How to make a perfect cup of tea
Tea brewing is slightly scientific but if you follow the basic times and tea making protocol described below you will brew correct and tasty tea every time. Speaking of time, this is very important when brewing. The following steps must be followed to make a perfect cup of tea:
1. Always start with spring water or distilled water (ideally spring), and make sure it's fresh and cool. Bring the water to a full, rolling boil in a stainless steel kettle, and then remove the kettle from heat immediately, as water that is allowed to boil too long loses the oxygen gas dissolved in it and can cause your tea to taste rather flat.
2. When using loose tea depending on the tea type measure applicable number of teaspoons of loose tea for each teacup of water (about 250 ml) and place it into the teapot. A good rule of thumb is to use "one teaspoon of tea for each person and an extra one for the teapot," but you can tweak this depending on your tastes.
- Oolong and green teas - one teaspoon for one cup.
- Black tea - a heaping teaspoon for a cup.
3. When you pour the water over your loose tea in a teapot or a mug, make sure the pot/mug is preheated. Pouring hot water into a cold pot/mug drastically lowers the water's temperature in the first few seconds and could affect the predictability of the steeping time for your tea as well as the quality of the flavors that get steeped out. The easiest way to preheat the pot/mug is to pour a bit of your heated water into the pot/mug and rinse it on all sides, discarding the water once you're done. THEN you can put in your tea, and finally, the water. Different tea types require different temperature:
- Greens/White: 50-70 C
- Oolong/Scented Oolongs: 80-90 C
- Blacks: 95 C
4. It is very important to note that if the tea you're making has WHOLE tea leaves in it as opposed to tea leaves that have been CUT, the steeping times will vary. Cut leaves release their essences more quickly and completely than do whole leaves, and therefore require much shorter steeping times than teas that use whole leaves. Not surprisingly, water temperature should be higher when one pours the water over whole leaves than when one pours them over cut leaves, as the higher temperature will facilitate a quicker release of the essences from the whole leaves.
- Greens/White: 3-7 min
- Oolong/Scented Oolongs: 5-6 min
- Blacks: 4-6 min
- Flavored tea: 3 min
- Tea like drinks: 4-6 min
5. When making iced tea, you should use more tea in proportion to the water to make it stronger (it's important that you don't necessarily steep the tea longer to make it stronger, which could increase the bitterness in some teas - just use more tea in the water instead), since it's harder to detect the fragrances and flavors of many teas when they're cold and not steaming with warm vapor. Make the tea at double strength if you're going to pour it over ice cubes of plain water; alternatively, if you freeze some tea in ice cube trays in advance, you can use those cubes instead when you're having your iced tea and you wouldn't have to increase the strength of the tea so much.
Never reuse tea leaves that have already been infused and which have sat out over night. Bacteria grow on the nutrient rich leaves if not handled properly.
The key to good tea is to drink it in light batches more frequently. High quality tea will always yield a delicious flavor with short infusion times.
Cheers, happy tea sojourning!
