Best way to brew tea (long and detailed)

Cafe Society
1

I was watching a TV show the other day about this Japanese coffee shop, with vintage fittings, a very large old espresso machine, different types of tampers for the espresso depending on what kind of drink was going to be made (regular espresso vs. cappuccino, for example), precise timing of the brewing, and so on. Everything was just so, and apparently it did make some difference, as everyone said the coffee drinks were wonderful.

So I got to thinking about tea (take it as given that we are talking loose tea here, teabags are the work of Satan; well, maybe Beelzebub, or one of the lesser demons). I don’t drink coffee, tea is my hot beverage of choice, but I don’t seem to be able to tell that much difference between different ways of brewing. Here are the ways I am familiar with:

  1. Tea pot. Pre-heat the pot with hot water from the kettle (then empty it out), spoon in the right amount of tea, add the right amount of hot water, brew for the right amount of time, serve. Have a tea strainer for when you are pouring into the cup (unless you like to read - and drink - tea leaves). Have a tea cozy to keep the pot warm between cups.

  2. French press. Put tea in the bottom, fill with hot water, put top on, press down when brewing is mostly done (it will continue to brew a little more through the mesh). Serve. No tea strainer should be necessary. If you can find a tea cozy to fit that might be nice, but French presses tend to be smaller anyway so maybe there wouldn’t be time for it to get cold.

  3. A steeper like this. Put in the tea, add the hot water, and when the tea is brewed to the desired strength, set the bottom on another vessel (like a tea pot) and the valve at the bottom is activated and lets the tea, sans leaves, into the pot. Can then be kept warm with a tea cozy if necessary; no tea strainer required. There are also smaller one-cup sizes.

  4. Electric tea maker like this. Water goes in pot, tea goes in tea basket. Water is heated to desired (adjustable) temperature, tea basket is automatically lowered into water for desired (adjustable) time, then raised out of the water. Tea is kept hot by the electrical element that originally heated the water.

  5. Individual cup infusers or tea balls. Makes one cup of tea at a time.

I presume most traditionalists (and is there another kind of tea drinker?) would go with #1, the tea pot. I find them messy and difficult to clean. French presses are ok but either too small (I like to make a lot of tea for myself) or the tea gets cold too fast.

I used a #3 at work for a long time, because we weren’t allowed to have electrical appliances at our desks. It worked pretty well and was pretty easy to clean. Tea was allowed to move freely in the water while it was brewing, which I understand is best. However, being made of mostly plastic they didn’t last very well and I went through 3 or 4 of them in 5 years or so.

I now have #4 at home. Pricy, but very very convenient, and consistent. The tea is contained in the basket rather than floating free, which may be a disadvantage. But you can adjust time and temperature easily for different types of tea, which is supposed to be good especially for white or green teas. Most people would probably blanch at the price (BB&B let me use one of their 20% off coupons so I got mine for $200) but I use it all the time, I’ve probably brewed 300 pots and it’s as good as new. Easy to clean, since all the tea is contained in the basket.

So any tea brewing connoisseurs out there? What is your preferred method (and have I left any out)?

2

I don’t generally make a teapot unless I’m making tea for more than just myself, I use the #3 method above with a 1-cup sized tea-thing. I like it a lot, and it’s less work to clean out than a ball strainer which always makes me swear.

The first thing I did was to buy an electric kettle. Most Americans don’t own one, but this is an oversight. Both Husband and Roommate have commented on how useful it is for non-tea-related things. I even bought a spare (cheap) one for the office that I keep in the break room.

3

I only drink one cup at a time so use an infuser basket - simple (and with a small electric kettle to boil the water, very fast) and clean up is nothing more than dumping the leaves and giving the basket a quick rinse.

4

Teapot, and I largely follow Orwell’s method, except I seldom bother to warm the pot.

More important than the method are the leaves themselves. Personally I’m a big fan of Dilmah.

ETA: I never clean the inside of the pot either, just dump the leaves out when I’m finished.

5

1 and 5 aren’t mutually exclusive. You can occasionally find tea balls that are more appropriately sized for the pot. My mom has one.

6

I either boil a normal pot on the stove or use the microwave. Then I pour it into a cup with a tea bag in it. (If I had loose tea, I’d probably use a tea ball. But I rarely see loose tea.)

Well, for hot tea. Iced tea is made by putting a pretty big bag in the normal pot, with some water. You wait for it to almost boil, then shut it off. Then pour it in a tea pitcher and add water, then remove the tea bag. Sweetener is added at some point in the process, then the tea is refrigerated.

7

lisiate beat me to Orwell’s method, so…

  1. Move to the desert.
  2. Fill a one-gallon glass container (we used apple juice bottles) with water.
  3. Put in three tea bags.
  4. Put the top on.
  5. Set it in the sun until it’s done.
  6. Chill or ice, and serve.
8

Not only did lisiate beat me to posting Orwell’s essay, but Johnny L.A. beat me to the “I got beaten” post! I’ve got to be quicker with the keyboard. Anyway, I follow a modernized version of Orwell’s rules - I have an electric tea kettle (not the kind described in the OP - it’s just a kettle that boils water, it doesn’t make the actual tea), so I pour the boiling water straight into the mug. I steep it for a while, usually preserve the teabag as it can make a lot more than one cup, then add milk (no sugar). For more than one person, a French press works well.

9

From the OP:

Teabags may be a necessary evil if real tea is unavailable, but real tea is so much more satisfying.

10

This might be a mortal sin, but I’ve tried both loose tea and tea bags (I’ve never used whole tea leaves, though I want to), and I find the differences negligible if both are high quality. Then again, I still have a soft spot for Kraft mac and cheese, so my palate isn’t exactly refined.

11

I’m kinda with Octarine here: I’ve tried the whole intense ritual…and I can’t find any appreciable difference. Now, I just use a nice sping-opening tea ball, and the result is great.

Also, I usually don’t want to drink an entire pot of tea. One mug is what I need. The rest would just go cold.

I also brew iced-tea the lazy way: never bring it to a boil at all, just put tea in cold water and put it in the fridge to chill. The result is weak, but still refreshing.

Sometimes, I think people ritualize their affairs needlessly, and that a double-blind experiment would demolish the fantasy. But, then again, I may be suffering from a fallacious folly of my own, i.e., “If I can’t tell the difference, then you can’t tell the difference either.”

Bon appetit!

12

I find the needless ritual itself satisfying. While I don’t go to whole tea ceremony lengths, the preparation of the pot, the anticipation while waiting for the tea to steep and pouring the cups (we both have tea in the morning, sadly my wife insists on adulterating it with sugar) are all part of the enjoyment.

Oh and I can definitely tell the difference, if only because there are leaves in my cup…

13

Put loose tea in Finum tea basket, put basket in mug, turn on electric kettle.
Pour boiling water over tea into the mug. Steep.

Drink delicious tea.

Put basket of leaves back in the mug, pour still-warm water over the leaves into the mug and steep again.

Drink delicious tea.

Repeat until kettle runs dry or tea loses flavor (3-5 steepings).

14

There was this guy named Eric Blair who really knew how to brew a great cup of tea. Let me Google his famous essay on the subject.

15

Here’s the Orwell…

And here’s Douglas Adams…

And…here’s the BBC.

lisiate: Good point about tea-leaves in the cup. Even the tea-ball method doesn’t totally eliminate these, although the tea-bag method does.

The Keurig system machines also do a halfway decent cup of tea, from a cartridge filled with some kind of concentrate. Yeah, it’s hyper-processed…but it isn’t bad.

16

A Finum basket does - really, it’s the perfect solution for those who make a cup at a time (and as aktep said, if you want more you can just reuse the leaves.)

17

I forgot about the Keurig method in my list. I had one of those (actually it’s still sitting around, although it doesn’t work any more) and while convenient I didn’t find the black tea strong enough, nor were there enough varieties to please me (I can’t stand Earl Gray, for example). It was useful for night-time cups of herbal tea, though. As I said, convenient but a very expensive cuppa.

I wasn’t so interested in what the experts said over the years as I was in what methods you folks use, and whether you could tell the difference between being just so or being casually slapdash about how you make it.

lisiate, I will acknowledge that there are better quality tea bags that make acceptable tea, but the ones I have seen are way too expensive for the tiny amount of tea you get. That’s as far as I’m willing to go on that subject.

18

I only break out the English style teapot when I’m sharing, as it’s a large pot. It’s Japanese ceramic, cobalt blue, with a ceramic infuser insert. I consider it an acceptable compromise to the cleanup. The holes in the infuser are large and numerous enough that the tea infuses acceptably to me, and still need a strainer over the cup when pouring. But to clean I just pull out and dump/rinse the infuser, then only need to swish out the pot.

When it’s just me I have a smaller French press that works nicely. I really love my stovetop kettle, I prefer it over electric, as my stove is gas and I like a nice big flame under my pretty yellow kettle. The teamaker linked in the OP looks awesome, but I would never spend the $$ on one.

That’s at home. At work I’m not enough of a snob or taste stickler to bother with more than nice quality bagged tea. 16 ounce mug, usually two teas - a green plus either a fruit or peppermint, and a small quart sized electric kettle. Fill the mug 3/4 full, steep, and sip until it cools, then heat what’s left in the kettle and add to the cup, sip until it cools, repeat until water’s gone. That usually gets me through a shift.

19

Most of the time here it’s just a teabag straight into a mug. If I’m making tea for more than myself, I have a teapot with an infuser insert into which I put the tea

20

I use three methods: tea bags for tea that comes in them (and there is some very good bagged tea), an infuser (I use disposable ones) and the Teavana Perfect Tea Maker, if I want to be bothered with cleaning up afterwards. I’ve never noticed any difference.

Of course, I use good good quality tea – I avoid Lipton’s and the like.