“Preparation purist” is wrong. You don’t boil the tea, you steep it in hot water. For some teas, like black tea, you usually boil the water before pouring it over the tea, but other types of tea use water that isn’t as hot (e.g. around 70-80°C for green tea).
Also, if you actually want to be an ingredient purist, tea must be made from the leaves of Camellia sinensis (or a closely related species).
In some countries where tee grows naturally you can found riviers and pond where the water carried tea leaves fell from the tree, which give naturally to the water some aroma.
The meme is terrible and shows the creator has taste buds that probably can’t distinguish between gutter water and tea (especially after it’s been BOILED a few hours).
I’ve been to a workshop about green tea recently and you can prepare it with any water temperature. You can make it with cold water, it just takes longer. You can even place ice cubes into the can, put tea leaves on top and let them melt
Yes, sun tea is tea. I’d really like to see this meme done by someone who actually knows something about tea (and doesn’t think it involves boiling tea leaves)
Why do you think that the Chinese way is the only way to prepare authentic tea? It’s so weird dude. We have an ancient tea tradition in India. That’s my point. That a purist might think this method as the proper way too. And it’d be just as valid.
It’s not weird at all. China invented tea (Camellia sinensis). The cultivation techniques, the drying and fermenting, and the brewing techniques for various types of black, white, green, and oolong tea. They named it, too. Both “tea” and “chai” are derived from the Chinese word for tea.
Tea wasn’t cultivated in India until the nineteenth century, when it was introduced by colonial British who literally stole tea plants and seeds from China in an act of corporate espionage. At that point in time, China had been cultivating tea for multiple millennia, and exporting it around the globe for several hundred years. India initially produced CTC (cut, tear, crush) tea on colonial plantations for export, only later (in the 1900s) selling tea to the domestic Indian market, when the practice of adding CTC black tea to masala chai took off in India.
What’s weird is that you’ve bought into some kind of alternate history where India invented tea.
I’m not the one who’s trying to change history here. We know that the Chinese have the oldest recorded tea consumption. Doesn’t make that the only valid way of doing it. It’s like saying that there’s only one authentic way to cook a potato, which is whatever the first person did with it.
And about whatever you said about tea being a new thing in India, it’s not accurate. It was first mass produced after the British came. But it actually goes back quite a bit. Camellia sinensis var. assamica is actually indigenous to the Assam region of India, and not “stolen from the Chinese”. Some think that some tribes in India (Singpho, Khamti) have been consuming tea from at least the 12th Century, though they had a different name for it. Some (A Revision of the Genus Camellia by Robert Sealy) think it goes back further, but idk about that.
But honestly, that’s not even the point. Why did you even feel the need to type this comment? Even if it was a 200 old tradition, that’s a pretty long time. And it should be accepted as a valid way of brewing. I’m not even disputing anything. I simply pointed out that there are alternative traditions. That the world isn’t fucking black and white. Seriously dude, when did I say anything that claimed that Indians invented tea? This isn’t twitter, no need to do this shit here.
Coffee beans aren’t true beans. They are the pit seeds of the coffee cherry fruit, similar to other stone fruit such as cherries, peaches, plums, olives, and dates.
You hit the issue, theyre confusing tea, a specific plant, with an infusion. Herbal tea is more correctly called an herbal infusion. Tea is a type of herbal infusion.
… most dictionaries record that the word tea is also used to refer to other plants beside the tea plant and to beverages made from these other plants. In any case, the term herbal tea is very well established and much more common than tisane.
Furthermore, in the Etymology of tea, the most ancient term for tea was 荼 (pronounced tu) which originally referred to various plants such as sow thistle, chicory, or smartweed, and was later used to exclusively refer to Camellia sinensis (true “tea”)
I think the confusion come from the fact that in many languages and cultures the name for tea and plant infusion is the same. Tea is name plant infusion because it is among the go to infusion if no plant is mention. But then in these language the name for “herbal infusion” or “herbal tea” does not contain the name of the specific plant “tee”. This or the languages got it wrong. Yes, I go that far.
This standard is not meant to define the proper method for brewing tea intended for general consumption, but rather to document a tea brewing procedure where meaningful sensory comparisons can be made.
I came to say the same thing about Camellia sinensis, thinking “am I about to be more of a tea purist than is even encapsulated in this chart?” So I’m glad somebody else got there first lol
It depends of the kind of tee your using. Once I bought the wrong type of turkish tea and next thing I now I’m boiling my tea during month so I don’t drink a slighty darker version of hot water.
Thank you. I am horrified that I had to scroll past a discussion of “is pho tea”? to get here. The so-called purist has never even made a proper cup of tea! So obviously pho is NEVER tea, since stock is extensively boiled.