Besides being the aroma of life, tea is also very healthy. Although, the last one could be mistaken easily. It is the most healthy when it is prepared properly! White tea and green tea are famous for their healthiness. But also black tea, oolong tea and other kinds could have important benefits.
I want to discuss the most important stage of brewing tea: water.
While the kind of tea we brew mainly determines the experience, it only adds its extract to water. Which makes water the main ingredient of tea. Up until the point that tea enters water, the water needs some proper preparations.
We will take a view on the following aspects:
- Water quality, most important aspects to be taken into account being hardness and the acidity of water
- Boiling water, most important aspects to be taken into account being boiling time and boiled time of water
- Steeping, the process focusing on temperature, can material and tea proportion
As a student in water management, which also specializes in drinking water engineering, I really enjoy to apply my knowledge in practical tea brewing advices. Feel free to ask anything or to contribute with your own knowledge and experiences with tea, and follow me for future blogposts regarding tea culture!
Let’s proceed with water quality.
Photo: Fortnum & Mason tea cup, instyle.co.uk
Despite different aspects that determine the quality of water, when it comes to brewing tea, two main parameters are important to take into account: hardness and acidity (pH).
Hardness is defined by the limestone content in water. This has an important influence in the taste of the water. Hard water is mainly encountered in tap water. Mineral water is a good alternative, which contains remarkably lower concentrations.
The pH-value however, is desired to be high. Since higher pH-values have more health benefits. The usual pH-value of the human body is 7-7.2. So a pH-value above this range should work perfectly. Just keep in mind that a pH-value higher than 9.5 might be risky.
When you use bottled water, it most certainly shows on the package the contents of the water. Magnesium (Mg) and Calcium (Ca) concentrations are also contributing aspects when it comes to water hardness. These concentrations should not be too high, meaning roughly 50 mg/L for Magnesium and 100 mg/L Calcium concentration maximum. (However for good coffee, high concentrations of Magnesium are proved to work beneficial, contact for further explanation)
The quality of tap water is strongly dependent of the country you live. Mostly tap water have high pH-values, but one should not forget that a high hardness also contributes to a higher pH-value. Which makes tap water perfectly good for its acidity but the taste would be less.
Besides the water quality, the boiling of the water is another important subject.
Once we have the right kind of water we prefer to use for preparing our tea, the next step is bringing water to boiling. There are two main steps when it comes to boiling water: the boiling time and the boiled time.
The boiling time is the time it takes for water to boil. This process should take its time since the dissolved oxygen content in water, as well as important minerals, needs to be preserved. First of all, it is important that the starting temperature is room temperature. Try to avoid previously heated water or mixing cold water with boiled water.
If you use tap water, it is wise to not use the warm water coming from the tap. It is also not good to use a water boiler since the heat addition is too large at once, it will affect the water quality very strongly
Using a stove, whether it is electrical or gas, is a good option. It should take roughly 15 to 20 minutes to boil one liter (6 tea cups) of water.
Furthermore, the boiled time of the water is also an important aspect. Water has several properties which change rapidly when it is brought into boiling. The most important is the dissolved oxygen content in the water. Once water starts boiling, the dissolved oxygen content (contributing strongly to the taste and healthiness of the tea) decreases rapidly.
I suggest the right directions of the boiled time are:
- Water is ‘boiling’ when the gas bubbles have a diameter of one finger thickness;
- From this moment on, the water should boil for maximum of ten seconds, after this point the water should be removed immediately from the heat source.
When these details are taken into account, the water quality is preserved quite good.
And finally, the steeping process of the tea, is also an essential piece of knowledge in preparation of tea. After having picked the right water and boiled this in a proper way, the fermentation process takes place. Although the right method for this part is strongly dependent on the type of tea one uses, I will explain aspects which are applicable for the vast majority of tea kinds.
First of all, after the water is boiled, the water has to cool down. Dependent on the kind of tea you’re brewing, different periods of time need to pass. Water has a boiling temperature of 100 degrees (Celsius), but this temperature will burn your tea, resulting in unsuccessful brewing process. For black tea, one should wait until it drops below 90 degrees at least. For some white tea brands, it is even advised to wait until water cools down to 70 degrees.
However, warming up the water until the desired temperature without first boiling it is not preferable. Some bacteria’s and microorganisms need to be removed before brewing tea, which happens near boiling point.
Also to be noted: when one pours water into another can or in a glass after boiling it, dependent on the size and volume, water cools down faster than it would in the initial can, which causes for some cases that the desired temperature is reached immediately.
This brings us to the next aspect to discuss: the can material. The material wherein the tea is being brewed has remarkable effects on the color and aroma of the brewed tea.
The materials which contribute strongly for this instance are cupper and porcelain. The bright and shiny color of the tea and its characteristic aroma are justified with these materials. However, using glass or aluminum are easier to find and to maintain, and are also good for tea fermentation.
When using tea kinds where the fermentation time is typically linger than 5 minutes, Turkish tea for example, the material properties have a stronger influence. Using cupper or porcelain are more important in this case.
After this point, it requires more and more specific descriptions for different kinds of tea. I will write about specific teas in my future blog series. As for now, the blog series for ‘brewing good tea’ as a general introduction of my tea world are ended with this part. Feel free to ask anything or to contribute with your own knowledge and experiences with tea, and follow me for future blogposts regarding tea culture!
