K S said

any one else brew this way?

Still on a learning curve with the kettle. I was almost ready to give up but now I am making progress. Darjeeling I got right on the first attempt with water straight out of the kettle. My other teas have taken some experimenting. I find myself too impatient in the morning to wait for the water to cool before pouring over the tea. I currently have about two months of tea bags left before I switch back over to loose leaf (never had the set up before to do it right at work). I drink mostly lightly flavored greens (earl, lemon, lotus) and oolong. What I have started doing the last few days is boiling the water. Taking my 10 ounce mug and adding about an ounce or slightly less cool water in the bottom. Just before pouring the boiling kettle water I add the bag. I am getting really good results this way. I have tried several experiments before stumbling on this method. The full flavor gets released without bruising the tea. I had the best cups of lemon and oolong today that I have ever had out of these bags.

I suspect when I start using loose leaf again I will have to start from scratch with the experimenting but at least for now I am enjoying making tea again.

6 Replies
Ricky said

I do that all the time when I need to make some greens and I only have boiling water. Another alternative is to transfer the hot water between two cups several times. The air should cool it off. I guess you could see how many times / at what height to transfer the water to get it to a certain temp.

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Kaitlin S said

Another alternative would be to figure out how much tap water to mix with the boiling water to get it to the right temperature.

What I do for greens and oolongs is to listen for when the kettle starts making noise (but isn’t whistling yet). I’m not really sure what temperature that ends up being, but it seems to work fine for a 3 minute steep.

I do the exact same thing. I am trying to steep my green teas at 180 degrees but I don’t have any way of really telling. So I stop my kettle at the same time, haha.

This is what I do as well. I haven’t tried checking the temp since I got my new thermometer.

Well, I should say I do this occasionally. Most of the time I just let the kettle cool down, because I’ve usually got the time.

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Teavana does that when making drinks – they throw in a respective amount of icecubes for how much they need to cool down their boiling water.

You might want to invest in a cooling bowl. I got one at a Korean tea shop, and when I’m sitting down to tea, it really helps me stay in touch with the tea, if you know what I’m sayin’.

K S said

Cooling bowl? Interesting. I had not heard of this. I tend to be bad about watching the time on the water at work. My boss doesn’t like it much if I stay too close in touch with the tea. Not sure this would work well for me. Sounds like what I stumbled on to is common and keeps me and the boss happy. Thanks for the input

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