Water temperature for tea
Boil and wait before pouring, or pour right away?
What's the ideal water temperature for tea steeping? I know some people pour water fresh from a just-boiled kettle into their tea pot, over their tea bags or tea ball. But I've read in other places that it's best to let the water sit a bit after boiling, before starting to brew your tea. Which is better? What's the ideal water temperature for tea?
Also, is it better to brew the tea in a tea ball? A drip filter? Or some other way?
Answer from Green Energy Efficient Homes
There's some debate as to the ideal water temperature for black tea. My brother is a hard core tea drinker and has reached the point where he carefully educates servers at restaurants on the proper way to make black tea, which in his view is that the water needs to be brought to a full boil and immediately poured into the teapot. He argues that without this boiling, the water is not hot enough to steep out all the aromatic oils that give the tea its wonderful flavor.
You just have to try brewing a cup of Earl Grey tea with tepid water to realize that the water temperature for tea is a little hotter than most restaurant water heaters provide. At my workplace there is a kitchenette with a coffee making machine that also has a hot water spout, and when I make Earl Grey using the machine's hot water, it never really tastes like Earl Grey. In fact it doesn't even taste much like tea - more like brewed grass - because not only the oil of Bergamot (which gives Earl Grey its distinct citrus flavor) but all the aromatic oils of the tea itself, stay in the tea leaves instead of being sweated out into the water.
But other purists argue that the best water temperature for tea is slightly less than boiling - closer to 195F (90C, or 10C below boiling). One thing to bear in mind here is that if you pour boiling water into a room-temperature teapot, the temperature will instantly drop well below the boiling point because the sides of the teapot will soak up some of the water's heat. That means a 195F water temperature for tea probably means boiling water in the kettle.
More delicate teas require a lower temperature. For green tea the recommended temperature is 175F or 80C, while for white tea 185F or 85C is suggested.
Herbal infusions (called herbal teas but don't actually contain tea leaves) should be steeped at 200F or 93C.
How do you manage to get the precise temperature you're supposed to use for each particular type of tea? If you're a purist and want to get it just right, then you can buy an energy saving kettle that has the required settings on it. For example, the Zojirushi kettle pictuered at right, and the less pricy but still highly praised Cuisinart CPK-17 PerfecTemp kettle
For hand-brewed coffee, you should strive for a temperature of 195F to 205F (90-95C). This is one reason why coffee made in drip coffee makers often has a bit of a burnt taste - the water has to boil in order for drops of it to be pushed up into the filter area. When you make coffee in a French press - or a Central American coffee sock, as I did for a year when I lived in Costa Rica - you can use water at a slightly lower temperature and it achieves a more mellow, balanced flavor than what comes out of a Mr Coffee.
For brewing loose tea, you have several options for how to hold the tea leaves. A tea ball is one option but I find them tedious to work with. The cheapest kind are made from two pieces of stainless steel that join at the center, so that when the tea ball is closed it has the shape and size of an egg. I have gone through several of these and given up on them; the problem is that they either don't stay shut properly (if they are held shut by just a small bump on one side that clips into the other) or they're impossible to get apart (the most recent case - the two halves screwed together, but it took tremendous effort to unscrew them). A better tea ball is made of wire mesh with a swivel clip to hold the two hemispheres together.
But even better is a tea brewing basket, which you place in the teapot, then dump the leaves in over top. The basket typically has a lid which you place overtop while the brewing takes place; when you're done, you invert the lid on the counter, remove the basket, and place it on the lid, so any water left in the tea leaves drains onto the lid instead of all over your counter. You can buy these brewing baskets in teapot or cup size. I have the smaller size and use it for both a mug of tea and an entire pot.
The other alternative is to pour the tea leaves into the pot directly, then top with hot water. Once the tea is brewed, pour out the spout while holding a strainer above the tea cup. The only drawback is that eventually the tea leaves are liable to clog up the spout of the teapot.
Don't forget to experiment. Just because someone tells you the ideal water temperature for tea doesn't mean it's ideal for you. Try different temperatures. I've tried everything from fresh off the boil to letting it sit for ten minutes before steeping, and I can't say I notice much difference in the taste.
I remember hearing, when I was in university, that black tea with milk tastes better if the tea is poured onto the milk and not the other way around. The fellow that insisted on this let himself be subjected to a taste test; we poured two cups while he wasn't watching, and asked him to identify which one was better. He identified the one where the tea was poured first as tasting better, in spite of his earlier assertions. Nobody else could tell the difference either.
Return from Water temperature for tea to the Home energy efficiency questions page or to the Green Energy Efficient Homes site home page.
© Green Energy Efficient Homes Inc. 2011 Privacy policy | Disclaimers
