An American scientist has sparked a trans-Atlantic tempest in a teapot by offering Britain advice on its favorite hot beverage.
Bryn Mawr College chemistry professor Michelle Francl says one of the keys to a perfect cup of tea is a pinch of salt. The tip is included in Francl’s book “Steeped: The Chemistry of Tea,” published Wednesday by the Royal Society of Chemistry.
Not since the Boston Tea Party has mixing tea with salt water roiled the Anglo-American relationship so much.
The salt suggestion drew howls of outrage from tea-lovers in Britain, where popular stereotype sees Americans as coffee-swilling boors who make tea, if at all, in the microwave.
…
The U.S. Embassy in London intervened in the brewing storm with a social media post reassuring “the good people of the U.K. that the unthinkable notion of adding salt to Britain’s national drink is not official United States policy.”
What about tea in the wave?
Do you even have a tea pot? Neanderthal.
?
I steam tea in a moka pot, am I doing it right?
The bad point for the British is: The professor is actually right! At least on the accord with the salt.
I don’t agree with her on another issue: She suggested to add milk after brewing. Nope. You don’t add milk at all. Or worse, lemon juice. Milk murders tea. It basically kills the more interesting chemicals by binding them into a mass that can’t be used by the digestive tract.
Where do you stand on sugar?
As someone with diabetes, I decline. But I am actually not opposed to someone using sugar. It does not react with the essential ingredients. Just don’t overdo it, tea is not soda…
Our bodies make all the sugar we need, honey on the other hand, give er
Depends on the tea, some tea is to be made with milk, for example chai, and some can be made with lemon juice, but most teas are to be brewed and had as is
Agree. Add in some lemon or ginger to be fancy but no milk.
You have piqued my interest on the thing of milk binding up beneficial chemicals. Can you elaborate?
The classic answer is that milk proteins (like casein) react with some the tea proteins (like tannin) and form bonds that the human digestion track cannot process. Tannin in black tea is responsible for most the bitter taste, which is the primary reason why people add milk to tea in the first place, but it is also one of the ingredients that make tea the more healthier beverage choice.
There is a scientific article I’ve read years ago that gave a lot more details, but with everything scientific behind f-ing paywalls nowadays, I could not find it again.
But I found an article that adds another interesting twist to the topic that I had not heard before: Milk Casein Inhibits Effect of Black Tea Galloylated Theaflavins to Inactivate SARS-CoV-2 In Vitro.
Thanks for taking the time to write that! I learned something new today. I usually take tea with oat milk, so now I’m curious what proteins oat milk has and if they act similarly. I’ll do some more reading.
While I doubt that oat milk has casein, as it is an animal protein, it might have other proteins that bind tannin in similar ways. Keep us posted!
I don’t doubt this works because it definitely makes acidic/bitter coffee more palatable.
Salt in tea … Your having a giraffe
My what?
That’s alright mate. I guess if I ever want advice on tea making, I’ll speak to the Chinese.
Fun fact, the modern tea bag was invented by an American. We really know how to throw a tea party.
I believe it was invented by accident. They were sending over samples of some tea in individual silk bags and the people thought of putting the whole thing in the cup.
My understanding (from wiki) is that they intended it to be individual servings of tea, and that customers would dump the contents of the bag out.
Now that’s a risky click
Oh, I think this is what you’re looking for.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teabagging
Quite informative.
Until one misunderstood and put the whole bag in and bam teabag.
Ironically the English don’t really know how to make tea. Then dump hot water on a tea bag then immediately throw on cold milk, making it impossible to actually brew.
No one does that.
Some people even put the milk in first.
lol the BBC has literally aired specials on this subject
Ok.
So make Tea in the microwave with plenty of salt.
I got it. Brits, you good? Boffins? Cheerio, pip, pip?
Tips hat
Evnin’ Govna’ !
Boffin is a slur
“agitating the bag”
If you want to create a better cup of tea at least begin with tea leaves, not tea bags.
Care to elaborate? I don’t see how having the leaves in a bag is inferior to having them loose
With very few exceptions the tea used in teabags is of much lower quality than loose leaf tea. Often it´s just fannings and dust, swept from the floor.
Somehow I doubt tea companies are sweeping dust off the floor and putting it in tea bags. C’mon.
I am not an expert but I have read about such practices again and again over the years. It´s also common knowledge that food companies do much, much worse things.
Dust is what remains after the tea has passed through the grading machine. It is powdery in texture and is often swept off the floor. Dust is considered the lowest grade of tea.
I’ll just assume my bro Steven Smith is one of those exceptions.
Sure looks like it.
A decent guide to tea grades here. Even with higher end teabags, any tea dust created (e.g. if the teabag gets squashed) gets trapped inside the bag. The tea dust makes for a more bitter cup.
Tea in bags is pulverized while loose leaf tends to be intact leaves. It changes the flavor.
I could not agree more. However, a lot of tea drinkers love their dust filled paper bags.
Step 1, grab some tea
Step 2, throw it the fuck out
Step 3, make coffeeI live a few hours from the nearest harbor. will a lake work?
Im a few hours away from Boston too, lets have a tea party!
Whats next britain giving advice on how to most effictivly shoot ur fellow shoolchildren?
Nice one. 👍
I think you’re doing pretty well in that regard without outside help.
Therr is always room for improvement
One joke
It’ll stop being funny when it stops being true
There is a reason everyone calls them the worlds greatest 3rd world country. They are always making it the greatest just never specified at what.
What’s wrong with the microwave? Heat is heat (except the 1995 movie which has little to do with heat or thermodynamics at all).
You could easily over steep it if you microwave it with the bag in it, but if you’re just boiling water it shouldn’t make a difference, other than being inefficient vs a kettle.
This is probably a US vs UK thing on power supply. Microwave is way faster to heat water than a kettle because the max voltage is lower in the US
My electric kettle heats water super fast. I don’t know where the idea that 120v electric kettles are slow came from. Maybe kettle tech used to be worse but I have zero complaints about my kettle speed and I have used European kettles too.
Its possible to make your house 220v here, but we dont because everything sold here is shitty ass 115v
I don’t think I would steep it in the microwave, but I could see myself boiling or reheating tea in it.
Reheating tea? U wot?
Don’t knock it til you try it. Cold water and bag goes in a mug in microwave. 1-2 mins later tea comes out. No forgetting about hot water or letting things cool and forgetting about it. I dont care if it’s correct. It tastes good to me.
Barbarian!
Isn’t microwaving the bag bad? Wouldn’t it add microplastics and such?
I had no idea but a quick search shows most teabags have plastics.
Not sure if there’s a difference between microwaving a bag in water or letting a bag sit in hot water
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You boil the water in the microwave. Then pour it. Not with the leaves or the pouch in.
Nothing. My two cents is just the microwave to heat up you water and add your tea of choice to steep afterwards.
I’ve never tried it but considering there’s 3 different boil levels for steeping tea called inventively first, second and third boil.
Also the levels of oxygen in the water can affect the taste of the tea I would hazard a guess that microwaving water will create a fucking cupped abortion.
A microwave - no matter how clean - will probably imbue the water with ‘extras’. Tea is extremely delicate. I swore I hated tea until one day aged 21yo a friend made me a cup and it turns out I’d been drinking tea wrong the previous 21yrs. It took another 5-6yrs for me to find my preferred tea making method. Everything from the cup to teapot and water hardness level. Whether it has additives in the water and how much. How long to steep for. Each tea can require different steeping times to get the right colour and taste.
Making GOOD tea right isn’t as easy as people think.
Meanwhile China is over there watching the west argue about a drink it invented millennia ago.
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Hold on, about to have my morning cup o Yorkshire, will report back
Edit - it kinda just makes it… rounder. Tea is supposed to be a little bit bitter, the salt makes the softer flavours more pronounced so it kinda stops tasting like tea
Edit 2, second cuppa. Just realised the prof probably doesn’t realise that a pinch of salt is actually quite a bit, so I tried an actual tiny pinch. You know what, it actually does improve it a tiny bit, but no enough that I need more salt in my life.
Does that daft cow not realise how much tea we drink? This is diabolical
You need to drink more (average modern human drinks too less). Then you need more salt.
Thanks for your research, I was too lazy to get off the chair and try myself
Now don’t leave us hanging, won’t you?
