I mean, it’s possible. But i boil water in microwaves every day, and it’s not something i ever worry about. And if your mug has even a minor scratch on the interior, the water will boil without becoming superheated. It’s actually kinda fun if you can get it to superheat, and then drop a teabag in, and it bursts into a full boil. But in fact, you quickly learn that it takes n seconds to heat your tap water in your favorite mug to “hot enough”.
I actually use a fancy little gooseneck electric kettle, and pour the water over loose tea leaves in my fancy glass tea-brewing mug. (It came with a fitting strainer.) Because i enjoy the ritual. But boiling water in the mug in the microwave works fine.
Lol. I find that it’s easier to wet the tea bag if you gently pour water over it, but carefully and slowly lowering the bag into the water works, too. The key thing is for part of the bag to be dry to let air out as you let the water seep in to another part of the tea bag. This is also why tea balls (with their larger mesh than paper) work better than tea bags.
You can save money by making your own Lapsong Souchong. Get a mug of hot water. Put in a regular tea bag. Add three to five cigarette butts (adjust for personal preference). Let steep for five minutes. Drink (this last step is optional and ill-advised).
It’s probably just the placebo effect, but when I make tea in a microwave, I convince myself it tastes flatter. Same with the pre-heated water at work.
When I’m home, I boil the water in a kettle, pour a little into the mug to warm the mug, dump it out, put in the bag (or loose tea holder), pour the water over the bag (or loose tea), and let it steep for 3 minutes. Then, out comes the bag and in goes some milk.
When I make tea for people that way, they have commented that I make really good tea, so maybe there’s something to it. It’s probably just the placebo effect, though – I don’t know that I could choose one or the other in an A/B test.
My family still laughs about how my mother was super picky about the temperature of her tea / coffee. After it was brewed she’d then heat it some more in the microwave. One time at a family get together she asked the hostess to nuke her coffee because “it’s not hot enough unless it burns my lips”. I don’t recall how long she left it in the micro, but the mug exploded, hilarity ensued.
Honest question: doesn’t the handle get too hot to hold when you nuke the water?
I just put the tea bag into the water in the cup, then use a spoon to force it beneath the surface then squeeze all the air out of the bag against the side of the mug. And use the spoon to hold the bag’s head underwater until it’s good and drowned. Much faster. I’m all about impatience.
In general I prefer loose tea and a tea ball for all the reasons you cite, but I do sometimes have tea bags or sachets which get the squish-out-the-air treatment.
My late wife called it “elixir of oil field” and refused to get within 5 feet of it. Other than that one pecadillo she was a fine human being.
I was fine until this. The flavor of tea is almost undetectable in the presence of milk. The idea you could tell boiled from warmed water in your tea when milk is overpowering everything by a factor of a few thousand is … peculiar.
I have a dozen coffee cups, each from a different, effectively random, source. I preheat them in the microwave with sacrificial water for 2 minutes. They’re all roughly the same shape. One cup gets a stupid-hot handle. The rest do not.
Unrelated to the above … I have also found that in some microwaves you can orient any cup so the handle gets extra-blasted and come out hotter than other orientations. The whole reason for turntables in microwaves is to even out the inevitable hotspots in the radiation pattern inside. If your oven has an annular hotspot and you happen to place the cup just right, you could (warning: technical terms ahead) nuke the shit out of the handle, not the body.
YMMV, but these factors are probably present at your house to some degree too. If hot handles are a problem, try rearranging the cup’s distance from center and handle orientation and see what happens. Also, once the water is boiling it won’t get any hotter. Nuking longer just causes the rest of the cup, handle included, to get hotter. you might be over-cooking the water, and cup, and handle vs. what’s necessary.
Experiment Forth!
Amusingly enough, i bought mine directly from Rishi, and it doesn’t have “Rishi” or those other images on it, just 4 dots under the spout, indicating the 100, 200, 300, and 400ml marks.
But it’s great for making tea from loose tea leaves.
Only if the mug, itself, is heated by microwaves. I have a couple of bowls that are heated, but most of my crockery isn’t. None of my mugs get hot in the microwave, except where they are right next to the hot water. So no, the handles stay room temp.
You can add tea bags or loose tea to it and heat it in a microwave. When it’s ready, you just sit it on top of your mug. There’s a built-in valve and filter which releases the tea into your mug while keeping all of the leaves in the pot.
Well, three things: First, I use some pretty strong tasting tea (Assam), so the flavor definitely comes through. Second, whether it seems flat or not is not a flavor thing, it’s more of a mouth feel thing. Third, yeah, it’s probably the placebo effect.
It is. I decide what mug i will use, and add an appropriate amount of tea and water. (Mostly, i fill it to 400ml and use a mug large enough to hold that.) I enjoy watching it brew, and then pour it into my mug, which also cools the tea down enough for me to drink it. It helps that my mugs are heavy ceramic and are cool in the winter. (No, i don’t enjoy very hot beverages.)
After breakfast, i dump most of the leaves into the compost bin, and rinse the rest down the sink.
I bought a box of Lapsong Souchong once to try it out. I drank one cup of it and I was ready to throw out the rest of the box.
But I was at work and a prisoner asked if he could have the rest of the box if I was going to throw it out anyway. I gave it to him, despite the possibility I was violating the Eighth Amendment by doing so.
I forgot to mention, one of my kettles is actually a Breville Tea Maker. You can set the temperature for lower temperature teas, like green and white, a well as the steep time. It will hold loose-leaf, but those into bags for easy cleanup. Expensive, but it’s been a nice splurge.
I have it on the best of authority, that at least one variety of tea will go on to the farthest reaches of the universe, meaning it may be the ultimate tea. And no kettle was involved!
Admittedly, Lapsang Souchong is a minority interest. You certainly won’t find it in your generic supermarket, although any tea shop worthy of the term has it. Kinda like single malt Scotch, it takes a certain … dedication … to learn to enjoy its subtleties. For whatever confused reason, for me it was love at first sip sometime in college and I’ve never looked back.
OTOH, ordinary black tea, e.g. Lipton’s swill, gives me a sore throat all but instantly. As do some, but not all, blacks. Other blacks and greens are OK, if mostly uninteresting. Oil of bergamot is not one of my favorites, but I will readily drink it. It beats the pants off Lipton’s rank evility.
My father liked lapsang souchong, and i associate it with him. I have a tin, and drink it when i miss my father. I enjoy it, but my every day tipple is a mix of yunnan black and ceylon green. Yeah, maybe that’s weird, but it’s really good. I brew the combined leaves by pouring 205°F water over them and letting them steep as i eat my breakfast.
My default tea is a basic English or Irish Breakfast tea. I also like some flavored teas like Bigelow’s Constant Comment or Raspberry Royale.
Once it’s past morning, I switch to caffeine-free herbal “tea”. Usually Celestial Seasonings; I like Country Peach Passion, Sleepytime, and Vermont Maple Ginger. Red Rose also has a really good line of sweet herbal teas (Sweet Temptations) but I can’t find them in stores anymore.
Much faster. I’m all about impatience.