Can you add a little bit of boiling water to a cup, let it brew, and then top up with cold water?
Thanks
Yes, you can. Once tea has been drawn in boiling water, it’s drawn. Adding cold water will dilute it, but it will not turn it back into undrawn tea.
Depending on how much tea you have in the cup (or, better, pot) you’ll probably want to add more than a “little bit” of boiling water. If you need to you can always tip some out in order to add enough cold water to dilute the tea to the degree you like.
i thought hot water is supposed to release the aromatics?
Yes. But once they’re released, they’re released.
Good Lord! You may be on to something there – as a summertime drink! Think of the marketing possibilities! We could call it “Cold Tea” - no, wait, that doesn’t sound *refreshing *enough. Should sound even colder than “cold.”
I’ve got it! Iced Tea! We’ll make a mint! Maybe add some sugar or honey and call it “Sweet Tea!”
Let me pop on off to the patent office before you get there.
(What “benefits” are we talking about? Is this some more of the propaganda from the Tea Promotion Board?)
I think they offer stock options, signing bonus, matching 401K, medical and dental and 8 weeks paid vacation.
I am British, so I am very much a pro tea advocate. I mean flavour and antioxidant benefits.
I cold-brew my summer tea. (Take tea, place in pitcher of water, place in refrigerator overnight, …, profit!) I have been using a jasmine green tea for this instead of my usual hot Oolong, English Breakfast or Yorkshire.
As far as I can tell, hotter water makes the infusion faster but the same volatiles are leached from the leaves. I am prepared to be corrected by one of our resident chemists, or confronted by one of our resident naturopaths, on this point and wil concede graciously if required.
Drinking hot tea within a few minutes of being boiled is actually quite bad for you in itself, it significantly raises your chances of developing esophageal cancer. I remember reading that there’s a town in Iran where a huge proportion of the population develops esophageal cancer, because they all drink a lot of hot tea immediately after boiling. If you leave it for 4 minutes or more after boiling, or if you add milk, it’s OK. However some studies have supposedly shown that adding milk destroys the health benefits of tea as protecting against cardiovascular disease. It’s a complicated mix, the tea business.
I haven’t heard anything about brewing hot tea, then topping it up with cold water, but I don’t see why that would destroy the health benefits? The milk does because it binds to the beneficial chemicals in the tea and essentially cancels them out. If hot water doesn’t do that, I don’t see why cold water would. But that’s just a guess.
What is termed “sun tea” is on the same lines – place tea in water (cold or room temperature) in a glass vessel. Cap loosely (optional) and place in a window or other sunny spot. Within a day or two you’ll have good tea, with aromatics, which can be chilled for iced tea, etc.
The primary source for that claim.
Interesting study.
The proposed mechanism is thermal injury coupled with other dietary exposures in that region but they do note that those with esophageal disorders prefer hot beverages, so it could be the disordered esophageal function that both predisposed to the preference and to the cancer.
In any case “hot” by usual British standards is under 60 C according to that article, which for the purposes of that study was considered “lukewarm”.
As to which exact compounds, be they aromatics or antioxidants, come out at which temperatures and over what time course, that appears to be quite complex with some compounds being very temperature dependent and some to varying degrees both time and temperature dependent. Or as another source puts it:
If you’ve got some nasal congestion, the heat is the benefit of hot tea, so it’s necessary in that case.
The thing is, you don’t want to release everything in the tea. In particular, you want to keep the tannin levels down, because too much tannin tastes terrible. And different things are released at different rates at different temperatures. While you could get all the good stuff by letting it cold-brew overnight, you might also get more tannin than you’d like that way, too.
So, will a small amount of hot water in the cup release all the benefits of the tea bag? Then I can add cold water.
bump
I don’t think what you want to do will work. You’ll put a little hot water on the tea bag, which will make a small amount of normal strength tea. Adding cold water will just make diluted tea.
Hot water extracts the beneficial and tasty compounds out of tea faster than cold water. Since most of the water you use will be cool, it might take a day or even longer to get the tea to the strength you want.
Are you trying to do this because you like drinking cold tea? You might need to plan ahead and stick it in the fridge.
The standard method of making iced tea is to make a concentrate and then add cold water.
At the office, we put two family size tea bags in a medium size pot. fill half way with boiling water. Ten minutes later this concentrate will make a two quart pitcher of ice tea. all you do is add cold water and stir.
so, yes steeping tea in a small amount of boiling water releases all the flavor.
Our sticking point on your question hinges on the difference between “a tasty cuppa” and these “benefits” you are asking about.
If the “benefits” are not defined we have trouble giving a solid answer.
The methods described will produce a flavourful cup or glass of tea. If there are further “benefits” to be sought, you will need to explain what else you are looking to find during your tea break.
“Sweet Tea” is what I refer to as “Confederate Tea”. My Confederate relatives object to this, but fuck them. My theory is that the Confederates, during the US Civil War, couldn’t get much tea in through the blockade, and couldn’t get much sugar out. So they compromised. Use as much tea as you could get, to darken the water, then use as much sugar as you had, to “flavor” it. Result? Maximal sugar, minimal actual tea. They developed a taste for that shit, and have been perpetrating it on the rest of us, ever since. Fucking Confederates! That stuff sucks.
I think the real story behind sweet tea is that it started out as a concentrate, so it’d be about right when diluted with a whole bunch of ice, but that folks started diluting it less and less until it reached the current levels.