Tempering: Pre-Warming Tea Mugs / Cups / Gaiwans?
Example: You plan to brew a black tea at 212*F as recommended per the brewing instructions. You pour boiling water into your room-temperature tea vessel and a fast-reading digital thermometer immediately indicates 195*F.
Do you:
1. Say it doesn’t matter. It was 212*F when the water first contacted the leaves in the brew basket.
2. Reheat it in the microwave before adding the leaves.
3. Pre-heat it by first pouring in a cup of boiling water, wait until the mug is hot to the touch, dump, then refill with fresh boiling water for brewing.
4. Skip the tea kettle and simply boil water in the microwave to heat both the water & vessel simultaneously.
5. In the case of a mug, pre-heat using a mug warmer: http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=sr_nr_p_72_0?rh=i%3Aaps%2Ck%3Amug+warmer%2Cp_72%3A2661618011&keywords=mug+warmer&ie=UTF8&qid=1408123288&rnid=2661617011
6. Other thoughts?
#3. I usually pour some boiling water into my mug and swirl it around for a few seconds, dump that water, and then steep my tea.
I never preheat anything. Hasn’t hurt me so far BUT I am quite sensitive to bitterness in the slightest so I don’t mind the temp cooling slightly in the air en route to the pot.
I don’t bother most of the time. I drink mostly black teas, and the water is still too hot for me to drink initially so I don’t see the point of preheating. I have to wait for it to cool anyway.
When I do Gong Fu I preheat.
“… I don’t see the point of preheating.”
The idea is to brew at 212, 208, 205 or whatever is recommended instead of something less caused by the room-temperature mug/cup cooling off the boiling water far too quickly.
I think looseTman is brewing in a cup whereas Marzipan is brewing in a teapot and pouring into a non-preheated cup. Correct? I think that’s where the slight confusion is coming from.
For just a cup I almost never preheat. If I’m making a full pot I’ll preheat it with boiling water as it keeps warm longer that way.
When I used to use a teapot to brew (and I still use a teapot to brew my white teas and spiced teas), I preheat the vessel using hot water – usually from the tap. I used to do the extra step of bringing the water to a boil and pre-heating my teapot this way, but, after trying it with the hot water from the tap and noticing no real discernible difference in taste between tempering the pot with hot water from the tap and boiling water, I found that the time I saved from hot water from the tap was much more valuable than a possible, arguably very minimal difference in taste between the two.
The reason I do temper the tea pot at all is because 1) it’s better for the teapot. The shock of the boiling water, even for a tea pot that’s been sitting in room temperature … can cause the tea pot to break. This happened once to me so I learned from my mistake. 2) there IS a difference in taste to me between the cold teapot versus the tempered teapot. It’s not a huge difference, but it’s something that I could notice, especially in cases of temperamental teas like Assam.
In cases of a mug, I haven’t used a mug warmer for many years. I usually just temper my mug the same way I would temper a teapot, with hot tap water.
Thanks for the highly detailed reply! Makes sense.
What makes Assam tea temperamental?
Just that it tends to get bitter if it’s oversteeped. I realize this is true for most teas – most teas can get bitter if they’re oversteeped although there are some teas that are more forgiving than others.
But with Assam, I’ve found that even a difference of 30 seconds can mean the difference between a cup without bitterness and one that is becoming bitter. 30 seconds too long can mean a bitter cup.
1 or 3. 3 when I’m making a pot or a huge mug and I have the time to wait for it to cool.
I have a mug warmer, but I wouldn’t use it with an empty mug. I use it to keep hot chocolate or coffee warm, but I don’t mind when my tea cools before I drink it.
(Safety protocol at my work is that one should never ever put an empty container on a hot plate. There must always be liquid in it or it might break (and in the lab we use pyrex, which is SUPER sharp and cuts deep with no warning).)
My glass teapot (see picture at left) has a very low heat capacity, so I don’t worry about pre-heating. When I use a ceramic tea-pot, I often rinse it in hot water from the tap prior to steeping. I tend to use water at 200 degrees anyway, since boiling water often makes the tea too bitter for my taste.
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