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this post was submitted on 25 Jan 2024
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I'm going to go to bat for our American friends and say that there's nothing wrong with boiling water in a microwave if that's the quickest water-boiling-method you've got. Boiling water is boiling water, who cares.
America's greater sin against tea drinking is their habit of letting the water cool down and then steeping a bag in the barely-hot water so that it makes a drink the colour of dehydrated urine. Why drink tea if you don't want to actually taste the tea?
But then on the other hand iced tea is nice, so they do redeem themselves a little.
Now this is serious! if there's one thing in this country that really bothers me Is the inability of yanks to make a good cup of tea Instructions are printed on the teabag But either they can't read Or they think it's a gag
Pour boiling water over the tea How simple and clear can the instructions be?
They bring you a cup with a lemon slice And an unopened tea bag beside it (how nice) And a pot of water and it may be hot But boiling it isn't so tea you have not
Why can't we Get our tea We need tea To set us free
It's boiling water that brings out tea's flavor With a dash of milk you've a real brew to savor They drink luke brown water that looks like gnat pee And it's got nothing to do with a good cup of tea
Pour boiling water over the tea How simple and clear Can the instructions be?
Pour boiling water over the tea Pour boiling water over the tea
Masters of Realizy - T.U.S.A. Sang by a tea enthusiast of the highest order, Ginger Baker
No it's not. Sorry but if you believe this you really don't understand tea making. There's 5 stages of water temperature that have different tastes and for different teas: https://www.goldenmoontea.com/blogs/tea/106687623-the-5-different-stages-of-boiling-water-and-how-the-chinese-use-them-for-tea
Tea has a delicate flavour. It's easy to mask it with an otherwise small change. The amount of oxygen in the water (don't use reboiled), the length of boil, the peak temperature, steeping time, water contents (flouride) and hardness (calcium) can all have a massive effect.
Tea isn't coffee. It isn't a strong enough flavour to hide fuck ups and poor technique (though popular black tea blends have tried!). My coffee cup has scum round the sides, I reuse spooons and water. It tastes the same every time.
But my TEA!? I use a clean cup every time, clean spoon, specifically boiled water, rinsed kettle, everything. If I allow the water to boil too long I have to lengthen the steeping time to compensate for the weaker taste. I have to use a dash more milk to make up for the increased bitterness and I have a quick taste to see if I need to add more sweetness. All that fucking around just because I let the water boil slightly longer!
Saying you can microwave water for tea is like telling a sommelier you can make Champaigne with Asda grapes in a gallon oil drum.
With respect to you, that's about technique rather than tooling. If you overboil your water you're going to have overboiled water, but nobody is making you overboil water in a microwave.
Fundamentally, a microwave just applies heat the same as any other cooking appliance. It doesn't add or remove fluoride or change your water hardness. The temperature of boiling water will always be as close to 100° as makes no difference because of simple physics. If you let your water sit bubbling away in the microwave for endless minutes then that's on you for not taking the water out of the microwave when it was done (and is not fundamentally different to overboiling water with a stovetop pot either).
People seem to think microwaves are some sort of spooky exotic magic technology, but they're not. They're just heaters.
I'm a software dev, engineer, scientist. I understand that ultimately controlling for all things kettle water and microwave water shouldn't be different. But you can't control for all those things. If I spent the next 5-6yrs perfecting microwave boiling (the same time it took me to perfect kettle boiling) then yes, I could get an equivalent tasting water for tea.
But heating to 100C (you didn't read my link - cos that's not a good temperature!!) isn't the only thing affecting taste!
Tea in a stainless steel kettle tastes different to a plastic one. When I buy a new kettle I have to faff with timings to regain the perfect tea taste because it's got less limescale and crap in the kettle.
Yeah I guess it's all "tooling" but you're being pedantic.
So yeah I guess you're right to an extent. But it's also right you can make whisky in a gallon drum with added wood flavour. You can make wine in a plastic jug and have it taste the same. But it's not optimal and if there's a way that's been done by a group for a long time then maybe take their advice? I'm 100% certain that your microwaved tea will taste worse than my kettle-boiled tea.
I didn't like tea until I hit 21yo and a friend made me a decent cup. It changed my view on tea completely and it took another 5-6 years of obsessively making different teas and techniques to realise how much tea is affected by everything.
I can't tell if your pedantry is stubborness to accept you're wrong or ignorance of the wider picture that tea isn't a simple formula.
For the record, I'm not an American and I don't microwave water for tea. Being a Brit of these blessed shores, and of our blessed 230v mains electricity supply, I have an electric kettle.
I am also a big tea drinker, and I'm perfectly happy with my setup. I have a metal kettle with a thermostatic heating element (because I prefer my green tea brewed cooler than my black tea), and I use filtered water (because I live in a very hard water area). My kettle is kept sparklingly limescale-free. I am well used to drinking other people's terrible tea, and I know what a good cup tastes like and how to make one.
But I also know that heating water in a pyrex jug in a microwave is exactly the same as heating water in an electric kettle, as long as you're not leaving it boiling for too long or letting it cool too much before using it. Because heat is just heat...
Well you're clearly a heretic and when I become PM I'll round people like you up into camps and boil you in giant microwaves. Good day sir!
Have you tried adding a tiny pinch of salt instead?
You leave our Trader Joe's Two Buck Chuck out of this, y'all hear now?