"Perfect cup of tea needs a pinch of salt and squeeze of lemon, says US chemist"
Salt?
What fresh hell is this?
@hesgen It. Tastes. Horrid.
For coffee, a tiny amount of salt is a quite well documented approach. *maybe* it makes sense for tea to mask bitterness. I *might* actually try it. At least the findings are correct about lemon with tea. That is the one-true-way (YMMNV).
@hesgen I'm always amused at scientists making pronouncements on this kind of thing. Before this it was "all you need to do to make a perfect cup of tea is drink it at 60°". Because apparently grades of tea don't exist, different brewing requirements don't exist, and differences in taste don't exist.
Nope. All you needed was 60°.
And now it's salt and lemon.
🙄
@hesgen Oh, good LORD! He's talking about BAGGED tea!
All credibility is now lost.
@zdl She. But clearly not a proper 'mother'.
@hesgen Oh. I stand corrected.
Usually it's men who are so confidently incorrect, so I leaped to an unwarranted assumption.
Mea culpa.
@babelcarp Bad news, pu'erh and oolong fans:
Further advice – that should surely be unnecessary for even the most casual of tea aficionados – is that both teabags and loose leaves should be used only once.
@babelcarp @tfb @tea (What culture? /s)
I agree!
@tfb @babelcarp @tea The part about decaf tea seems a bit dubious too. That doesn't seem to agree with a lot of other analysis... but maybe for British style broken leaves more caffeine gets extracted almost immediately immediately?
@slomo I've seen an analysis somewhere that measured almost all of the caffeine dissolving in some very short time lile 30 seconds, so I can believe it for the sort of chopped tea that goes in tea bags.
@tfb @babelcarp @tea If you can only use your leaves once, you're buying the wrong leaves.
@hesgen in an Inner Mongolian city of Ordos it is a must to put salt (and more than a pinch of salt) to your tea 😆 it's pretty good
@hesgen I'll give this a try.
How do Americans define "a pinch"? 1 cubic inch right?
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