A US scientist has brewed up a storm by offering Britain advice on making tea
A US scientist has brewed up a storm by offering Britain advice on making tea
An American scientist has sparked a trans-Atlantic tempest in a teapot by offering Britain advice on its favorite hot beverage.
An American scientist has sparked a trans-Atlantic tempest in a teapot by offering Britain advice on its favorite hot beverage.
Bryn Mawr College chemistry professor Michelle Francl says one of the keys to a perfect cup of tea is a pinch of salt. The tip is included in Francl’s book “Steeped: The Chemistry of Tea,” published Wednesday by the Royal Society of Chemistry.
Not since the Boston Tea Party has mixing tea with salt water roiled the Anglo-American relationship so much.
The salt suggestion drew howls of outrage from tea-lovers in Britain, where popular stereotype sees Americans as coffee-swilling boors who make tea, if at all, in the microwave.
...
The U.S. Embassy in London intervened in the brewing storm with a social media post reassuring “the good people of the U.K. that the unthinkable notion of adding salt to Britain’s national drink is not official United States policy.”
Ok.
So make Tea in the microwave with plenty of salt.
I got it. Brits, you good? Boffins? Cheerio, pip, pip?
58Tips hat
Evnin' Govna' !
12Boffin is a slur
1
Hold on, about to have my morning cup o Yorkshire, will report back
Edit - it kinda just makes it... rounder. Tea is supposed to be a little bit bitter, the salt makes the softer flavours more pronounced so it kinda stops tasting like tea
Edit 2, second cuppa. Just realised the prof probably doesn't realise that a pinch of salt is actually quite a bit, so I tried an actual tiny pinch. You know what, it actually does improve it a tiny bit, but no enough that I need more salt in my life.
Does that daft cow not realise how much tea we drink? This is diabolical
49Thanks for your research, I was too lazy to get off the chair and try myself
10You need to drink more (average modern human drinks too less). Then you need more salt.
3Now don't leave us hanging, won't you?
3
Add salt BEFORE putting the cup in the microwave, not after. Silly Brits.
45Fun fact, the modern tea bag was invented by an American. We really know how to throw a tea party.
34I believe it was invented by accident. They were sending over samples of some tea in individual silk bags and the people thought of putting the whole thing in the cup.
24My understanding (from wiki) is that they intended it to be individual servings of tea, and that customers would dump the contents of the bag out.
22
"agitating the bag"
If you want to create a better cup of tea at least begin with tea leaves, not tea bags.
29I could not agree more. However, a lot of tea drinkers love their dust filled paper bags.
9Care to elaborate? I don't see how having the leaves in a bag is inferior to having them loose
6A decent guide to tea grades here. Even with higher end teabags, any tea dust created (e.g. if the teabag gets squashed) gets trapped inside the bag. The tea dust makes for a more bitter cup.
14Tea in bags is pulverized while loose leaf tends to be intact leaves. It changes the flavor.
1
Now I'm curious how that would taste.
24We are not talking about Tibetan butter tea salt levels here. In the article it is recommended to use just enough salt to tone down the bitterness by blocking the bitterness receptors on the tongue, not so much that the tea actually tastes salty.
31Yeah, seems silly to discount something you've never tried just because it isn't what you're used to, but hey, that's the English way.
20Uh no, hanging on in quiet desperation is the English way.
22Yeah, is it? I somehow don't feel like that's the case.
-2
If there only was a way to find out.
13oh well, back to chewing dry tea leaves
13
The bad point for the British is: The professor is actually right! At least on the accord with the salt.
I don't agree with her on another issue: She suggested to add milk after brewing. Nope. You don't add milk at all. Or worse, lemon juice. Milk murders tea. It basically kills the more interesting chemicals by binding them into a mass that can't be used by the digestive tract.
18Where do you stand on sugar?
7As someone with diabetes, I decline. But I am actually not opposed to someone using sugar. It does not react with the essential ingredients. Just don't overdo it, tea is not soda...
2Our bodies make all the sugar we need, honey on the other hand, give er
-4
Depends on the tea, some tea is to be made with milk, for example chai, and some can be made with lemon juice, but most teas are to be brewed and had as is
5You have piqued my interest on the thing of milk binding up beneficial chemicals. Can you elaborate?
3The classic answer is that milk proteins (like casein) react with some the tea proteins (like tannin) and form bonds that the human digestion track cannot process. Tannin in black tea is responsible for most the bitter taste, which is the primary reason why people add milk to tea in the first place, but it is also one of the ingredients that make tea the more healthier beverage choice.
There is a scientific article I've read years ago that gave a lot more details, but with everything scientific behind f-ing paywalls nowadays, I could not find it again.
But I found an article that adds another interesting twist to the topic that I had not heard before: Milk Casein Inhibits Effect of Black Tea Galloylated Theaflavins to Inactivate SARS-CoV-2 In Vitro.
1
Agree. Add in some lemon or ginger to be fancy but no milk.
1
Meanwhile China is over there watching the west argue about a drink it invented millennia ago.
14I don't doubt this works because it definitely makes acidic/bitter coffee more palatable.
12That's alright mate. I guess if I ever want advice on tea making, I'll speak to the Chinese.
10Kinda surprised this is just now coming up for tea drinkers. 3rd wave coffee nerds have been using saline solution to cut down on bitter flavors for like a decade now.
6Salt in tea ... Your having a giraffe
6My what?
3
This is the best summary I could come up with:
LONDON (AP) — An American scientist has sparked a trans-Atlantic tempest in a teapot by offering Britain advice on its favorite hot beverage.
Bryn Mawr College chemistry professor Michelle Francl says one of the keys to a perfect cup of tea is a pinch of salt.
The salt suggestion drew howls of outrage from tea-lovers in Britain, where popular stereotype sees Americans as coffee-swilling boors who make tea, if at all, in the microwave.
The U.S. Embassy in London intervened in the brewing storm with a social media post reassuring “the good people of the U.K. that the unthinkable notion of adding salt to Britain’s national drink is not official United States policy.”
The product of three years’ research and experimentation, the book explores the more than 100 chemical compounds found in tea and “puts the chemistry to use with advice on how to brew a better cup,” its publisher says.
She also advocates making tea in a pre-warmed pot, agitating the bag briefly but vigorously and serving in a short, stout mug to preserve the heat.
The original article contains 398 words, the summary contains 177 words. Saved 56%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!
5I like the idea of using molten salt to heat up the water and leaves.
2Ironically the English don’t really know how to make tea. Then dump hot water on a tea bag then immediately throw on cold milk, making it impossible to actually brew.
2No one does that.
13Some people even put the milk in first.
0lol the BBC has literally aired specials on this subject
-1
What's wrong with the microwave? Heat is heat (except the 1995 movie which has little to do with heat or thermodynamics at all).
2You could easily over steep it if you microwave it with the bag in it, but if you're just boiling water it shouldn't make a difference, other than being inefficient vs a kettle.
7I've never tried it but considering there's 3 different boil levels for steeping tea called inventively first, second and third boil.
Also the levels of oxygen in the water can affect the taste of the tea I would hazard a guess that microwaving water will create a fucking cupped abortion.
A microwave - no matter how clean - will probably imbue the water with 'extras'. Tea is extremely delicate. I swore I hated tea until one day aged 21yo a friend made me a cup and it turns out I'd been drinking tea wrong the previous 21yrs. It took another 5-6yrs for me to find my preferred tea making method. Everything from the cup to teapot and water hardness level. Whether it has additives in the water and how much. How long to steep for. Each tea can require different steeping times to get the right colour and taste.
Making GOOD tea right isn't as easy as people think.
5It overheats it.
The water in a microwave when boiled forms small pockets of gaseous water whose temperature is more than 100 deg C, so it basically cooks the guts out of the tea.
3You boil the water in the microwave. Then pour it. Not with the leaves or the pouch in.
4
Nothing. My two cents is just the microwave to heat up you water and add your tea of choice to steep afterwards.
2
What about tea in the wave?
1Do you even have a tea pot? Neanderthal.
1I steam tea in a moka pot, am I doing it right?
1?
1
Microwaving tea is fine. I do it all the time.
(It’s my username)
1Step 1, grab some tea
Step 2, throw it the fuck out
Step 3, make coffee-8I live a few hours from the nearest harbor. will a lake work?
3Im a few hours away from Boston too, lets have a tea party!
0