This week on Revival Tea Academy we're talking about how you've been making tea wrong your entire life. There's all different kinds of teas: Camellia Sinensis, a Green tea, a Black tea or Herbal blend; and time and temperature are everything.
The first thing we want to talk about though are how much tea should you put inside of a cup; and really the rule of thumb is to use one teaspoon per eight ounces of water (which is why they call it a teaspoon). If you're using a tea bag, that should have about a teaspoon of tea in it; so that works as well. You will need to have a different time and temperature for every single type of tea. Green tea, you typically want to steep at about 170 to175 degrees fahrenheit. This is very important. A lot of people have had bad experiences with Green teas; where they get burnt, the tea will turn bitter and people will think that they're not really a Green tea fan, when really it's just been made wrong for them their entire lives. With a Black tea we need the water temperature to be around 200 to 212 degrees (which is water to a boil). If you don't get the water to the appropriate temperature for a Black tea it won't extract all the flavor that you're looking for. You could have a very nice English Breakfast or Earl Grey, but if you don't get it to that 200/212 degrees it won't extract all that flavor.
When talking about time, it's just as important, a Green tea is going to steep about 3 minutes, where a Black Tea is going to steep 5 up to even 6 minutes for a Chai or our Lemon Ginger Tonic; something with a little bit of spice in it. One tip for all of our teas here at Revival Tea Company is for every tea that you're drinking you can go to our website at www.revivaltcompany.com and find the perfect time and temperature for each individual cup. And with just these few simple tricks, you should be able to make the perfect cup of tea every single time.
Cheers,
Revival Tea Academy