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ISO Standard for Preparing Tea
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- Pbhaskal 6y agoIt is very different from how we make it in india
- vector_spaces 6y agoHow do you make it in India?
- moh_maya 6y agoEach state, each family, each district, probably has their own version. The tea can be salty (J&K), incredibly sweet with thickened milk, with spices (cardamom, ginger among others), brewed with bhang (wet cannabis leaf), boiled with milk, leaves spices and sugar at the same time, or with each ingredient added in some specific order.. The possibilities are limited only by one's imagination, and my imagination often falls short of reality. :D
- Laforet 6y agoIndian tea or chai is heavily spiced and often boiled in milk instead of steeped in hot water.
- numpad0 6y agoThey do almost like Frappuccino without modern technologies
- juskrey 6y agoMasala is one of the best things I've tasted in my life, and definitely the best tea preparation
- detaro 6y agoNote that the standard is not for how to make a good tea, but just one suitable for sampling tea leaves (and provide some instructions to do it the same way every time)
- jamesgreenleaf 6y agoIf anyone here is developing a network-enabled ISO3103-compatible automatic teapot, be sure that it responds to invalid coffee requests with an HTTP 418.
- readflaggedcomm 6y agoVessel masses are considered, but room temperature is not, which makes steeping and cooling times meaningless. When winter and summer room temperatures vary by over 15 degrees Celcius, techniques must vary.
- Laforet 6y agoFor those who are brewing ISO standard tea, it's safe to assume they are doing so inside a QC lab with climate control set to 20 degrees Celsius, and without a leaky roof or hurricane force wind over their heads.
- pie420 6y agoPool where the fuck are your room temperatures varying that much? You know a thermostat is usually set to about 68 degrees F. Maybe +/- 5 degrees. Any more variance than that and you're crazy.
- beAbU 6y agoYou realize that not all homes have thermostats, right? Where I live our summers are cool enough and our winters warm enough that there is no need for climate controlled homes. This has the concequence of widely fluctuating internal temperatures, especially in homes that are poorly insulated which is usually the case for older homes.
- noisy_boy 6y agoThis is how I make it: 1. Start boiling water on my trusty electric kettle 2. Open the Cardamom premix[0] sachet and pour half[1] its contents into the cup 3. Pour half-cup boiling water, mix and enjoy. [0]: https://www.amazon.com/Great-Bazaar-Bakri-Instant-Cardamom-Chai/dp/B00KTBKROY https://www.amazon.com/Great-Bazaar-Bakri-Instant-Cardamom-C... [1]: full sachet with full cup of water is too sweet (except maybe for Indian palettes pre-trained with sweet stuff)
- ycombinete 6y agoWagh Bakri’s Masala loose leaf tea is so good!
- Grustaf 6y agoThat’s not brewing tea.
- marshmallow_12 6y agowhat about the milk? I'm not surprised you getting downvotes.
- noisy_boy 6y agoMilk is included in the pre-mix. Haters gonna hate :)
- marshmallow_12 6y agodon't worry. I appreciate you
- Slackwise 6y agoTea and milk go together like coffee and lemon.
- 867-5309 6y agotaste is in the tongue of the imbiber
- alexwasserman 6y agoThe original standard (from British Standards Institute) is here: https://www.mus-ic.co.uk/images/blog/2006-04-27/bs_6008.pdf https://www.mus-ic.co.uk/images/blog/2006-04-27/bs_6008.pdf And, somewhat more complete and well defined than the wikipedia summary. N.B. the PDF above references bsonline.techindex.co.uk, but that domain seems to have lapsed. The current BSI and ISO standards require purchase, and can't be linked to directly (that I can find).
- azernik 6y ago"The protocol has been criticized for omitting any mention of prewarming the pot.[6] Ireland was the only country to object, and objected on technical grounds.[7]"
- seanieb 6y agoVery proud of Ireland today!
- discreteevent 6y agoIndeed. And the Irish spend more per gram of tea than any other country in the world. It's a good strategy: Pick something relatively cheap and then get the best of it.
- yladiz 6y agoWhat kind(s) of tea are generally drank in Ireland? Black tea like Darjeeling?
- selimthegrim 6y agoI have to wonder if there is a statute saying Irish Breakfast is formulated to disgust the Queen or something/differentiate itself from English Breakfast
- aloisdg 6y agoIreland is the best country with France to opposed the UK.
- CrazedGeek 6y agoTom Scott did a video on this, preparing and consuming a cup of tea to this standard: https://youtu.be/nAsrsMPftOI https://youtu.be/nAsrsMPftOI
- 5tefan 6y agoThat is a rabbit hole. My personal advice if someone likes to care: Get a "professional" tea cupping/tasting set. No taste altering filter methods required. My best tea related purchase ever. Quality loose leaf tea from all over the world to develop your taste buds. Please consider that 2g/100ml is too much tea. Don't fall for hyped teas. Find tea shops willing to prepare a sample. I got this one from a very accomplished tea master during a class he gave: Low dosage and boiling water and long steeping. Take sips inbetween. Drink it hot or let is sit for an hour. The taste profile changes with temperature. Good teas will taste good. Bad teas will taste bad. This procedure is simple but unforgiving.
- tsimionescu 6y ago> Low dosage and boiling water and long steeping. Take sips inbetween. Drink it hot or let is sit for an hour. The taste profile changes with temperature. Good teas will taste good. Bad teas will taste bad. This procedure is simple but unforgiving. I've usually preferred, and seem recommended, the opposite: high quantities of tea, medium temperature water, multiple short steeping. For good teas, the taste changes with every steeping, with the best aroma often being the second or third. For some teas, the first stepping is un drinkable (especially Pu Erh). Especially for more delicate green teas, pouring boiling water over them will make them bitter, so I would never recommend that. If your tea is ever bitter, even the tiniest bit, that is the fault of your brewing method: either your water was too hot, or the ratio between tea, water, and steep time was too much.
- 5tefan 6y agoA rabbit hole. As I said. Some specialty teas could use a gentle steep. You are right. I like my method. Easy to use. Bitterness is not inherent to tea. I don't accept this in teas.
- tsimionescu 6y agoAgreed, it's all a matter of preference, and likely depends on tea as well. But have you really been able to brew green tea with boiling water without having it become bitter? I've tried with a few teas and never succeeded.
- bluedays 6y agoReminds me of https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTTP/Status/418 https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTTP/Status/418
- nimbius 6y agoI am truly sorry but for anyone not drowning their tea in the alabaster ichor of the masses of Great Britain, 2g per 100ml of water is a bombastic amount of tea to brew and an infuriating statement to make from a standards body. whats even more ridiculous is that the 2/100 ratio is FREQUENTLY insisted upon by websites selling loose teas. Try this experiment. meter out a 1 litre pot of water. now meter out 18-20 grams of loose green tea. what you brew (if you attempt it) will be flat-out undrinkable. There has GOT to be something better than the ISO standard here. EDIT: I just tried to do this again with a green lower grade Xinyang Maojian and it tasted like the over-steeped dreck conjured up in an airport coffee chains platitude scrawled cardboard cups. the cup was rich, but the astringency was like trying to drink a cup of drywall. It was utterly wasteful for anything more than just testing and the comical amount of tea I used to attempt this left me with a sense of remorse. The tea I made sat tangibly heavy in my stomach. It is a standard, and I guess I never stopped to consider what a standard means and thats what this standard does a particularly great job of doing. Yes, Starbucks adheres to this standard and if you buy a venti will gladly (sometimes reluctantly) give you four tea bags in the cup but for the love of god yank them out after a minute or two at most lest youre looking to start up your own tannery in the terminal. Its quite strange to think of a standard as something you shouldn't make a habit of.
- edgyquant 6y agoI’m gonna have to disagree here. The average coffee cup is 118ml and the average tea packet contains 1.5-2g of tea (from a quick google.) When I make morning tea I use a packet for 1 coffee cup of hot water, so that’s basically the standard. It is very drinkable, as I do it every morning. Any more water and it starts to taste like water as opposed to tea.
- BossingAround 6y ago> The average coffee cup is 118ml Average where? The most standard Ikea cup [1] that I can see in all the offices around here is 8oz, which is around 230ml. Personally, I drink coffee from that, but for tea, I always use some of the 10oz cups, which is more along the line of 300ml. A tea bag for 300ml is perfectly acceptable in my mind. [1] https://www.ikea.com/us/en/p/faergrik-mug-stoneware-white-60143992/ https://www.ikea.com/us/en/p/faergrik-mug-stoneware-white-60...
- dang 6y agoIf curious, two small past threads: ISO 3103:1980 (ISO standard for tea making) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1138824 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1138824 - Feb 2010 (5 comments) ISO 3103: an international standard for brewing tea - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=95457 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=95457 - Jan 2008 (7 comments)
- fermienrico 6y agoThis standard is not for you. People here are missing the purpose of a standard. No matter the details, it serves as a standard way to brew and conduct tasting for tea traders and professionals. Nit picking whether this or that is fine but unless something drastically changes (such as dynamic range of tastes), it won’t matter much. Whether it follows tradition in your specific region is also irrelevant. This isn’t the “right” way to brew either nor does it try to. Ironically, the bickering here is exactly why a standard is needed. It is proving its point.
- tsimionescu 6y agoIt would be interesting to check if the aroma of a proper home brewing tea has any relationship with the aroma you get by brewing tea for 6 minutes with boiling water. From my experience, for many teas, the moment you've poured that boiling water over it, you've lost all aroma that it could have given off. It wouldn't surprise me if this standard was responsible for the terrible tea you usually get at a supermarket, especially in green tea. If the brewing method basically makes all green tea taste bitter and tanninous, the blandest, weakest teas will rise to the top, as they will be the least bitter when brewed in boiling water. Much better teas, that would have beautiful flavors if brewed in colder water, would never be favored.
- tasuki 6y ago> it serves as a standard way to brew and conduct tasting for tea traders and professionals No trader or professional dealing with gyokuro is using this method. The method's usefulness is limited to a very specific set of teas, which should be explicitly called out in the standard.
- hyperman1 6y agoIs there anything like this for coffee?
- kwhitefoot 6y agoIf you can read Norwegian the Norwegian Coffee Associationhas a lot of information: https://kaffe.no/6-gode-tilberedningsregler/ https://kaffe.no/6-gode-tilberedningsregler/ They run the European Coffee Brewing Centre (ECBC) that tests coffee brewing equipment (this one is in English): https://www.ecbc.no/about-ecbc/ https://www.ecbc.no/about-ecbc/
- amanaplanacanal 6y agoThe Specialty Coffee Association has standards for cupping coffee, which would seem to be equivalent to these for tea.
- Gatsky 6y agoIt is mentioned in the Royal Chemistry Society link [1] not to use pre-boiled water, since it has been degassed and will taste ‘flat’. This is true in my experience. I also tend to shake the tea vigorously if making it in a thermos to introduce some enlivening aeration. Admittedly, I only bother with these embellishments if making tea for others. [1] https://web.archive.org/web/20140811033029/http://www.rsc.org/pdf/pressoffice/2003/tea.pdf https://web.archive.org/web/20140811033029/http://www.rsc.or...
- libraryatnight 6y agoI love tea. I hate talking to other people who love tea. Here's the recipe for tea: tea, hot water. You can experiment with leaves and blends and temperatures and vessels. You can put whatever you want in it. I don't care if you take your tea with mustard. Use the combinations you enjoy.
- eyan 6y agoI can't upvote this enough. I love _something_. I hate talking to other people who love _something_. ...use the combinations you enjoy. Bless the parent comment.
- kowlo 6y agoYou dislike talking to others about things you have a mutual love for, but you’re happy talking to others about things you have a mutual hate for. There’s a name for that
- aloisdg 6y agoWe called it left wing politics and it is as old as Marx vs Bakunin.
- scribu 6y agoIt's called "hate bonding", apparently: https://www.smh.com.au/lifestyle/life-and-relationships/your-real-friends-are-the-one-that-youve-hate-bonded-with-over-shared-dislikes-20170222-guicr1.html https://www.smh.com.au/lifestyle/life-and-relationships/your...
- Teever 6y agoAll the comments in this thread remind me of this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ZK8Z8hulFg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ZK8Z8hulFg
- statstutor 6y agoIt seems more ironic to me, that the parent likes talking about how much they hate talking about it.
- marshmallow_12 6y agoI just dump a tea bag with sugar and top up with milk. No fancy stuff. I couldn't care less about any standards. I think someone has a bit too much time on their hands.
- detaro 6y agoWorking to make consistent tea products is "too much time on their hands"?
- marshmallow_12 6y agoyou are taking me too seriously. I just take what i'm given and don't second guess it. If i don't like it, i move on.
- puzzledobserver 6y agoMy first thought was to think that the standard was ridiculous. Obsessive formalization of the mundane. But that's a hasty conclusion. Why does this standard even exist? The Wikipedia article mentions something about maintaining consistency of blends and harvests, but can somebody elaborate? If I was managing a tea plantation, I might certainly be interested in something like this, but why would I use the ISO recipe, rather than some plantation-specific technique?
- detaro 6y agoYou're a tea plantation. You get visited by a tea buyer. She wants to compare your tea with the teas she has tasted at the other places, and thus expects you to prepare it exactly the same as everyone else.
- Symbiote 6y agoA relative had a job brewing tea with this method. I think the purpose was quality control and consistency checks for a supermarket. It doesn't matter if it tastes good or bad. It just needs to be consistent, so the professional taster can analyse it.
- guytv 6y agoIs there anything like this for intercourse? We could then scientifically compare.
- keiferski 6y agoThe Book of Tea is a really awesome work on the Japanese Tea Ceremony and historical tea culture. Originally written in English, too. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Book_of_Tea https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Book_of_Tea https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/769 https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/769
- vmilner 6y agoOrwell on tea: https://www.orwellfoundation.com/the-orwell-foundation/orwell/essays-and-other-works/a-nice-cup-of-tea/ https://www.orwellfoundation.com/the-orwell-foundation/orwel... Christopher Hitchens on (Orwell on) tea: http://www.slate.com/id/2279601/ http://www.slate.com/id/2279601/
- rusk 6y agoIsn’t Orwell on Tea some sort of troll? I like some elements but the bit where you heat the porcelain before putting the water in it is a recipe for disaster surely!
- glial 6y agoI put a bit of hot water in the pot and stick in the microwave for a couple minutes. Works great.
- rusk 6y agoNope. No mention of microwave in there. To save you the hassle of reading the piece ... Orwell advocates heating your dry porcelain over a naked flame before pouring actual rolling boiling water in. I haven’t actually tried this because I’m very risk averse. I think this piece takes on a slightly different tone if you imagine a George Orwell’s tongue firmly in his cheek. I read it as a wry take on the sophistry of the English class system ...
- glial 6y agoThanks. I read the Orwell link, but hearing porcelain on a flame terrifies me also, so I was trying to suggest a safe alternative. On his tone, I get the impression that Orwell really IS this concerned about the right way to make tea. I agree with him about putting milk in last.
- alkonaut 6y agoWhere did the British(?) idea of milk in tea come from? When I lived in Britain I was surprised to see that people put milk in tea almost without asking as if “tea” meant “tea with milk”. When they had colonies with tea plantations I assume it’s not common in Asia so when Britain had colonies people didn’t drink tea with milk there when the Britons arrived? Is it like UK Indian cuisine, an “adaptation” to the local taste?
- smusamashah 6y agoWhere did the idea of tea with only a spoon of milk came from? I am from Pakistan working in Britain and I absolutely despise the British tea. Kadak Chai in McDonald's Qatar is the closest to the tea I have bought outside my country. Tea is our social drink and made by boiling nearly same amount of water and milk with loose tea. It's never fruit flavored, just tea.
- alkonaut 6y agoSo I take it in (at least) Pakistan there was a culture of having milk in tea before the British colonial era?
- smusamashah 6y agoI dont know the history of tea in subcontinent. We have one more form of Tea called Doodh Patti (Milk Tea) where tea is added directly in milk, no added water.
- Symbiote 6y agoThe book referenced on Wikipedia is on Library Genesis [1], and I found it so interesting I'm not sure which bits to quote. > At the beginning of the twentieth century, the majority of Indians did not know how to make a cup of tea and were reluctant to drink one. Now that India is both the world’s major producer and consumer of tea, this seems incredible. It confounds the myth that the British acquired their love of tea from their Indian subjects. In fact, it was the British who introduced tea to the Indians. Although they barely changed the way Indians eat, the British radically altered what they eat and drink. While the introduction of a wide variety of European and American vegetables to India was an inadvertent by-product of British rule, the conversion of the population to tea drinking was the result of what must have been the first major marketing campaign in India. The British-owned Indian Tea Association set itself the task of first creating a new habit among the Indian population, and then spreading it across the entire subcontinent. [1] http://library.lol/main/5677300D17F8B79988D323EDE13C2FA2 http://library.lol/main/5677300D17F8B79988D323EDE13C2FA2 (Start at book p187, which is p208 in the PDF.)
- MikeDelta 6y agoInteresting, are there also standards available on other forms of tea, for instance green tea (with water at 70 degrees C instead of 100 so that the tea leaves don't burn), matcha (powdered green tea), or chai?
- jpcooper 6y agoI would like to discuss the after brew process. Can anyone explain why they put the teabag in the sink and not directly into the rubbish? There must be reasons behind this.
- corty 6y agoTo reduce dripping before carrying it over to the wastebin. At least that's why I do it.
- jpcooper 6y agoBut you could hold the mug/pot over the bin.
- corty 6y agoI could if I weren't also prone to overfilling the mug so carrying it around needlessly was a bad idea :)
- thinkingemote 6y agoUnless the bin needs a spare hand to open it.
- richardwhiuk 6y agoTo prevent the rubbish containing a pool of water in it.
- PaulAJ 6y agoThis standard has nothing to do with drinking tea for pleasure. It exists so that professional tea tasters can consistently get the same taste twice from the same set of leaves. Professional tasters have to suck the tea onto their tongues from a spoon, taste, then spit out the tea. See for instance this video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y9BoEfwQiJc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y9BoEfwQiJc
- SamWhited 6y agoI go in coffee shops all the time and see signs advertising that their tea or coffee is fair trade, USDA Certified Organic, etc. but I have yet to see one that says "ISO 3103 compliant!" Just another thing to add to my pipe dream of one day owning a small business.
- dalleh 6y agohttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7FJQ0TdsMxI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7FJQ0TdsMxI Based on this article this video is accurate AF.
- abhayhegde 6y agoHas life been made complex under the pretext of perfectionism? Yes, and here is your example. Heat water, make tea, savor every drop, live happily.
- detaro 6y agohow does a standard for people in the tea industry to compare products make your life complex?
- dcminter 6y agoDouglas Adams on making tea: https://h2g2.com/edited_entry/A61345 https://h2g2.com/edited_entry/A61345 I'm sure he'd have enjoyed the notion of an ISO standard version (perhaps this is the very fluid the Nutrimatics machines deployed?)
- forgotmypw17 6y agoi recently discovered many teabags which appear paper are plastic lined. you can easily check for yourself by burning one momentarily and smelling the smoke. psa for tea lovers trying to avoid endocrine disruptors.
- neurostimulant 6y agoI'd love to read the linked ISO document but it's hidden behind paywal :( https://www.iso.org/standard/73224.html https://www.iso.org/standard/73224.html
- pornel 6y agoI wonder if Gell-Mann Amnesia effect applies to ISO standards. You can clearly see how the standard is some weird compromise, disconnected from how people actually make tea, and not really helpful in making a good cup of tea. Why would you assume that other ISO standards are robust instructions that should be followed to the letter, and not more of this?
- m463 6y agoFor your perusal, MIL-C-43205: MIL-C-43205G 4 August 1986 SUPERSEDING MIL-C-43205F 30 December 1980 MILITARY SPECIFICATION COOKIE MIX, DRY This specification is approved for use by all Departments and Agencies of the Department of Defense. 1. SCOPE 1.1 Scope. This document covers cookie mixes for use by the Department of Defense as an item of general issue. 1.2 Classification. The cookie mixes shall be of the following types, as specified (see 6.1): Type I - Chocolate Type II - Sugar Type III - Oatmeal 2. APPLICABLE DOCUMENTS <snip>... https://www.dla.mil/Portals/104/Documents/TroopSupport/Subsistence/Rations/pcrs/ugr/ugrm01/43205.pdf https://www.dla.mil/Portals/104/Documents/TroopSupport/Subsi...
- pmdulaney 6y agoWhen going to college I lived with my aunt. Coffee was too expensive, so we drank tea. I looked up how to brew tea in her old Encyclopedia Brittanica. The most useful bit of information I gleaned was that 3 minutes was the optimal steeping time. You want to maximize caffeine while keeping the bitter tannins to a minimum. I also found that drinking lots of tea caused muscle twitches. I did some research at the library and the cause, I determined, was that tannins also hinder the absorption of B vitamins. So take B vitamins if you start to have eye twitches, etc. Or drink less black tea.