Tea Time

Track_Shovel@slrpnk.net to Lemmy Shitpost@lemmy.world – 900 points –
152

"Preparation purist" is wrong. You don't boil the tea, you steep it in hot water. For some teas, like black tea, you usually boil the water before pouring it over the tea, but other types of tea use water that isn't as hot (e.g. around 70-80°C for green tea).

Also, if you actually want to be an ingredient purist, tea must be made from the leaves of Camellia sinensis (or a closely related species).

You're arguing with a meme that put clogged gutter as pure tea ingredient

Correct. That would be tea as long as it's camellia sinensis.

i mean, if you consider tea to be leaves soaked in water until the flavor comes out, then clogged up gutter water is tea.

What's the proper steeping time for decaying oak leaves "until the flavor comes out"?

I'd say you should steep them for up to a year, that way you get all the taste.

Excellent, I'll be ready to sell my current batch this coming October.

In some countries where tee grows naturally you can found riviers and pond where the water carried tea leaves fell from the tree, which give naturally to the water some aroma.

The meme is terrible and shows the creator has taste buds that probably can't distinguish between gutter water and tea (especially after it's been BOILED a few hours).

You hit the issue, theyre confusing tea, a specific plant, with an infusion. Herbal tea is more correctly called an herbal infusion. Tea is a type of herbal infusion.

From https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herbal_tea :

... most dictionaries record that the word tea is also used to refer to other plants beside the tea plant and to beverages made from these other plants. In any case, the term herbal tea is very well established and much more common than tisane.

Furthermore, in the Etymology of tea, the most ancient term for tea was 荼 (pronounced tu) which originally referred to various plants such as sow thistle, chicory, or smartweed, and was later used to exclusively refer to Camellia sinensis (true "tea")

I think the confusion come from the fact that in many languages and cultures the name for tea and plant infusion is the same. Tea is name plant infusion because it is among the go to infusion if no plant is mention. But then in these language the name for "herbal infusion" or "herbal tea" does not contain the name of the specific plant "tee". This or the languages got it wrong. Yes, I go that far.

I'm steeping in sweat and I drank a lot of camellia sinensis, am I tea?

Unfortunately for you, yes. Please report to the nearest Tetley factory for processing.

I came to say the same thing about Camellia sinensis, thinking "am I about to be more of a tea purist than is even encapsulated in this chart?" So I'm glad somebody else got there first lol

This standard is not meant to define the proper method for brewing tea intended for general consumption, but rather to document a tea brewing procedure where meaningful sensory comparisons can be made.

I've been to a workshop about green tea recently and you can prepare it with any water temperature. You can make it with cold water, it just takes longer. You can even place ice cubes into the can, put tea leaves on top and let them melt

Yes, sun tea is tea. I'd really like to see this meme done by someone who actually knows something about tea (and doesn't think it involves boiling tea leaves)

Ice brewed tea is a thing in the US. Take a pitcher with water and ice, throw it in the fridge overnight with some tea bags

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100% agreed.

Though I'm firmly in the "coffee is tea" camp

Coffee is hot bean juice

Coffee with vanilla and soy milk is a three bean soup.

As a bean purist, I have to disagree. (My puristic view: a bean can only come from a legume.) It's a one bean soup.

Coffee beans aren't true beans. They are the pit seeds of the coffee cherry fruit, similar to other stone fruit such as cherries, peaches, plums, olives, and dates.

No, the fruit must be squeezed for juice. Soy milk is bean juice, but coffee is not.

I think coffee is sometimes tea, but turkish coffee and espresso are definitely not

It depends. It's perfectly acceptable to boil the tea for many Indian preparations (usually called cha or chai).

That's not tea, it's chai.

Which is a type of tea.

Sure, if you think preparation and ingredients don't matter. Enjoy a hot, steaming, cup of Saturn.

Why do you think that the Chinese way is the only way to prepare authentic tea? It's so weird dude. We have an ancient tea tradition in India. That's my point. That a purist might think this method as the proper way too. And it'd be just as valid.

It's not weird at all. China invented tea (Camellia sinensis). The cultivation techniques, the drying and fermenting, and the brewing techniques for various types of black, white, green, and oolong tea. They named it, too. Both "tea" and "chai" are derived from the Chinese word for tea.

Tea wasn't cultivated in India until the nineteenth century, when it was introduced by colonial British who literally stole tea plants and seeds from China in an act of corporate espionage. At that point in time, China had been cultivating tea for multiple millennia, and exporting it around the globe for several hundred years. India initially produced CTC (cut, tear, crush) tea on colonial plantations for export, only later (in the 1900s) selling tea to the domestic Indian market, when the practice of adding CTC black tea to masala chai took off in India.

What's weird is that you've bought into some kind of alternate history where India invented tea.

I'm not the one who's trying to change history here. We know that the Chinese have the oldest recorded tea consumption. Doesn't make that the only valid way of doing it. It's like saying that there's only one authentic way to cook a potato, which is whatever the first person did with it.

And about whatever you said about tea being a new thing in India, it's not accurate. It was first mass produced after the British came. But it actually goes back quite a bit. Camellia sinensis var. assamica is actually indigenous to the Assam region of India, and not "stolen from the Chinese". Some think that some tribes in India (Singpho, Khamti) have been consuming tea from at least the 12th Century, though they had a different name for it. Some (A Revision of the Genus Camellia by Robert Sealy) think it goes back further, but idk about that.

But honestly, that's not even the point. Why did you even feel the need to type this comment? Even if it was a 200 old tradition, that's a pretty long time. And it should be accepted as a valid way of brewing. I'm not even disputing anything. I simply pointed out that there are alternative traditions. That the world isn't fucking black and white. Seriously dude, when did I say anything that claimed that Indians invented tea? This isn't twitter, no need to do this shit here.

It depends of the kind of tee your using. Once I bought the wrong type of turkish tea and next thing I now I'm boiling my tea during month so I don't drink a slighty darker version of hot water.

Thank you. I am horrified that I had to scroll past a discussion of "is pho tea"? to get here. The so-called purist has never even made a proper cup of tea! So obviously pho is NEVER tea, since stock is extensively boiled.

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Preparation futurist, Ingredient singularity:

There's a singularity in that nebula.

I have never rewatched Voyager and I think I have to soon.

It's only tea if it's made from the tea region of the plant. Anything else is sparkling suspension

Crude oil is texas tea, but mac and cheese requires milk not water.

I think I've seen mac and cheese cups that ask for hot water.

Do you people not put milk in your crude oil? I find it suits the subtle bitterness of Alberta tar to give it a wonderful but subtle aftertaste.

but mac and cheese requires milk not water.

So does masala chai.

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Tea preparation rebels are not constrained by shallow concepts like 'being edible'

Saturn is a mixture of gases. It has a solid rocky/hydrogen core surrounded by a layer of liquid hydrogen/helium. You could argue that this intermediate liquid layer might have solid particulates, and this would agree with the definition, but overall Saturn is too complicated to be classified this way. A better extreme example would be something like Earth's oceans.

You're response sounds like what an AI would say when you try to be sarcastic with it.

An AI would give a generic definition of Saturn and a generic definition of tea and then say something irrelevant like "scientists disagree about the exact composition of Saturn's core"

As miso soup enjoyer i can confirm it's tea, because it's relaxing & delicious

So because i make cold berry tea in summer and think coffee is a tea too, i'm a "crude oil is tea" sort of guy? 🤨

What, you don't enjoy a nice iced crude oil on a hot summers day?

Son, fetch me another can of that crude oil, I'm mighty parched

How 'bout a little dollop of microplastics on my asbestos pancakes? Got a long day of work ahead.

except... with "pure" tea you don't consume the original ingredient. (eating tea leaves or coffee grounds? eeww.)

pho, etc you do. ergo, not tea.

Pho is just animal oil/juice suspended. Everything else is like milk, honey, lemon, sugar, etc. that people do consume in tea.

what about the rice noodles, chicken, mushrooms, etc etc.? come on.

So if a deranged person drinks the broth without eating the ingredients, did they then turn their pho into tea?

No, because you don't really make tea by boiling tea leaves. Tea is an infusion made from pouring hot water over tea leaves. Not boiling tea leaves.

As the other person mentioned, the base of pho is the stock which includes steeped plants. So it's tea with some other things thrown in it.

What about stock? Take some bones, spices, and vegetables; boil them in water; and strain out all the solids. You're left with nothing but a flavored liquid.

sure, stock is tea. the base of pho is tea, but pho isn't pho until you at least put some noodles in it. Until then, it's just ingredients for pho.

This is cool. Why would I want this?

I've never used it, but the idea is that nutrient uptake will be faster than if someone just dressed the top of the soil with compost. The extra aerobic bacteria could also be beneficial.

For liquid fertilizer, but seems silly when you can get the same results but just throwing the compost in the water and stirring it around, letting the solids sink to the bottom.

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I'm sorry, but BOILING? You do not BOIL tea leaves unless you are an absolute heathen. You may pour just-off-the-stove, formerly boiling water over black tea leaves, making the tea about 210 degrees Fahrenheit. But you do NOT put allow water with tea leaves in it to BOIL unless you are seriously deranged.

Yeah this. Biggest mistake most people that hate tea make is they dont bother learning that tea has specific temps for brewing depending on the leaves and that pouring boiling water off the stove on it will make most teas bitter.

Many teas are best at 85-90C, just off the boil.

I guess I'm an ingredient purist, preparation rebel. If your house is surrounded by tea plants, and the tea leaves fall in the gutter, how is that different from brewing tea the normal way?

Hey, that's basically tea's origin story.

In Chinese legendEmperor Shennong was drinking a bowl of just boiled water because of a decree that his subjects must boil water before drinking it.[12] Some time around 2737 BC, a few leaves were blown from a nearby tree into his water, changing the color and taste. The emperor took a sip of the brew and was pleasantly surprised by its flavor and restorative properties.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_tea

mighty brave for an emperor to see that their water has changed color, and decide to try it anyway.

Water isn't the ideal temperature. Everyone knows black tea must be made with water that's 212-210 degreases Fahrenheit

JFC, for someone so bent about the proper way to prepare tea, one would think you'd be able to spell "degrees"

LOL I know how to spell degrees. I probably hit the wrong key and spellcheck autocorrected it to something random. Welcome to 2024.

I mean, he's not going to have black tea anyways as it won't have been prepared correctly.

So, is a martini with the olive on top, a preparation rebel/igredient neutral or ingredient purist?

This and the cube rule are the best way to make an argument for categorizing edible items

Beef tea was when people would boil jerky to rehydrate it. I actually do that at work sometimes! Most nights I enjoy bouillon broth on its own, but occasionally I'll spruce it up with a little jerky, and it actually thicken up and get more tender! It also GREATLY enhances the flavor of the broth. When the dry night air of the office is bothering my throat, nothing satisfies quite like warm broth.

(I get hot water by not putting any coffee grounds in the coffee machine. I also use this to prepare tea on occasion, and also ramen cups every once in a blue moon)

+1 for coffee machine cup ramen, a very useful technique that I implement often.

If you boil coffee it'll be over extracted, bitter, and nasty.

Same applies to green tea. Shouldn't go over 175F, or it'll be overly bitter as it extracts more caffeine.

Asking anyway. Hey Fiora, is a hotdog in a hotdog bun considered a sandwich?

Coffee isn't a tea, as you don't boil it. If you boil it, you burn the coffee! That's an extraction - you can steep it, but it's better if you just push the water through at high pressure (which will royally screw up a tea).

Ah, pedantry in pedantry. So - now for Lemmy to tell me what I've gotten wrong :⁠-⁠D

Boiling green tea is also considered burnt, as green teas recommended steeping temp is 170-175, unless I misunderstood what you mean there.

No, that's fair. Coffee at pressure is about 93 - 95°C... No idea for drip/french press/v60 etc. as I don't use those For Aeropress, I'd wait until the kettle stopped making noise, that seemed to be a good balance without burning the oils.

Teas are generally not boiled, but steeped in hot water that was boiling a moment ago. I was going to say that cowboy coffee is boiled, but then I looked it up, and even then, the pot is pulled off the heat before adding the grounds.

I boil my coffee, and a lot of people do. Espresso and derivatives are rather new way of making coffee, the old way is by boiling a coffee.

I do boil coffee. One of us might be a coffee preparation purist.

I've actually had coffee tea, I have Indonesian family and one of the times I visited I was traded a bag of coffee leaves and berries for agreeing to be in some advertising pictures, and its actually pretty good!

Coffee ≠ tea. Coffee is made from beans and tea is made from leaves. That's why tea tastes like grass clippings.

Ginger tea though. It's fine not to consider that tea, but if you do call it tea, you have to let coffee in too.

I have a Yogi tea with curry here. Sold as tea.

Yeah and tomatoes are taxed like vegetables, that doesn't make it correct.

Ackchyually, coffee is made from dried berries that people call beans for some reason

While you're right and I forgot about that, it doesn't make a difference in the context of my argument.

Lol y'all are just cranky because you drink leaf broth.