Possibility: looking at tea brewing & health benefits of tea are increased.
Atik
I hope yuou enjoyed out meeting in Bandung. Please let me know that you get this.
regards
Ian
Address to Indonesian Tea Association November 2010
I would like to thank Atik for inviting me to talk to you. It is a great privilege.
The topic for tonight is ‘New ideas about tea’.
I would first like to establish what the old ideas are. There are two major types of tea – Chinese tea and Black tea.
The Chinese ideas about tea are not based on science but seem to have at their base a false idea – that you get more total flavor and more cups of tea by brewing a large quantity of large tea leaves several times. By pouring water over the leaves several times, you successively extract more flavor until there is none left. This is demonstrably wrong – by drying the brewed leaves and reducing them to fannings size, you can get more flavor than in the first brew. The boiling water cannot penetrate through the large leaf and only dissolves the flavor on the surface.
The second idea that is prominent in Chinese tea culture is that different teas should be brewed at different temperatures. I have been to three different Chinese universities and asked if there is scientific evidence to support this idea. There appears to be none. Effectively this means that it is opinion until it is established as a fact. The real test is whether blindfolded tea tasters can detect at which temperature the tea has been brewed. I doubt this. Additionally it is certain that Chinese place a great importance on the shape and appearance of the leaf and the colour of the brew. Taste is secondary. There is no doubt that a huge amount of tea in China is drunk with very little tea flavour. I have some to the conclusion that Chinese are more interested in the idea and culture of tea than the tea itself.
Black tea is very much associated with the old British Empire. The British tried to grow green tea in India – the first shipment arrived in London mouldy. The second shipment in 1838 was fired to a higher temperature to reduce the moisture and possibility of mould. It tasted good, with sugar even better and with milk and sugar better still. The British found it difficult to get Indians to work and imported machinery – one machine did the work of forty men in three hours forty minutes. The result was much broken tea. Grading of tea sizes was somehow implanted in the mind that BOP was the best but you cannot judge the taste or quality of tea by the size of the leaf. Indonesian tea was not British tea and found it hard to be recognized in the list of good teas.
A Google request to establish the best cup of tea gives no replies that would allow you to recognize one if you saw one in the street. There are 2,480,000 vague instructions as to how to make it but nothing to tell you when you have succeeded.
These vague instructions are:
- Preheat the pot.
- Pour boiling water over the tea leaves and let stand for 3-5 minutes.
- Do not brew for more than five minutes to prevent bitterness.
- One teaspoon per person and one for the pot but no instruction on how to select the correct spoon or the size of the cup.
Following these instructions exactly will produce a great variety of cups of tea.
There is rarely mention of the word ‘astringency’ which causes a dryness and coating on the tongue. Tannin bitterness is traditionally detected at the back of the tongue. The use of milk and sugar masks both the bitterness and astringency making the tea palatable. People who drink black tea without milk and sugar generally drink weak tea where the astringency has been reduced by dilution.
It is clearly useless to make such instructions which do not take into account of the fact that brewing time should vary with leaf size and that the result, unless drunk diluted and weak, requires milk and sugar to be palatable.
The new ideas open up a new possibility of looking at tea brewing.
.1. Fine leaf teas – dust or fannings – means a faster and more complete extraction of flavour. A very fine leaf releases all its flavour in thirty seconds and then bitterness.
2. The flavor extraction from tea reduces by 50% every 10C that the temperature is reduced. It can be shown that the brewing temperature in a porcelain teapot is around 84C. The conclusion is the brew the tea as closed to boiling point as possible.
3. Astringency develops after 30 seconds.
The results of this combination are that
- .The health benefits of tea are increased by 160% - an increase of antioxidants from 100 units to 160 units weight for weight.
- Less tea can be used. For instance with Chinese green tea 130 liters can be produced from one kg of green tea fannings using the special; filter as opposed to 50 using traditional methods. The 130 liters may be 260 because Chinese tea drink tea and judge it by the colour of the brew, not the taste
- Iced tea can be made in thirty seconds
- Tea lattes can be made
- Flavour and bitterness have been separated for the first time ever. There is almost no astringency. The flavour is smoother and more appealing.
- The tea can be drunk without milk and sugar because there is no bitterness
Can we now state that the perfect cup of tea has a lot of flavour and no bitterness?
I would like to make a few comments about teabags. I will make a test showing the extraction of colour when a whole teabag is brewed in the Tea-Cha filter and when the dry tea from a similar teabag is brewed. The colour shows you how much flavour is retained by the paper. I then take the wet teabag and cut it open to allow hot water to reach all the tea. You can see that much more colour is released from the cut bag. In my opinion the lower brewing temperature in a pot or cup and the paper barrier make it almost impossible to make a tea flavoured beverage. That is why flavoured teabags are popular. Triangular teabags are equally poor – they use larger leaf with subsequent poor flavour extraction.
I believe there will eventually be a problem ecologically with teabags. Approximately ten percent of the weight of a tea bag is paper which means that 100 kgs of paper are used with every tonne of teabags. Approximately one and a half million kgs of paper were used last year in Australian teabags. Once this information becomes widely known, I can imagine the uproar.
Thank you,
Ian Bersten
November 16th , 2010
Darso Sayat
Terimakasih Pak Atik atas kiriman info yg menarik ini. Minggu lalu saya lihat filter buatan Mr.Ian ini. Tapi belum pernah coba.
Cara kerjanya mirip dengan saringan teh jaman dulu. (see http://www.tea-cha.com.au/)
Gelar Mr. Ian ini keren ya: Mr. Ian Bersten Ph.T Doctor of Teaology
Sekali lagi terimakasih.
Salam,
Darso
CHAKRA
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