I am pretty much a novice tea brewer. I just started a few months ago and have myself a bag of looseleaf green tea.
Does tap water work good for tea brewing, my tap water is from a well through a reverse osmosis machine and then to the refrigerator.
What is a good but not complicated method of brewing tea, my friend says just to get this thing from Starbucks where you just put the looseleaf in and then brew then the thing presses the looseleaf down to the bottom, does this work good? And what is this type of device called?
Are there any random little things to add to green tea sometimes that make better variety, I've heard people saying milk, sugar, and cream, how do these taste when put into green tea?
I use tap water and don't notice an odd taste. I guess if it works for you, then it's a good thing.
Put two or three teaspoons of tea into a teapot, pour in water, steep, strain into cups. I have a teapot with a filter basket, so I don't need to bother with the last step. The water should be boiling for black tea, off the boil for oolong/jasmine/herbal, and way off the boil for green. I generally steep according to leaf size. The finest cuts, like a breakfast tea, get about thirty seconds. A big leaf gets five minutes. A tisane (herbal) gets as much as ten minutes.
French Press. They work well if you're serving everything in it immediately. If not, the tea will sit in there and oversteep.
My mom grew up drinking green tea with milk and sugar. I've had it. It's not bad, but it's kind of thin. Cream is too heavy for tea (in my experience). It works better in coffee.
If you want some variety, (may lightning strike me down), you may want to try adding some juice. I've found that good green tea tastes like apricots. They sell apricot juice, don't they?
Varies. RO and refrigeration are both good for it. You want something with an essentially neutral ph (right around 7), and i've seen potable water vary from 6.0 to 8.5, as determined with test strips intended for aquarium maintenance.
Hardness counts too. I, uh, forget how that scale works, or what i found was ideal. If your hardness is mainly calcium then the hardness increases in lock step with the ph, typically. If it's magnesium . . . . oh hell ask a chemist, I'm in software.
Water that is too soft and too acidic will brew up tea that is more bitter. Water that is too hard will brew up tea that is weak and leaves mineral crud in your brewing and drinking vessels.
The correct term is a Melior type pot. Your friend may be referring to either a 'french press' type coffee maker (which will work, but it's best not to apply pressure to the leaves), or to the 16oz Bodum Assam tea pot that Starbucks is known to sell, which has a melior type infuser assembly.
Some here will deride the Bodum designs, but my 16oz spherical bodum pot works pretty well for me. The advantage of the design is that you can isolate the leaf from the tea and prevent oversteeping without having to transfer the tea into another pot.
The truth is there are pros and cons to any infusing method, and glass vs. ceramic body and plastic vs. glass vs. mesh vs. any infuser are religious arguments that will never be settled to anyone's satisfaction.
Milk in green tea isn't generally recommended, though, any japanese restaurant can serve you green tea ice cream, and it's pretty good stuff.
Cream in tea of any kind isn't typically done, it's too heavy.
A lot of people like to add a little sugar to tea. I'm one of them.
Honey is also popular in green tea, and plum juice (which contains a ton of fructose) can be good too.
In tibet, they sometimes put salt and rancid yak butter in it.
I guess it depends on your taste. If the water tastes good to you by itself then it's a good start. If you want to experiment though, pick up a couple of different bottled waters (the ones in glass or clear plastic, not the cloudy plastic which leaves a taste...I ahve heard Volvic, Arrowhead and Danno are good) and see if you can tell the difference, other things begin equal.
I am not sure if the Starbucks thing is the same as what I have, I have a Bodum Assam (pic here
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) that does that but I don't use it for greens. I prefer to brew my greens either in a gaiwan (pic here for instance
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) or a clear glass teapot or jar or what I have on hand so I can see the leaves and the color of the tea, it adds aesthetic pleasure for me. I even use a plain water glass on occasion. And lately I've been using my Pyrex measuring cup, very handy.
You can put whatever suits your taste into green tea...I add peppermint to my green gunpowder tea (but not to my "good" green teas...I don't put anything into them) but I imagine you could put some ginger in or what have you. Some tea vendors will put rosebuds or jasmine etc. in. Depending on how you like the taste of straight green tea, milk kills the flavor that's inherent in the brewed liquid itself, I feel. If I were to want to add sweetener to mine, I would add honey but that's just my thought. I do think that for the average perosn who's not used to green tea straight it takes a little getting used to, but it quenches thirst really well, especially when it's cold.
Most important points for green teas: low temps (165-170 or lower) and short to medium steep times (depending on the temp of the water). One can get more than one steep out of a good green, I routinely get 4-6 out of mine depending on what I'm brewing. If the temp is too high it gives you spinach. :)
I use anything from a pint jelly jar to a coffee carafe (NEVER used for coffee) and recently I found a Bodum assam pot without the press part for $2 at the Goodwill, yay!!
You're welcome, let us know how it goes for you. :)
Really nice spring water might add something,might add something, foul-tasting tap (and I've tasted that) would undoubtedly detract. I run my brewing water through a Brita pitcher and that cleans tap water nicely enough. I reckon your reverse osmosis machine should serve well enough for brewing a good cup.
The press method works well enough, but there is a danger of stewing a certain amount of the leaf and introducing an amount of bitterness if you do multiple infusions. I would personally look for fine mesh infusion baskets either to fit my brewing vessel of preference, either mug or pot. There are countless sources of pots equiped with fine-mesh infusion baskets and any number of sources of mug-sized infusion baskets. In a pinch, a paper-cone coffee-filter sunk into a pot or cup will provide adequate room for the leaves to expand and give up their good flavors and then filter out the unwelcome bits.
My morning eye-opener of black tea has a dose of both milk and sugar, habits left over from years spent stationed in England. Green tea, even Oolong tea....they have a subtle natural sweetness to them as long as you don't over-steep them. They have a lot to offer on their own. Milk and sugar have significantly stronger flavors....it's really easy to lose the flavor of the tea you're paying for under the over-tones of the sugar and milk.
Depends on your tap water. My water at home is fine, while the water at work has a huge amount of dissolved iron in it, and makes tea taste funny.
Try brewing tea with the tap water and some bottled spring water. If you can't tell the difference, don't worry about it.
This is called a French press, and I'm not a fan of it. If you want a convenient and easy way to brew loose tea without a lot of work and without a lot of leaves in your cup, the fine plastic infusers are a good choice. A number of companies sell them... I think our local supermarket has some from the Republic of Tea, but I bought mine from Upton's. These are fine mesh screen cups that fit neatly inside a mug.
I think these are all horrible things to do to a good green tea. Mint leaves and sugar, maybe. But not cream and milk. But again, try it and see if you like it. I think it sounds nasty, but that's me.
I'd agree wholeheartedly if it's black tea. However, with green and other teas, if one starts with water that's not as hot as usual, there isn't the need to serve everything immediately as experienced by the users of the Fuguang thermal traveler and myself with my glass mug and straw because our leaves aren't ever separated from the brew.
Ah, now there's a thought...why don't I provide a link to the Fuguang tea traveler?
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