According to Twinings tea:

Always use freshly drawn (filtered if possible) cold water in the kettle. Tea loves oxygen as it helps the flavour develop.

Most of us are guilty of the following... looking at the kettle seeing there is some old, used water in there and simply re-boiling.

If you keep re-boiling the water in the kettle, it loses all of its oxygen and you’ll be left with a really flat cup of tea.

If you boil the kettle with fresh water, you’ll have a delicious cup of oxygenated tea that tastes divine.

https://twinings.co.uk/blogs/news/how-to-make-a-cup-of-tea-p...

I'm not sure how much difference this makes, but when I use the hot water boiler at work, the tea definitely tastes slightly off compared to using a kettle at home. But it's also possible the hot water boiler at work is not producing hot enough water.

An Asian style water boiler maintains the temp just below boiling, so there isn’t any reboiling throughout the day. Think of it as a water boiling thermos.

You’re meant to replace the water daily. Not sure how many follow that guideline.

Warmer water loses dissolved gasses faster.

But as it cools the gasses reintegrate. So I'm not sure the science backs this up. Water at the same temp should have the same amount of dissolved gas regardless of how it got to that temp (given enough time for the gas to reintegrate).

I think you're incorrectly discounting that time aspect. If you leave a glass of tap water sitting out, eventually there will be a bunch of bubbles clinging to the sides of the glass. This doesn't happen immediately, but rather over many hours. Similarly, I would think that boiling water won't reach its gas equilibrium during the course of making tea, but hot water sitting around waiting to be used will.

I agree with this. I develop my own film and the way I manage water is to boil it, put it into sealed bottles, and store those in the fridge. This avoids bubbles more readily than just using tap water (which is over 20C in the summer anyway, which is why I do the refrigeration thing). No, I don't have an aerator on my tap either. Obviously that introduces a lot of bubbles.

Unless you are bubbling air through the water, it's going to take a long time to get the dissolved gas back in.

It's true that boiling water reduces dissolved oxygen, but cooling water takes on dissolved oxygen.

So I don't think the science backs this up.

Nearly all tea advice is ideology and superstition, explicitly because most people like different things about tea. There cannot be a right answer for such a personal preference.

Make tea such that you enjoy it. Same as coffee.

Agreed. You can't beat good old Nescafe instant coffee. Starbucks just can't compare.

Hmm, I don’t seem to be able to go back and delete this comment.

>Nearly all tea advice is ideology and superstition, explicitly because most people like different things about tea.

That's BS. It's true: people do have different tastes and preferences, so opinions are just that. But it's not "superstition": different brands/blends of tea really do taste different, many times remarkably so. It's just like a McDonald's burger vs. a burger from a high-end restaurant. One of course isn't objectively better than the other (from a taste standpoint; I'm ignoring nutrition here), since it's a matter of opinion, but you will find that significant groups of people who like a particular food enough to have tried different varieties will usually form similar opinions, or at least sort themselves into different camps.

"Superstition" implies that the differences people taste are not real, and this is quite simply false. The differences are real; it's up to you which one you like better. More expensive doesn't always mean better-tasting.

Honestly if it’s to put Twinings in it, it doesn’t really matter.

Any better tea to recommend? I'm used to Twinnings as the best I can find where I live, but I'm open to other brands if they're better.

Ahmad and Impra are both several cuts above Twinings, not expensive (especially as bulk loose-leaf) and can be found in standard grocery stores, or ordered online.

If you've a specialty tea shop nearby, that's all but certainly better, though it can be pricey.

You'll find there's a whole new world out there, and may regret discovering a taste for real whole-leaf teas.

Greens, whites, blacks, fermented, oolongs, darjeelings, matcha, gunpowder, pu'er, etc.

There are also herbal teas, such as rooibos, not made from sinchilla (tea plant), but also tasty.

Best is to buy a bag of loose tea from a tea shop. The leaves are whole, it's not powder. It's usually not hard to find, but they don't sell it at most supermarkets.

Are you American? In my non-double-blind experience, the crap that Twinings sells in the US seems different from what they sell elsewhere.

No I'm in western Europe. And I buy Twinings sometimes, it's not horrible, but it's not great tea either.

Just put it in the blender for a while.

They do make such a thing as an instant hot water dispenser, though they are considered a luxury and not very common:

https://insinkerator.emerson.com/en-us/shop/insinkerator/ins...

These use a tank to keep a few cups of water hot at all times. The instant part is the delivery of it, not the heating. So this does not satisfy the Twinings comment you are replying to.

It does, because the water is aerated as it comes out of the faucet.

it doesn't. the faucet of these types of tanks is just a pipe opening and has laminar flow. it doesn't exit the normal sink faucet (which will have an aerator).

[delayed]

I’ve had a 4L Zojirushi boiler in the US for about 15 years now. This is the best solution for those who complain about 120V kettles.

At least in the German-speaking market there exist said solutions, but they are not very common (yet?). I believe keeping 4L at near boiling temperature is still less efficient than individually heating and it takes less than a minute with 3kW.

Now all the German speaking market needs is tea that actually tastes good.

Legionella

I kid, but there's something about "fresh" water probably?

The water stays way above the temp for legionella. And the water is still pretty fresh, it ends up getting replaced every other day or so in winter. And in summer we just replace it once in a while anyway.

Also it will reboil after a certain amount of time.

Some do. It's become a popular addition to a middle class kitchen. All offices have them.

As to why Asian households have it and we don't, I think it's simply that we have been boiling water in kettles since the stoves ran on coal, and the electric kettle is just an upgrade of that same old system

Not to mention the age of our housing stock. The Asian households you refer to, when were their homes built? I'm guessing much more recently, comparatively speaking.

Why is the age of the housing stock relevant here? An Japanese-style water boiler is an add-on kitchen appliance, like the Instapot or an air-fryer, so, cultural differences aside, you'd expect similar adoption rates. Given that we haven't, there must be some cultural component as to why.

Some people have instant boiling water taps with tanks, they're not unknown but rare and becoming increasingly less so. I think this is because a) they're relatively new here and b) last time I looked they cost about £1k plus fitting.

The Japanese water boilers look like they cost £200ish (vs £15 for a kettle) and are bulkier than a kettle. They will save practically no time - kettles boil fast here and while they're boiling it gives you time to put the tea in and any other preparations.

It just occurred to me that Japan also uses 120V (actually I think they use 100V), so it may be just a matter of speed. You can boil water a lot quicker with your 240V outlets than we can with our 100-120V.

You're not taking the amps into account. Voltage without the amps on the circuit breaker is pretty useless. Quickly Googling indicates that a standard residential circuit breaker in Japan is 30A (3000 watt max), meaning you'd get more power than you would in the US with 120v / 15A (1800 watt max), and much less than where I live in Germany with 230v / 16A (3680 watt max).

>You're not taking the amps into account. Voltage without the amps on the circuit breaker is pretty useless. Quickly Googling indicates that a standard residential circuit breaker in Japan is 30A

Sorry, that's wrong. The breakers on my 100V outlets here in Tokyo are 15A IIRC (I'm not home at the moment). 30A sounds like an air conditioning circuit. 30A on a regular outlet would require huge wires; they're not going to wire a whole apartment with that stuff.

I actually have a kettle here, bought in Japan. It's rated at 900W. It's OK for boiling a single cup of water, but it's definitely not quick. Faster than the microwave though: microwaves here are 500W or 600W (frequently selectable), and the high-end ones go up to 900W. All this should tell you something about the amp capacity of the kitchen outlets here.

Just a note about the power ratings here:

900W is how much my kettle is rated for, which means it actually draws 900W of power (which is about 9A at 100V).

For the microwave, 900W is the power transmitted to the food, not the power drawn from the outlet. All microwaves are rated this way. But microwaves are not particularly efficient; just guessing, I'd guess that a typical 1200W American microwave draws around 1500-1600W, and certainly no more than 1800W since that's the max the outlet can provide. So my microwave at the 900W setting probably draws a bare minimum of 1100W (11A at 100V).

And that's a fancy microwave; the typical microwaves here are all 500/600W. I think the most powerful one I've ever seen in a store was 1000W, so that's probably the highest power rating that can safely run on typical kitchen circuits here in reasonably modern buildings.

Age matters because in many cases the house was built with some expectations, and something else won't work at all. In the 1950s your house got a total of 4 circuits, which was enough for clocks and lights, one fridge, and a kitchen mixer (an electric range was an option and added circuits). Of course TVs arrived in the 1950s (they existed before then but were not common) and started blowing power budgets. As people started using more electric new houses got upgraded to handle those loads, but many older houses have not been updated as it is expensive (major remodel as you need to tear down walls).

Of course the above is standard, not everyone takes the standard. However it is unusual to take something else.

Builders (read electric codes) build for what is common uses. If everyone wants an something that uses a lot of power the wires will be made to handle that in new houses. However if you want that same thing in an older house you may discover that the rewiring needed makes it not worth it and so you look for an alternate.

I'm not sure that's exactly true in this context. At least, I've never been in the house in the UK where the electrics in the kitchen couldn't handle a kettle, and a water boiler for hot drinks isn't likely to use more.

What is tea temperature for you? As I understand it black tea which Brits drink should be made with water at close to boiling (100 C) while green tea should be made with water at 80 C.

My pet peeve in the US is ordering a cup of tea and getting a cup of cooling water and a teabag by the side. Fine for herbal or green tea but terrible for black tea.

My boiler lets me set the hold temp at 208f(97.8C), 195F(90.5C), and 175F(79.4C). So basically you can do all the different "ideal" temps depending on which tea you make the most.

We keep it at 195 since we don't make black teas, and then we can let it cool down to whichever tea we want or just mix it with some filtered cold to get it to temp.

My pet peeve is ordering hot tea and finding out they only have coffee or iced tea. I've also gotten hot tea in a plastic melting cup a few times.

The hot urn cannot be more efficient than boiling the correct amount of water each time.

The limiting factor is the specific heat capacity of water. If daily consumption is 2l, you have to put in the joules to raise 2l to boiling, either way. If you have heat losses during the day, there's your inefficiency.

It is of course less efficient. I never said it was more efficient. But it's more convenient.

Your comment literally says "It's super efficient" though.

Sure, but that doesn't imply it's more efficient than the other options. Just that it's also very efficient.

How many people are boiling the correct amount each time though? I fill my jug up all the way and then keep reboiling which seems less efficient as the boiled water keeps cooling down.

I fill it to a certain mark every time. Not that I'm trying to conserve energy, I just don't want to leave extra water sitting.

I use my target cup to measure out how much water to boil.

Why wouldn't you boil just the amount that's needed? Boiling the whole container is unnecessarily wasteful.

Boiling water costs like a tenth of a cent and saves a few seconds to just fill less often

>Why don't Brits (and other tea drinking cultures in Europe) do this?

Because it is better to boil the right amount of water to the precise temperature when you need it, as it takes virtually no time.

I can boil enough for a cuppa in my weak US electric kettle in no time at all, so I have to assume a UK super kettle is nearly instantaneous.