Random tea thing I just HAD to share

[dr4b]

We have a bunch of different tea bags available in the tea/coffee room here at work. I've been drinking hot tea all week since my throat is sore.

Today I noticed we have a Tazo chai tea teabag, and I love chai so I thought I'd try it.

It sure smells like chai, but doesn't taste nearly as good as the stuff I think of as chai.

I've left the teabag in the mug as I drink it. The less and less liquid there is in the mug, the worse it tastes, but the better it smells.

Comments

[mh75.livejournal.com]

1) There is chemistry involved in brewing tea. Brew time has an effect. The bitter componenets in tea take a while to be released, so if you leave tea brewing for a long time the bitterness starts to come out. Josh can tell you more about this than you care to know, but, in short, i am not surprised that the chai tastes worse as you let it sit.

2) Tazo can suck. I haven't tried their chai.

3) What Nikari said. Drinking 'chai' that is finished usually involved having added sweeteners, and often milk, along with spices. Usually tea bags include the spices but not the sweetener or milk.

Good luck with your tea drinking - it can be a joy.

[bhudson.livejournal.com]

You want to steep black tea about 5 minutes in boiling water; green tea for about 2-3 minutes in 190-degree water; oolong is halfway. Masala chai (at least in this country) tends to be made with black Assam tea, which is rather more robust to oversteeping than most teas, but you certainly want to remove the bag after some time. That said, when I went to the tea shop in Providence, they instructed us to steep their spiced tea bags for seven minutes. Milk and sugar can mask the bitterness, but not eliminate it (they can turn barely-undrinkable into barely-drinkable); beyond that, they do funny (yummy) things to Assam that I haven't quite yet understood for lack of practice.

Also, don't drain the bag into the cup if you can avoid it: the bitter compounds seem just not to be quite so motile, even when they have started to dissolve, so by removing the bag and the water in the bag, you can avoid mixing them in to your cup. Again, this is far more important with teas other than Assam.