poorly understood (if even acknowledged) by the lay public in all sorts of contexts.
It's very interesting to read your description, and I must confess that I hadn't considered the other components of the equation, taking "oxygen content" as a common shorthand. It is of course plausible that determining the effect on brew-taste of changing just the dissolved oxygen content of the water suffers from a poor signal-to-noise ratio. However, if this is the real point of the challenge-question ("...provide some convincing science to support the oft-cited "fact" that oxygen in water is critical to making good tea"), then it is not a little specious in its wording, one must concede.
Given that excessive boiling results in several chemical alterations occuring simultaneously, no tea drinker could probably claim to be truly concerned about the effect of changing just one of them - because changing just one of them doesn't happen in the course of conventional brewing. That is, *if* the chemical alterations are truly coupled and are inseparable given the utensils and environment of the common tea-house. In this case, it is not relevant to be interested in the effect of variation of just one of these obfuscated variables - from the point of view of tasting brewed tea, and is thus specious to question "oxygen in water".
I'll be honest:
...it sounds as if a reader, who has invested some of their time in understanding the physical process of water's chemical content, has come across people discussing "dissolved oxygen" and wants to make the point that it is a variable obfuscated by others. This is fair. However, rather than stating this fact, the reader prefers to the spectacle of offering his "best puerh", and saving the fact for later.
I'm fine with that, but it does seem a little tedious (and fairly ostentatious).
You do contribute some excellent information, for which I thank you, but it's dressed up in the language of pedantry, for which I cannot thank you.
Keep up the good work, but do please consider a more congenial approach. If each of us were similarly ostentatious about our fields, it wouldn't be much of a fun group, would it?
There's been a lot of discussion and even a successful book recently on the topic of BS as a social phenomenon. Harry G. Frankfurt asserts that BS is much more damaging to society than outright lying. The liar, it is pointed out, needs a deep regard for and understanding of truth in order to craft his deceptions. The BSer simply doesn't care, hence diluting the underlying value of truth to the whole culture.
A lot of tea mythology is useful, whether or not correct. A lot is fun to have and to share, whether or not correct. Some of it actually interferes with most people's ability to enjoy tea to the fullest. Injunctions that include words like must - always - never and other universal quantifiers are rarely defensible in practice, beyond deliberately stylized ritual. Aside from significant inconsistency between and even within some rule sets, the failure to allow for personal preference and variations in all of the ingredients of tea enjoyment make this kind of compulsive orthodoxy as much an annoyance as a support beyond professional circles and the like.
The BS factor really comes to the fore when people start making assertions about things like how water *must* be handled, brewing temperature rules, and other matters of operational significance. The whole "oxygen" thing may be true; I've just never seen supportive evidence. Slinging jargon like that lends an unearned air (so to speak) of technical competence, hence credibility, that serves the speaker's ego at cost to the listener's own insight. Beyond the social costs of such empty posturing, the displacement of real knowledge or honest ignorance with cant and empty formalism interferes in important ways with learning. For example, focusing on dissolved gases can distract attention from mineral content and other factors that are not, in fact, tightly coupled to oxygen content. One could identify a dozen other common examples relating to tea varietals, purchasing, storage, handling, use in combination with foods, health effects good and bad, etc.
Concedo nulli, especially if the assertion is incomprehensible. The real point of the "challenge question" was twofold: to aim critical thinking at claims that are probably untrue and the quality of thinking and discourse that gives rise to them; and also to elicit evidence if any exists, or at least a higher level of inquiry on this oft-encountered topic.
For "results" substitute "may, in some common circumstances, result" or an equivalent formulation.
, no tea drinker could probably claim to be
No tea drinker? And it does; that's a key point. Where I live, the concentration of divalent carbonates in water is nil, so boiling doesn't matter much. Extensive reboiling of water makes no difference to tea taste that I can detect (except when chlorine or organics happen to be running high). When I've lived in chalky parts of the UK, the effect was dramatic. However, I'll stand by the assertion that even there, the main effect of overboiling is to deposit more lime scale in the kettle.
I might comment if I could parse the foregoing paragraph. Is this the current state of Oxford English?
Thank you for the diluted approbation. It makes my otherwise dreary day. More to the point, you might want to consider the distinction between pedantry for the sake of social hierarchy and precision for the sake of clarity. If you can render my OP without the technical language in less than double its tedious length without losing meaning, I will be grateful for the writing lesson. I tried pretty hard to offer information at several levels, including search terms for people who actually want to understand and even experiment with this sort of thing and qualitative descriptions for the less scientifically inclined.
Ignoring the implied value judgment on ostentation (seen any beams lately?), it's the diversity of posting styles, content, background and predilections that makes this place fun. Hobbes, I'd urge you to killfile any poster whose ostentation offends, certainly including this one.
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