Monday, November 27, 2006

Tea, anyone?

Today began my long tea research project. Actually, "begin" is a misnomer, since I've been interested in the leaves for quite some time and have been doing what can be called "haphazard" research at best. Anyway...

At first, I thought I was limited to only brewing the tea at 200 degrees Fahr. because the little spigot on our drip brewer gives that sort of water. However, green tea leaves burn at 200 degrees. The optimal temp. is 175 degrees Fahr., which causes a slight problem. How to get the temp down in a timely manner? Using a little brain power, though, I figured I could use the espresso machine milk-steaming wand (properly cleaned, of course) to bring filtered cold water to the proper temp. Apart from the hideous noise that this process made, it worked quite well. The green tea tastes perfect. Now I have to figure out if this process will ruin my steam wand (which I doubt it will, but I must ask).

So, if you are in the mood for a properly steeped cup of tea, stop in.

1 comment:

Jason said...

Hope you guys have fun tonight!

Some thoughts--

1) I know a fair bit about tea (enough to be silent and deadly), but you need to clue me in on some more things, like temperature stuff.

2) I made an Americano before I left for the test--the water on the Bunn machine barely came out at a trickle. Has this happened to you?

3) The food test was REALLY REALLY HARD. I'm not kidding. I'm worried about how I did (especially--not exaggerating--a few of the questions were not covered whatsoever on the online course).

4) I have bad news about "Black Gold"--it's being shown at 3 p.m. on Sat. Maybe we can go the following week (if you have no problem with going on Sunday).

5) I got a lot of sweet books tonight, on the cheap.