Preheating
Does anyone else preheat their tea cups/mugs by rinsing it in very hot water before pouring tea into it?
Not when I’m making a large pot, but when I’m doing tea in smaller portions – with a gaiwan or when I’m doing tea gong-fu style, for example – I will heat the teaware with water beforehand each steep by pouring hot water over the vessel.
I’ve heard it actually does affect the taste somewhat, though I haven’t sat down to have a controlled experiment and really make an experienced observation.
I do it for pu-erhs (which I also wash with boiling water before steeping) primarily because I truly want to like pu-erh and therefore I want to give the pu-erh I’m trying its best chance. I also do it for white teas and jasmine pearls which seem to respond to that treatment by tasting better. Otherwise, I don’t do it all that often for other teas.
Washing the tea to me seems like you’d be making it lose some of it’s flavor and thus producing a weaker cup.
It is odd, isn’t it? But it is one of the recommendations I’ve read about with pu-erhs and one that was reaffirmed to me from other quarters. The idea is that you soak it for a few seconds in boiling water then throw that water out and then steep it in the real water you will use. Since doing this I am less likely to throw up immediately after drinking pu-erh so it is a good practice in my book. (Your experience may be different, of course.)
Also it seems to make the pu-erh taste better and somewhat sweeter.
I can see it w/ pu erh, but then again I HATE pu erh lol. I can’t see doing it w/ whites and God forbid pearl teas… making the leaves unfurl prematurely takes all the fun out of it.:)
I don’t. I do it only with pu-erhs. (Thus the parenthetical phrase was placed next to the pu-erhs and not next to the mention of white or jasmine tea.)
I’ve actually noticed that for some teas, they steep stronger and tastier if you do the rinse-and-dump before hand. I read that it has to do with giving the tea leaves time to unfold.
I’ve never tried it, but since I use a warming stand with a tea light candle, I wonder if I could just light the candle while the kettle’s boiling…hmm…
When making a pot of strong tea I would usually preheat it. The idea is that this way the boiling water stays as hot as possible when in contact with the tea, rather than warming the pot up.
I don’t bother when I’m using an infuser, because they are such a small mass of metal they warm up almost instantly.
I have rinsed tea before – some of the bitter green teas benefit from this. It’s a traditional chinese tea making method, as told to me by my brother who lived there for a while and his chinese wife. I hope they know what they’re talking about. It does take some of the bitterness out of a green tea when I’ve tried it.
I like my tea to stay as warm as I can comfortably stand it so I have gotten into the habit of always pre-warming any teaware I use. I tend to pout if my tea cools off so I do what I can to prevent that from happening.
The water for black teas should be added near boiling point 99 °C (210 °F). Many of the active substances in black tea do not develop at temperatures lower than 90°C (195ºF). For some more delicate teas lower temperatures are recommended. The temperature will have as large an effect on the final flavor as the type of tea used.
To insure that my water is and stays as hot as possible I do preheat my tea pot…
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