The Best Tasting Cup of Tea…Seriously…
What I’ve Discovered That Allows Us to Steep The Best Tea Broth…
Ever wonder if you are getting the best tea broth possible from your leaves?...
Are you unsure how to tell if you are steeping in a way to ensure you get the best result from the leaves without getting too much too soon?
If so, you are far from alone…Many tea drinkers don’t realize they are doing an injustice to the tea they are steeping, or they don’t realize that small adjustments in their steeping process could bring more pleasure in the cup…even possibly open the range of teas they would enjoy and benefit from with just a simple tweak or two to their steeping process.
Even those who have considerable experience steeping tea can be surprised by what a valuable steeping tip can do for their process, yielding the best tea in their cup.
We are programmed to think there are defined ways to steep different teas. For example, you are supposed to steep Black Tea with one teaspoon of leaves for 3 minutes, using Boiling Water…right? Not exactly. Just within the category of Black Tea alone, there is a gigantic range of teas that benefit from having their steeping conditions tailored to the ingredients within them, the place they were grown, and the process by which they were processed into steepable tea, to get the best tea result possible.
Read Bai et al. (2023): The types of brewing water affect tea infusion flavor by changing the tea mineral dissolution...
There are two important types of ingredients in tea...
1) Readily Available & Desirable (More) Water-Soluble ingredients...
2) Less Available & Undesirable (Less) Water-Soluble ingredients…
It matters because for each individual tea, the process by which it was created determines the best means of extracting its goodness. As complicated as that sounds, it is quite simple…
The key to the best tea is to extract the Readily Available & Desirable Water-Soluble ingredients you desire…
While allowing the Less Readily Available (Non)-Water-Soluble Ingredients (solid leaf & stem parts) to remain in the water for as little time as possible.
So, what should one do to get the best tea?...
For each tea that is new to you, intentionally under-steep your first infusion. Observe the broth color and taste the tea. Consider how you feel about that first infusion, and decide if and how you might adjust the experience to find the best tea steeping routine for you.
Using the broth color as a gauge point, re-steep to your desired color, and not by any particular steeping time.
Over the next several infusions of that tea, adjust your steeping period based on the broth color, striving for the Sweet Spot Color you have now determined gives the best tea result for you.
Typically, what you will find when you follow this process is that while you are enjoying your first cup, the desirable water-soluble ingredients you want for your ideal cup character are becoming more available for extraction into your broth. The instant the hot water hits the damp leaves, they burst into the broth, giving you instant color.
Quickly remove the leaves from the broth to avoid overly concentrated desirable ingredients and keep almost all the undesirable ingredients from infusing into your broth, resulting in the best tea possible.
Using a clear vessel to steep your tealeaves is important because it allows you to easily monitor the ingredient extraction into the broth and adjust the steeping period based on the strength of the leaves, using the shade or tint of the tea broth as a guide.
This technique keeps the less desirable stems and solid leaf pieces from tainting the broth and yields the best tea results cup after cup.
Whichever tea type is the best in your opinion, or if you enjoy them all, extracting the desirable ingredients into the broth and avoiding over-steeping will allow you to extract what you want from the leaves and minimize any less-desirable, tainting ingredients.
Remember, we are all different and like what we like. That means as individuals, we want our tea...something we love, to be just so.
Finding the Sweet Spot that is right for you is something you can do for each tea in your tea rotation. You will find that the Sweet Spot color becomes something more; It becomes part of the identity of the tea, which is part of the tea's Character.
If you are interested in getting the most from your money, and in this case, the best tea you spent your hard-earned money on, buy quality teas and get every bit of goodness from the leaves by managing your steeping effectively.
Extracting just the right amount of ingredient from the leaves to your preference for each infusion, based on the broth, color allows us to zero in on the best tea cup for us, and take a giant step toward understanding the character of tea.
Broth color is one of many characteristics that lead us to understanding & appreciating our tea more...and therefore getting more value for our tea dollar.
Now…on to the best cup of tea…