cobalta wrote:Is it really necessary to drag out the candy thermometer and gram scale to make a pot of tea? Well, the answer to that one is yes, if you want a drinkable pot of snooty tea.
Absolutely not! I'm sorry if I gave that impression.
Most avid tea drinkers rarely bother with accurate measuring devices.
When I make a cup of earl grey, this is my method:
toss a large pinch of tea into a cup, add some boiling water, leave it for a little while, scoop out most of the tea leaves, and drink my tea.
I'm a little more careful when making white or green tea, but that is just because I personally
suck at temperature comparison. Most avid green tea drinkers follow a very similar method to my earl grey method (except they "add some
hot water").
What the measuring devices do:
1. Help someone who hasn't made a lot of tea learn to make a pot of tea without someone to assist him/her the first few times.
2. Help one figure out the right way to make a brand new type of tea.
3. Allow tea drinkers to compare brewing methods.
Fortunately, adding too much tea is really the easiest problem to correct. Just pull out a measuring spoon and add the tea leaves that way the first few times. After a few tries, you will be able to tell by eye about how much tea to add.
In general, most teas use 1 tsp per cup of water. However, some teas work better with less, and some work better with more.
In the end, it is a matter of how you like it.
For example, if you find that adding a teaspoon-ish of tea leaves results in a bitter cup, you might want to add less tea. If you find, however, that it results in an extremely weak cup, you might want to add more tea.
~Yresim~