db

Having recently moved to the Big Smoke, I’ve found the quality of my tea has gone significantly downwards; a far cry from the soft waters of the Land of my Fathers where I grew up. I note the recipe states using ’softened’ water, which I agree is no substitute for naturally soft water. I have to conclude, from personal experience, that one can only get a decent cup of tea in Wales. :)

Perhaps I should have read that press release before I linked to it – the Loughborough man concentrates on adding milk before water “because denaturation of milk proteins is likely to occur”, but this isn’t the historical reason. In the bad old days, pre-porcelain, the milk was added first because the hot tea would crack the cheap china cups that were available to the masses.

And so, bereft of science but heavy on history, this rambly post ends. It seems it was about as useful as the teapot pictured in this post, apparently made of chocolate!

Jon

Incidentally, Tetley marketed pyramidal teabags a while back for a fresher flavour, but on the box it said it didn’t matter if the teabag didn’t sit fully pyramidally erect as you’d still get a full-flavoured cuppa. Basically proved that the shape was purely a marketing ploy.

db

As to the oxygen levels, I believe that’s a red herring, is there a research paper on that aspect that you could cite?

db

http://www.rsc.org/pdf/pressoffice/2003/tea.pdf

If anyone is more eminently qualified to give the recipe for a Perfect Cup of Tea than Oscar Wilde, then surely it must be the Chemistry Department at Loughborough University ;-)

I’ve tried it myself, and it works like a charm. The more ceremony in a cup of tea, the better, of course – the Eastern civilisations correctly observe this still. IMHO, naturally.

Jon

Back in my days in Analytical QC wet lab we’d boil the water to remove CO2 for precise titration solutions so could be that if increased H2CO3 would extract components that might alter taste. Seems logical someone at sometime must have done investigation of this nature to profile what differences in tea solutions occur based on water source/treatment so a literature search might find data (if not could be a good school science project if had access to GC?).

I recall in undergrad org lab using steam distillation to extract caffeine from tea as one of the few times people enjoyed smell in the lab. Perhaps only second to when we made a selection of esters with Methyl salicylate/wintergreen being my favorite.

db

Ion exchanged water is the last thing you want to drink…those calcium and magnesium ions are swapped for sodium (from salt) in such a device. I mentioned this in an item on drinking softened water that was originally on chemspy but I migrated it to here…

db