Taste changes over several hours
Does tea continue to “brew” after the tea has been removed from the water?
Other than the occasional glass of iced tea in a restaurant, I mostly drink tea from a thermos at my desk. I mostly use tea bags today. I also have loose tea, but I really can’t tell that much difference between loose and bags and the bags are much more convenient. I hope that doesn’t disqualify me as a participant here.
I brew the tea right in the thermos, then discard the tea bags and take the thermos to my desk.
I prefer the milder teas, mostly greens and some whites and oolongs. I’ve noticed something recently that I hadn’t previously. The taste gets milder and smoother over several hours. Within the first half hour to hour, the tea can have an odd “off” taste that is hard to describe. The term that comes to mind is “hollow” as if it isn’t quite done. But over an hour or more, it gradually becomes milder, smoother, and fuller.
PS: I found it ironic that the spellchecker on a tea forum flagged “oolong”. ;-)
the spellchecker is in your browser, set to english :)
I cant comment on thermos brewing but certainly hot tea tastes different from medium temp tea. It gets sweeter as it cools, hotter tea is more hollow, thats true
It seems like it is related to more than just temperature. My thermos is very good. It can keep things very hot for hours. My recollection is that even tea that is still quite hot is sweeter after an hour or two than it is right after brewing, but I’ll have to test that.
Is “hollow” the correct term? What exactly is the difference? If it were subjected to some type of chemical analysis, would it be different chemically or is it just how it is perceived by my taste sensors?
Re Spellchecker: I’ll have to see if I can add words.
Is there any way to quote excerpts from the post I am replying to? I didn’t see any way to do that?
Why would brewing in a thermos make a difference? Does the tea know that it is in a thermos vs a cup or something else? The thermos is stainless steel so that should not make a difference over, say, glass. The thermos does keep the water temperature fairly constant. I often check it at the start and the end. The temperature will usually drop no more than 2-4 degrees depending on the initial temperature. If it starts out at 160F, is will end up at 156-157. If it starts out at 200, it might get down to 194-195. This is for a brew time of 2-4 minutes.
PS: I have added oolong to the browser dictionary (Firefox) so it is no longer flagged. Thanks for that tip.
I notice the same thing!! Thought I was crazy because I can’t explain why this happens, but good to know I’m not alone. Even the most expensive, complex tea tastes absolutely flat when brewed in my thermos. For this reason I stopped brewing tea in a thermos and always have a teapot handy :)
Cathy,
Are you saying that tea brewed in a thermos tastes different than the exact same tea brewed the exact same way except for in a teapot?
I thought I noticed the same effect regardless of the vessel, but now I’ll have to go test it.
What you’re experiencing is an actual phenomenon, and not your imagination. It’s been described in literature a few times, and this isn’t the first time it’s come up on Steepster.
What’s essentially happening, is you’re overheating your tea. I want to use the term “stewed”, but that’s already used both to mean oversteeped tea, and as a term in tea-production when tea is improperly dried and over-ferments.
A number of compounds in tea are affected by temperature, and some of these will start to deteriorate or break down with excessive, prolonged heat (like that found in a thermos, versus tea that is allowed to cool in a mug). The main theorized contestor for this is thearubigin, which gives tea its strength and body, and which is known to break down under extended high temperatures. C.R. Harler specifically speculated that this breakdown was what caused the deterioration in quality found in thermos-kept teas.
Although since you’re describing the tea going from ‘unfinished’ to ‘fuller’ sort of sounds like the progression of catechins to theaflavin to thearubigin (the chemical withering progression in tea production).
Login or sign up to leave a comment.