Time. Temperature. Tea.

Just as we love to experiment with our coffee beverages, we love tea experimentation too!

Your desired brew strength can be varied in the length of the infusion time and the amount of tea leaves used in this infusion.

In your experimentation of brewing tea, it is not recommended to vary the water temperature as it can significantly impact the overall quality by either accenting out bitter tastes or not pulling out enough flavours and aromas.

So when brewing tea how does the temperature affect the flavours?

When starting your tea experimentation, it is important to consider the original parameters for the different tea brewing temperatures for different types of tea.

• Green Tea: around 80ºC for 2-3 minutes
• Oolong Tea: around 90ºC for 3-4 minutes
• Black Tea: around 100ºC for 3-5 minutes
• White Tea: around 80ºC for 2-5 minutes
• Pu-erh Tea: around 100ºC for 2-4 minutes
• Herbal Tea: around 100ºC for 5-10 minutes
• Rooibos Tea: around 100ºC for 5-7 minutes

Some other handy tips to keep in mind during your brewing tea experimentation processes:

• Always start with fresh, filtered water.
• Do not reboil the water as it will flatten the taste of the tea due to the decreased levels of oxygen in the water.
• Preheat your tea pot and/or cup.
• Learn the difference between re-infusing loose leaf teas, as some such as herbal teas are one shot wonders, whereas other tea such as oolong can re-infused.
• If you cannot control the temperature on your kettle, boil and pour your water from a regular kettle into a measuring cup with a pour spout and measure the temperature using a kitchen thermometer.