[HN Gopher] Will boiling water ruin green tea? ___________________________________________________________________ Will boiling water ruin green tea? Author : tmtvl Score : 44 points Date : 2023-04-21 19:01 UTC (3 hours ago) (HTM) web link (www.myjapanesegreentea.com) (TXT) w3m dump (www.myjapanesegreentea.com) | johnea wrote: | HN DDoS'd... | colordrops wrote: | As I get older I notice my senses get less refined and weaker, | especially smell and taste, and especially after a couple covid | infections. This on top off constant distraction and stress makes | it nearly impossible for me to taste any subtlety in things like | coffee and tea and wine. To be frank I'm jealous of these people | that can dedicate all this time and passion to various techniques | and flavors. | kayodelycaon wrote: | From experience, if it's not a passion or priority, it helps | externalize the decision process. Have a friend (or online | service) who does the research for you. Then you buy the | minimum equipment (a temperature controlled kettle and a | strainer) and a few teas. When you get time, brew them to the | instructions. If you have some free time, you can start it with | a cup of tea. | | There no need to get massively invested. | | This is how I learned to paint minis. All I did was buy some | unpainted ones and drop by a friend's place. He has all of the | supplies and equipment. All of my unpainted minis are in his | closet. :) | | Edit: By having a friend, I mean if you have a friend who is | into tea/coffee/wine/etc. I enjoy hanging out with people who | have hobbies I wouldn't pick up on my own. | andix wrote: | It will make it taste bad (bitter). It's similar to overcooked | pasta. Not ruined, but not good either. | kayodelycaon wrote: | All teas have "optimal" temperatures and brew times. A lot of | green teas do not work well being boiled into bitter | disappointment. Before I had to give up caffeine, I recall | Gunpowder green tea being less tricky to get right. :) | fatfingerd wrote: | I don't think their analysis about caffeine is correct and | doesn't cite sources. I've seen a lower temperature for a longer | time more often being ideal for maximizing caffeine vs other | components in pubmed research on teas, I.e.: | | https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/21339166/ | | If one does a lower temperature for a longer time it is often | also equivalent to boiling for a very short time a.f.a pathogens. | I think the relative bitterness is probably higher for higher | temperature brews after normalizing on caffeine. | cinbun8 wrote: | I sorta knew this from experience, that high temperature would | make the tea bitter. But why is this on HN? | triyambakam wrote: | Wouldn't you have this reaction to at minimum 50% of all HN | submissions? | kwhitefoot wrote: | Because coders drink tea? | politelemon wrote: | Coders like <T> | pacaro wrote: | Except for the Marxist coders who only drink herbal infusions | | Because proper tea is theft | mudita wrote: | Are you familiar with the Hacker News Guidelines | (https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)? | | "What to Submit | | On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. | That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to | reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that | gratifies one's intellectual curiosity." | sva_ wrote: | Sadly, boiling water will absolutely ruin matcha. But I'm too | hooked. | drooopy wrote: | I can confirm. Matcha tastes like crap when made with boiling | water. | FartyMcFarter wrote: | If you like it so much, it's probably worth buying a kettle | with temperature control. | sva_ wrote: | Oh I don't need it, I have an eye for it. | | I meant that the matcha powder probably has pollutants which | might get decreased by boiling it, as the article suggests, | but that would ruin the flavor. | taraparo wrote: | the german tea expert Ernst Janssen recommends to also use | boiling water to prepare green tea as most of the teas are | contaminated with germs and other things. different green tea | brands including organic tea brands were tested by the renowned | German test.de magazine and they confirmed that, also most of | organic teas are contaminated. and since this is nothing you can | easily check at home, better use boiling water. | | https://www.ernst-janssen.com/tee-almanach | https://www.n-tv.de/ratgeber/Stiftung-Warentest-bewertet-gru... | zokier wrote: | That seems paranoid considering that I have never heard anyone | getting food poisoning from tea, no matter how it was brewed. | | edit: Reading the linked article, it seems mostly concerned | about contaminants and not germs. Intuitively thinking, I'd | imagine higher temps would end up extracting more of those from | leaves to the drink than lower temps? | taraparo wrote: | > I'd imagine higher temps would end up extracting more of | those from leaves to the drink than lower temps? | | that is actually an interesting aspect. | StrangeATractor wrote: | Yeah it seems so dried out you wouldn't have too much to | worry about. | | As for boiling tea for sanitation, I took a wilderness first | responder class and they taught us that you could bring water | to a boil at any altitude a human can breath at (without | holding it at a boil for 15 minutes as some claim) and it's | considered sterilized. In Cusco, that would be around | 191F/89C (humans can breathe quite a bit higher up than | Cusco). Not a bad tea-brewing temp! | | Also, I suggest trying kukicha. It's high in l-theanine and | lower in caffeine. Tasty too. | nijave wrote: | I think it's a halflife/timing thing. Once it hits boiling, | it's instance death for most microbials. | | You can keep it a lot lower for longer but it's also | potentially difficult to tell the temperature (easier to | say, bubbles? It's hot enough) | brianwawok wrote: | > Yeah it seems so dried out you wouldn't have too much to | worry about. | | How about the people touching / sneezing on it in the | packaging factory? | elif wrote: | If you source your green tea from a Japanese tea farm, | this is really not a concern. Farm workers all wear | gloves and masks, and the tea leaves are harvested | directly from the tea bushes to a net via a machine. | | Additionally, the tea plants are covered by cloth for up | to a month before harvest, dramatically reducing the | chances of bird droppings. | | They are also steamed, rolled, and dried by mechanical | devices which remove virtually all moisture. | nijave wrote: | Not sure about most things transferred via touch/sneeze | but I imagine lack of moisture would cause anything | living to die fairly quickly. | morsch wrote: | The germ thing seems to go back to this 2005 press release by | the BfR, which does indeed urge people to use boiling water | to kill Salmonella particularly when preparing herbal tea. It | doesn't cite any known cases or numbers: https://mobil.bfr.bu | nd.de/de/presse/presseinformationen/2005... | | Searching further, there were a couple of cases of Salmonella | in infants in 2003 that were traced to fennel anise tea. The | timing fits. I couldn't find anything more recent, but I | didn't look very hard. | | https://www.ernaehrungs- | umschau.de/news/16-07-2003-salmonell... | | Here's more data from government sources. They tested tea and | herbal tea in 2008, and found traces of Salmonella or E.coli | in 2-3% of prosecute products, and mold in 20%. Doesn't | differentiate between herbal and real tea. | | https://www.lgl.bayern.de/lebensmittel/warengruppen/wc_47_te. | .. | | I'm not worried. But then I usually use boiling water, or | almost boiling water, which should be enough to kill micro | organisms. And I'm sure I get more mold toxins from various | other food sources without noticing it, cereals, nuts, | processed foods etc. Tea is a dilution, after all. | stametseater wrote: | All foodstuffs are contaminated with germs, unless you go to | extraordinary effort to prevent it (e.g. intense gamma | radiation.) Unless there is some particular reason to care | (you're a hospital feeding people who had their bone marrow | nuked by cancer/chemo), then the correct solution is to stop | caring. Who ever heard of people dropping dead because they | brewed their tea with sub-boiling water? This isn't happening, | it's not something you should worry about. | Vecr wrote: | Do they really use gamma, or just electron beams like in a TV | tube? | thfuran wrote: | People mostly get by fine without boiling their salads but | they do occasionally get e coli or something. | taraparo wrote: | they even found salmonella in tea. to kill them one would | need to heat the tea constantly above 70 degree Celsius over | a period of ten minutes. | punnerud wrote: | 71degC for 1/2min to kill salmonella, instantly with 74. | | 10min is around 64degC. | | Remember that the cup often cool down the water 10-15 | degrees. So the water should not be under 90degC from the | boiler to be safe. | LargoLasskhyfv wrote: | Dreck reinigt den Magen. Stellt Euch nicht so an, Ihr | Weicheier! | prophesi wrote: | There's a lot of factors to it. The way the leaves are processed, | the quality/freshness of the leaves, ratio of leaf to water, | steeping time. | | I think in general it's safest to brew green teas at 175f. But | I'm doing quick gongfu brewing sessions with a late-march sichuan | green tea, and it tastes great at 205f. Less intense at the usual | 175f, but picks up more subtle flavors. | triyambakam wrote: | I appreciate the connoisseur vernacular | prophesi wrote: | Becoming a tea snob helped me stay away from alcohol during | quarantine :/ | InitialLastName wrote: | Becoming a whiskey snob just made me wish I could abide | cigar smoking. | tmtvl wrote: | TL;DR no, but it will make it bitter and astringent because more | caffeine and catechins will be extracted. | PuppyTailWags wrote: | It depends on the green, though. Good-quality green tea from | China can often withstand higher temperatures or long brewing, | to the point where it's normal to just pinch some tea in a mug | and refill with hot water throughout the day. | archagon wrote: | IIRC, Chinese green tea is a completely different beast from | Japanese green tea like sencha. | zokier wrote: | I wouldn't say it is matter of quality; or rather lot of | high-quality teas can still be quite sensitive to high temps. | Gyokuros mentioned in the article are good example | PuppyTailWags wrote: | Please re-read my post that I said _from China_ | specifically. Gyokuro, a green tea primarily of japanese | make and style, does not apply to what I said. I 'm | thinking of gan lu or mao jian style teas. | dima55 wrote: | The article this thread is commenting on is about | Japanese green tea, hence the confusion. | olivermarks wrote: | I drink ridiculous amounts of English Breakfast tea with 1% milk | every day. The water HAS to be boiling when it hits the tea. You | cn really tell the difference if the water is less than boiling. | Same but more subtle with green tea imo | dima55 wrote: | Do you actually drink not-bottom-of-the-barrel sencha? If not, | your experience is not applicable, respectfully. With even | middle-of-the-road sencha the difference is far from subtle. | olivermarks wrote: | I always thought Sencha was different to green tea, steamed | leaves, more subtle? | galangalalgol wrote: | 15% of people don't taste bitterness in the same way. Hops | taste floral and a bit sweet to me and I like to chew on | Artemisia species my family finds hideously bitter. I could | put cheap gunpowder green tea in a percolator for an hour and | it wouldn't taste bitter to me. Perhaps the gp has the same | trait? | Avshalom wrote: | I took the simple precaution of moving a mile above sea level. | calebm wrote: | Yes. I've tried it - makes it obviously more bitter. ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2023-04-21 23:00 UTC)