Tea Talk Miami 2008

Tea – the CUTTING EDGE

The topic is the cutting edge but the only way to determine this is to determine just what the limits of knowledge are – where are we and what are we looking for? This involves knowing just where we are in relation to the science of what we are trying to achieve. Anybody can make a claim that their machine or process or is the cutting edge but if it does not achieve what it set out to do, or does not work, then it is not the cutting edge. Similarly with tea – if the claim is made that it is first class and it does not live up to its promise then we need to be able to make some intelligent comment. We need to understand the criteria by which we judge success.

Perhaps I can make my position clear by stating the following.

Philosophy is like being in a dark room and looking for a black cat.

Metaphysics is like being in a dark room and looking for a black cat that isn't there.

Religion is like being in a dark room and looking for a black cat that isn't there and shouting "I found it!"

I am clearly in the philosophy camp. I look for the scientific basis to make any statement. I suspect that many, if not most of you, are in the religious camp.

The conventional wisdom as defined by John Kenneth Galbraith

The conventional wisdom is the product of the repeated expression of views that is in the interest of those professing them to hold, and which gain strength and validity from the frequency with which they are expressed.

The cutting edge for tea is very hard to discuss because there is no definition of what a cup of tea is beyond saying that it is the decoction resulting from the contact of hot water with tea leaves. It seems to be anything at all. If the product or end result is not defined then it is very difficult to define scientifically what is trying to be achieved. How do you know if you have achieved a good result??

My own definition is sufficient. Does it taste like tea? Does it taste like the tea as described? Do you like it? If the answers to all three questions are positive, then it is a good cup of tea.

Chinese and Indian style teas

There are two main types of tea – Chinese style tea and Indian/Sri Lanka style tea. There is no doubt that there are differences in flavour along green /black lines but I wonder to what extent the difference is between large leaf and small leaf teas. Black Chinese teas have a recognisably different flavour. Chinese black teas taste very different to Indian/ Ceylon black teas. The large leaf Chinese teas are brewed with different techniques – but the slow release of flavour from the large leaf means less tannin bitterness whereas the widespread use of CTC and BOP teas and small leaf teas in large pots in the West has been accompanied by a much larger tannin bitterness release which has been hidden by the use of milk and sugar – especially sugar. Those who like sweetness will prefer black teas with milk and sugar or even condensed milk.

I have just returned from the Canton Fair where I met several firms selling Chinese tea. Whatever the theory of making Chinese tea there is no doubt that all the books about Chinese tea practise one thing while I believe most consumers practise another. As written by Shakespeare, it was ‘More honoured in the breach than the observance’ I have never drunk so much tea that is lukewarm in my life.

I have asked several renowned tasters of Chinese tea what makes the difference in the price of the tea. What exactly determines the price of the tea. It is a complicated issue because the price seems to be determined according to the date of manufacture in relation to eighteen festivals in the Chinese calendar.

“Now, how do you recognise good tea?”

“We taste it.”

“How do you taste it?”

“We taste it in the back of the throat.”

At this point I sort of give up because it is my belief that you can taste nothing in the back of the throat – only temperature can be determined there. Well this may not be strictly correct. In fact bitterness is tasted at the back of the tongue and I am now wondering if it is the lack of bitterness which determines if a Chinese tea is good for Chinese tasters. But it must go beyond that – there seems to be a spiritual dimension which is beyond analysis. The Chinese reject black tea from India and Ceylon in general as being terrible – only Darjeeling is comparable with theirs and this is a tea notable for the absence of bitterness. Perhaps this is the reason that Chinese tasters talk of tasting tea in the throat – perhaps they really mean the back of the tongue.. They often refer to avoidance of bitterness. A substantial and pleasant aroma makes a difference. The addition of boiling water several times means that even the tea tastes different from the same pot over a period of time.

Fragrance and flavor harmonize in the throat

The Tea Man, who has a website, (http://www.teatalk.com/general/taste.htm) encapsulated the theory of tea tasting in the following passage, “Appreciating the beautiful color of tea is intimately connected to experiencing its wonderful flavor. First take a sip and hold it in your cheeks; you will learn the tea’s aroma by experience. Then move the tea further back into the oral cavity and move it around a little; you will learn by experience the characteristics of its taste, including the sweetness, bitterness or astringency, fullness, lightness, liveliness, and stimulatory characteristics, as well as how all of these combine to produce the overall effect.

As soon as the tea has been swallowed, the sensation in the throat may be one of bitterness followed by sweetness.

Fragrance, flavor and overall harmonization are the three aspects of tea that can be sensed in the mouth and throat. Generally speaking, the astringent taste will not be too strong; good tea should be sweet, full-bodied, lively, and have the special characteristics of its type.”

I have nothing more to add except to ask how much tea that is sold is capable of delivering the promise incorporated in the hype.. Not much I think. Poor packaging and lack of freshness are the major problems. If you can smell the tea in the supermarket aisle then the tea is losing its aroma.

Water temperature

PP2 Teapots like this are to the best of my knowledge totally unavailable today

PP3

PP4 The water was boiled in the pot

PP5 The water was boiled electrically in the 1920s. Compare modern use where the water is below boiling after pouring over the tea.

The tea industry is the only industry that I know where the technology has gone backwards in the last hundred yeas. In 1907 in the USA you could buy an electric teapot where the water was boiling and for many years until the 1930s you could buy an electric tea pot where a tea-ball could be lowered into the boiling water and brewed. Both have now fallen out of use in recent times. This brings me to the biggest problem with making tea – the water temperature.

PP6. This is one the rarest tea antiques in the world. Not even the Hong Kong tea museum has one. The boiler is supported over a flame which sends heat through a tube internally for rapid boiling. The tube below the handle sits in a dish which is overflowing with water and automatically fills the boiler every time it is put back on the flame. The tube above the handles tells you when the water is boiling. Absolutely ingenious and demonstrates the importance the Chinese place on the water being at boiling point.

Boiling water is so simple that most people never give it a second thought. The term most usually used is ‘freshly boiled water’ which has two meanings ‘just boiled’ and water that has not been boiled for a long time so that the oxygen is driven off. Water boils from around the heat source and progressively heats and boils the water until it is all at boiling point. This actually means that the oxygen is being progressively driven off. In theory we should be using a wide bottomed kettle over a wide heat source and the water should be very shallow. The boiled water would be more oxygenated.

Water with full oxygen can be made in a microwave oven by taking the water to 211 or 99C.

PP7 – This is the brewing temperature under different conditions. Not boiling by a long way.

A single test made with boiling water into

            After 30 seconds                         with preheating

           without preheating                     after three minutes

Espresso cup                      72                                             72

porcelain mug                    89                                             85

ceramic mug                      80                                             82

ceramic teapot                    81                                             90

Very clearly tea made in a cup or mug suffers from serious temperature loss in the brewing process and I suspect that most tea is made in single serves in a cup or mug.

You can demonstrate the importance of temperature for yourself by using a teabag in a tea strainer and pouring boiling water over the teabag slowly – the color will amaze you even if the tea doesn’t. It would be a major improvement if more people did this.

TEA STRAINERS

PP8, PP9 Tea strainers from long ago – not very good but still sold.

I would not be surprised to find that almost every tea shop in the Western world sells these or similar. I have grave doubts that they work at all and may be doing a disservice to the tea industry. Similarly with other forms of modern exotic strainers that do not allow a full and quick cross flow of hot water.

TEABAGS

I hesitate to use the words ‘good’ or ‘bad’ because that implies a moral judgment. If someone likes a style of painting I can only say, “I don’t like it.” – I cannot say it is good or bad – similarly with tea bags. I believe the way that they are normally served causes teabag tea to fail the test that I apply to all food and beverages – with your eyes closed can you recognise what it is? If you can get a positive answer, you may ask the next question – is it nice or not nice.? My problem with teabags is not with the teabags themselves as much as with the method of use. The design of the normal paper teabag does not encourage water flow through the leaves which is a pre-requisite for a good flavour extraction. The main problem is that they are normally used with water being poured over a teabag in a cup, mug or teapot. The temperature problem I have mentioned exacerbates the situation. The extraction is very slow and it seems almost impossible to make bitter tea.

The latest triangular or pyramid teabags which have a larger leaf and plenty of room for the tea to swell potentially make a better tea provided the temperature problem is overcome. I cannot say whether they will make a better cup of tea than the same tea used in a teapot. Being a great cynic, I have doubts that they are being sold for the reason that they make better tea but rather that they are more expensive and thus a luxury and attractive for consumers for that reason. I see no scientific statements to justify their existence.

There is a form of teabags that are long filter bags for the consumer to fill with tea – they are suspended in the pot or the cup. They do not work to my satisfaction but their widespread use indicates that there is a large part of the market satisfied with them. I suspect that the devotees are more used to tea without bitterness and drunk black than with milk and sugar.

I am led to the conclusion that tea connoisseurs have different expectations of what is in their cup. Tea drunk black and tea drunk with milk and sugar taste as different as poached eggs and scrambled eggs.

TEAPOTS

PP10 – The ideal shape for a teapot in my mind.

There have been teapots in the West for over three centuries and I see few advantages in any of them intrinsically. The best ones cause the tea leaves to fall into the spout so that the water passes through them rather than letting the tea essence stay at the bottom of the pot. The one thing I can say is that the lighter the material the better the teapot is likely to be at brewing at a higher temperature. Plastic is particularly suitable for this but unattractive. Probably the next best is lightweight glass – the brew is enhanced in appearance.

PP11 The teapot is plastic and absorbs much less heat from the water and the insulation keeps it hot.

Some teapots incorporate filter baskets internally and pressers to squeeze out the flavour. It makes you aware of the possibility that there must be flavour left in the tea leaves if you do not squeeze them – or is it possible that the squeezing does not make any difference at all? I await the scientific proof one way or another.

PP12 I would like to see tests showing just how good a tea maker this is.

The best teapots that I have used were of Japanese origin and used a cylindrical filter with a very fine nylon mesh at the bottom. The hot water has to go through the tea and not out the side of the filter – in other words the tea got a thorough wetting. I always felt the result was very good.

PP13 The filter is very fine nylon mesh. The lid is kept on by a magnetic ring around the rim of the teapot.

AUTOMATIC BREWERS

The German CLOER Teeautomat is a double chamber machine with a variable brew time from 2-12 minutes. It probably works reasonably. I do not know what the brew temperature is. Operation is as follows; water in a reservoir is heated, and poured over the tea in a "brewing chamber", sits there for some pre-programmed time after which a valve is opened, and the brewed tea flows through a filter into a "receiving chamber". The TriniTEA Electric Maker seems to do everything it is supposed to. Most of the reviews from owners are positive so I will assume that it works well.

My reservations to both machines stem from the fact that the dimensions of the tea leaves are not exact.

The SANYO commercial automatic matcha machine is amazing – costs a lot and will obey every command you give it to make matcha tea in every way you can imagine. This is a true cutting edge machine.

The Espresso machine KLUB from Taiwan has a patented process and a claim that it can do anything. I am not sure about this. In Milan in October I tried to get the people on the stand to make a concentrate and they could not. It seems satisfactory to make what it is designed to do – it makes tea cappuccinos with frothed milk and also iced coffee using a lot of ice. I have seen it being used in a chain in China

Characteristics of tea. The following may be opinions but I have a strong suspicion that they are facts.

 • According to several websites tea releases 80% of its caffeine in the first thirty seconds. The suggestion is that 80% of the flavour comes out in the first thirty seconds but the data does not show how the experiments were designed. Bitterness comes out afterwards. It is my opinion that the bitterness is present even in a three to five minute steeping but is not tasted because it is diluted.
 • Tea sinks when boiling water is poured over it.

• If water boiled in a microwave oven is poured over tea, the leaves float because the water has retained its oxygen molecules.

• The tea essence is leached from the tea leaves and some will rest between the tea leaves at the bottom of the pot unless the leaves are agitated in some way.

• The smaller the leaf size the faster the extraction.

• Tea leaves in different size grades will brew in different times.

• The higher the temperature, the higher the extraction rate and vice-versa.

• A very small leaf size and a very hot water brewing temperature should result in a very strong and fast extraction.

If the above facts are true then certain things follow.

1. Tea filters where some of the water may go into the pot without passing through the leaves are not likely to get the full extraction.

2. Tea makers where the tea is steeped at temperatures below boiling point are not as efficient at extracting the flavour.

3. Tea which is enveloped in little containers with holes in the sides are unlikely to give a good brew and even then , there will have to be room for the tea to swell and allow water to freely circulate.

4. Tea leaves which are pressed may not release all the flavour – it depends on the design of the pot and whether there are apertures under the tea.

Only two criteria remain to be established. I know that some parts of the tea industry use measurements of tea leaves in mms. This is especially relevant for larger sizes. The rather vaguer terms of BOP etc are not used. Tea size needs to be classified better.

The second is freshness. This almost the unmentionable subject. I, as an informed consumer, do not know how to determine if tea is fresh except by buying it and hoping. I would have thought there could be something better.

PP14 – An English or perhaps Australian tea dispenser from a bottle

I see tea specialist shops which display fancy canisters of tea as part of the décor. The more the better. I always remember being in Cherry Hill, North Carolina many years and asking a retailer why he was selling 40 different coffee beans which were stale – wouldn’t it be better to sell ten beans all fresh. The response was that if he didn’t do it, another shop in town would and he would lose the business. Who is running the business – the retailer or the consumer. I am aware of all the nuances of the situation – the consumer wants a range of products and that is what makes us specialists. It concerns me that I get dumb looks when I ask tea traders where to buy good fresh tea and they have no idea. Is it impossible? I would like to see more attention paid to a tea date passport attached to packs of tea and to bulk teas. I know it is difficult but it is possible.

There is no doubt that vacuum packed tea preserves the flavour of the tea better than packaging with oxygen. The packaging must be done in the factory straight after packaging. The United Planters Association of Southern India and the Tea Board of India have issued a paper by Mr. K. Gopal Krishnan reporting the basic research that vacuum packing of tea at the tea factory assists freshness and thereby flavour retention by around 15%. The important point to remember is that if the just opened packet has a good aroma, the tea inside has lost the aroma to the packet. The key to a good cup of tea is to use tea that still retains the aroma at the time of brewing.

The proof of the pudding is in the drinking. If so much tea is being drunk and the business is growing something must be right. Alternatively it might be that the consumer has been trained to have very low expectations. I suspect that this is the truth.

The TEA-CHA process

PP15 The red is small leaf tea with boiling water for thirty seconds and the blue is large leaf tea at a lower temperature for 3-5 minutes.

I would now like to introduce you to something totally new – the real cutting edge. In a very real sense it is the logical conclusion of what I have just been speaking about.

I believe this is the first new tea process in a few hundred years – all the others involve steeping in some way, either pressurised or un-pressurised. The process is designed to make a concentrate from very small tea leaves in thirty seconds from leaching the flavour from the tea leaf and NOT steeping . The concentrate is then diluted it to make a cup of tea, a pot of tea, a pitcher of iced tea or a tea latte – all after thirty seconds. Only time will tell whether it is successful commercially. I have heard from tea tasters that it is very good because it makes the tea flavour without bitterness. One tea man said that it was the only scientific way he had seen to make tea.

PP16, By pouring just enough boiling water to cover the tea for thirty seconds you get a strong concentrate

PP17, PP18, PP18,PP19, PP20, PP21

It is my assertion that it makes better tea from the lowest grades of tea than can be made from better grades of tea. I am joined by some professional Indian tea tasters in saying this. My own experiments show that it can make better tea from large leaf tea finely ground which is not surprising as the process extracts as much tea flavour as possible and as little bitterness as possible

Finally I would like to suggest that there is a Code of Conduct for the industry. I believe every person and company in the tea industry should subscribe to a code of conduct which should be publicised at every opportunity to identify participants. The buying public should base their decisions on the stated integrity of the vendor and not the reputation of the company.

1. Only to sell tea making devices which actually work according to any definition that the vendor wants to make. Pretty packaging, mark-up and other factors should play no part in the decision.

2. Everyone in the tea chain should ensure that the tea they are selling is true to description and fresh enough to make a good cup of tea according to description.

Final thought. Everyone in the tea chain should take on step every day to ensure that the consumer gets a better cup of tea.