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Forgetfulness is not the exclusive province of the elderly. At least that’s what I keep telling myself, and thus am assured that being forgetful is not a sign of being over the hill. Many people — even some decades younger than me — forget things due to their busy lives, including attending to their children. I don’t have that excuse either. So, why do I often forget to time my tea? No idea, but I do know that it’s not a total disaster.
A big note on the teapot to remember to time the tea!
The good news is that forgetting to time your tea is not the end of the world. Nor does it mean that you have to dump the oversteeped tea down the drain (or water your garden with it). There are options:
- If it’s a fairly strong black tea such as an Assam, you can add a bunch of sweetener and, if you are one who can stand milk in your tea, you can add some milk. That will take away the bitterness.
- If it’s a green tea like gunpowder, I find that thinning it with some water heated to the proper steeping temperature helps.
- A little lemon juice would be a help, with just the right amount of sour balancing out the astringency.
- Ditto for a sprinkle of cinnamon or some other flavoring according to your particular taste. In fact, if you have typical chai spices on hand, turn your oversteeped tea into a spiced chai.
- And then there are recipes where you can use strongly steeped tea in place of broth or water. Soups, stews, casseroles, baked goods, or more, are possibilities here.
Of course, the best cure is prevention. Time to implement a timer. Having a full set of fingers and toes, I nevertheless find using them as my instruments to keep track of the passing seconds and minutes for steeping to be a tad tricky. With so many timers available, from those shaped like mini hourglasses and filled with colored sand to high-tech apps for your iPhone or computer, timing your tea should be a no-brainer.
But, how do you remember to use the timer? Ah, as the Bard said, there lies the rub. You could enlist your spouse or other family member or a roommate to remind you, but who will remind them? This could end up being an infinite regression, like images in fun house mirrors, with Donny reminding Susie to remind Tiffany that she promised to remind Harry to remind you to set the timer when you steep your tea.
Hm… maybe a note on the teapot would be simpler.
A big note.
A big big BIG note.
Well, anyway, even if you forget to time your tea, you can save it with the options listed above. And don’t worry about your forgetfulness being due to old age. Blame it on insufficient sleep, your mind being occupied with deep thoughts, or some such excuse… uh, I mean legitimate reason.
See also:
Time to Time Your Tea
Nothing Beats that “Golden Pour” of Tea
Tea Gadgets and Novelties
It’s Teamaker Time
Tea Time Horrors
Time to Time Your Tea
Tea Brewing Techniques ß correct spelling
Tea-Timing!
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Get ready to think outside the teapot. There are other ways to steep your teas. It’s time to explore a few of them.
Just as the most creative and imaginative people tend to “think outside the box” when they are facing a tricky issue or new situation, you can approach tea steeping with the same resourcefulness. What you steep in and how you steep can be dependent on the tea being steeped, but the rules aren’t hard and fast. Some are simply a matter of tradition, another way of saying they are habitual. There’s plenty of room for you to be creative.
Matcha
Whether full leaf or matcha powder, whether white or oolong, whether loose or in a bag/sachet, teas are added to hot water in some vessel. For many of us, teapots are most often the type of vessel chosen for steeping teas.
First, a bit about teapots. They come in a variety of sizes and materials but are basically all the same. They have a body to hold water, a hole in the top for adding the water and tea, a lid for the hole, a handle, and a spout for pouring the liquid.
Yixing teapots are made from a special clay and usually hold about one cupful of tea. Porcelain teapots in a variety of styles, shapes, and sizes abound. Glass teapots are great for a visual tea experience, especially when steeping a “flowering” tea. Metals and pottery are other materials used. There are teapots as small as about half a cup or so. On the large end of the scale are supersized teapots used in British tearooms. Then, there are Russian Samovars that are actually large urns holding hot water and a smaller teapot filled with a strong tea brew that sits on top of it through the day.
Now, to consider some alternatives. After all, there are teas and tea customs in various countries that employ other vessels for the proper preparation and enjoyment of certain teas. Full-leaf green teas are one example. You can put a few tea leaves in a specially made bowl with a lid, let the tea steep, move the lid back a little, and sip the tea, leaving the leaves in the cup. Then, add more hot water for a second, third, fourth, or even fifth infusion. If you don’t have one of these special cups with lid, try a small bowl and some lid from a plastic container.
Another tea that inspires tea drinkers to expand beyond the teapot is “flowering” tea. Meant to be as much a visual spectacle as a taste sensation, flowering teas are full tea leaves and often flower petals “sewn” together with thin string. Dry, they are most commonly shaped like balls and mushrooms. Steeped, they open into a large blossom. Using a glass teapot is one obvious choice. An open glass bowl is non-teapot option. (I used a bowl from a florist shop, well washed of course.) There’s no pouring spout, but a ladle can be used to move the liquid into the cup.
Still another alternative is found in your kitchen cupboard: a glass measuring cup. It has about the same features as a teapot: a body, a hole in the top to add water and tea, a handle, and a spout (a bit short but serviceable). You can heat the water in the microwave, test the temperature with a thermometer, add the tea to the water, cover with some impromptu lid such as from an empty plastic container, and watch the tea steep.
These are just a few possibilities. Explore your kitchen cupboards for a suitable vessel for your next teatime adventure — just for the heck of it!
Make sure to check out A.C.’s blog, Tea Time with A.C. Cargill!
French presses are becoming all the rage for gourmet coffee drinkers — but what about tea? We tea drinkers like the gourmet touch when preparing our fine teas just as much as coffee drinkers like it for their fine coffees. Can we use a French press, too? Sure we can, at least that’s the opinion of several tea drinkers I know.
First things first. What the heck is a French press? No, it has nothing to do with laundry. Basically, a French press is a glass or plastic cylindrical beaker and a plunger with a wire or mesh filter. They date back to the mid-19th century when they were made of metal instead. The legend of how the French press was created goes back to an old man in the Provence area of France. He would go out for a long walk and stop to make coffee over an open fire. He bought a metal screen from a passing Italian peddler and used a stick to push that screen down into the metal cylinder. The result was a very good cup of coffee free of most of the grind pieces.
So, how do you use a French press to steep a very good cup of tea? And does tea that you steep in a French press taste better than tea steeped other ways? The answer to the first question is simple and objective. The answer to the second is strictly subjective and depends on your tastebuds.
Simple steps for using a French press to steep tea:
- Be sure that the French press is thoroughly clean from the last use so that the metal parts aren’t coated with bitter alkaloids from the previous steeping.
- Put about one half ounce of dry tea for every cup (8 ounces) of water into the press.
- Bring your water to just under boiling and pour it into the press over the dry tea.
- Let steep. How long depends on the tea being used. Black tea needs a few minutes. White and green teas take only 30 seconds to a couple of minutes. Oolongs will need something in-between. You will need to do some experimenting and can hurry the process along by pushing down the plunger once or twice.
- When the steeping is done, push down the plunger (don’t force it) and pour the tea into your cups or mugs.
Keep in mind that teas come in different forms: full leaf, broken leaf, fannings, dust, and powder (mainly Japanese matcha). If the pieces are too small, they will get pushed through the wire or mesh filter attached to the plunger. It’s also not a good idea to use the same French press for both coffee and tea. The strong taste of coffee is hard to wash totally out of the metal screen on the plunger. You also shouldn’t let tea continue to steep in the press (unless you actually like “bitter tea face”). When steeping time is done, pour all the tea into cups or another container. Since French presses often only hold about 2 to 3 cups of liquid (some hold as much as a quart), this shouldn’t be too much of an issue. If you’re using the French press in an office, keep another container there to hold the excess tea liquid and then clean the press.
Awhile back, I wrote about steeping tea using an infuser basket the size of the cup. The point was letting the tea fully interact with the water, not get cramped in a small space, such as an infuser ball. The French press certainly accomplishes this, too, and is therefore a viable alternative to steeping loose in a teapot (but don’t tell my teapots I said that — they’re very jealous).
Want a good demo for how to use a French press properly? Check out this one by Lainie Peterson of Lainie Sips.
Do your own taste test of tea steeped in a French press versus in a teapot and see which you like best. I think the teapot steeping tastes best (had to say that, since my teapots are listening). Enjoy!
Don’t forget to stop by A.C.’s blog, Tea Time with A.C. Cargill!
