Food Theory: Your Tea SUCKS... But That's None of My Business

hello Internet welcome to food Theory where when life handsy lemons you make lemonade but when life hands you small green leaves from Asia you make tea ladies and gentlemen it's that time of year the weather is getting colder the nights are getting longer and we all have our favorite hot drink that we like to cuddle up on the couch with sometimes it's coffee sometimes it's hot cocoa but if you're one special member of Team theorist my wife's Steph it's almost certainly gonna be a cup of freshly brewed tea no exaggeration she's going through like three or four cups a day probably three to four cups of tea a day see I'm not making this stuff up no joke the dishwasher is just full of tea mugs which is like what you doing stuff just rinse them out save the actual space in there for stuff that's hard to wash sorry am I getting a little bit too real for you anyway if you watch our channels you know by now that we're optimizers we want to use data and testing to give us the best possible experiences in all parts of our life and that includes our warm leaf water so today we're in the kitchen breaking down the element sense of this simple drink to give you the perfect cup of tea do seemingly arbitrary steps like whether the water or the milk goes into the cup first actually result in a noticeably different tasting tea and perhaps most importantly of all if there is a detectable difference what's the objectively best way to prepare your tea Bottoms Up theorists it's time to get this party started sorry if that joke wasn't high enough quality even I feel a little bit guilty about that one drink up friends because today is going to be full of highbrow drinks with lowbrow puns today is going to be my favorite episode of food Theory maybe ever it's going to be terrific animal staff is certainly our local tea expert I am steeped in the stuff you could say that she is Queen tea I'm practically fermented myself there is one thing that she lacked the international perspective she merely adopted tea but others they were born in it molded by it we needed someone British so uh Tom you being from the UK obviously you know tea that that is part of your curriculum you have Reading Writing arithmetic and yes it is a specialty of ours Sam's usually heading up things over in Game Theory land where the closest he gets to food is writing about mutant cows with happy Meat Farms Argy or cannibalism in the visual novel cooking companions let's just say this is a nice change of pace for him so with our crack team assembled we dove into our investigation now how us Americans make tea can be a bit of a controversial topic especially for people coming from the UK so to get things started I pulled out this Gem of a video from at J shell36 an American woman that's living over in the UK who demonstrated how she makes her afternoon tea and let's just say I'm using some heavy air quotes with that word I'm curious since we have a resident UK expert here we have some American families making British tea and I'd love your opinion I can't imagine this ever possibly going wrong no I this is gonna be entirely factual here we go why are you going in the microwave why would you do that no what what that's so much milk oh no oh no it's a video that went viral in the UK as people became so outraged that even National newspapers reported on it so of course I had myself a bright idea let's do a taste test shall we yes I think we start off with Tom making his proper British cup of tea okay and you feel very strongly about that I do and I we'll make Tick Tock to you and I will taste both and we got to work I mean seeing the way he functions in the kitchen makes this an even more like weird Multiverse situation that I'm deal ING with between this one and this one how does one open this bag just so we've covered our bases at this point it's important to know that there are a ton of different teas out there in the world ranging in areas from Japan to South Africa but today we're collectively lifting our pinkies only to the classic British that means that we're going to exclusively be talking about and testing black tea most of which originally comes from this little corner of India right here called the Assam region the preparation of traditional British tea typically involves using water boiled in a kettle and immediately combined with tea directly into a teapot before serving milk was historically added to the bottom of the teacup he was poured on top swirl and boom you're done this was The Classy tea that Tom set out to make meanwhile I was relegated to shoveling sugar into my cup for my Tick-Tock tea I would just like to point out that they're still trying to open the tea bag my microwave is all done with heated water so right now Tick-Tock tea is looking pretty good why is the handle so hot the time it takes to heal those third degree burns gives us time to finish the proper British tea now I pour the milk in drop it [Music] in my hair why am I here after a few minor burns it was time to taste no no no no not a shocker we determined that Tick Tock is better for spilling the tea than actually drinking the tea meanwhile Tom's Baseline British tea tasted nice it was fine there we are such a British reaction anyway I still wasn't satisfied it's not enough to just say that Tick-Tock tea is lame and any old tea bag you throw around can beat it anyone can do that this channel is built on the premise that I can overthink anything and then write it off as a business expense so if we're gonna make tea we're gonna be making the best tea and to do that we have to build the best cup of tea from the ground up using science so what we decided to do was break down all the variables that go into a cup of tea so we could test them one at a time first what's the best shape and material for your tea bags if any secondly we gotta talk about milk how much milk should you be putting into your tea third order of events should you put hot water in the cup first or cool milk fourth how long should you be steeping your tea for and lastly what's the best vessel to hold on to your tea does your cup actually make a difference in your tasting experience oh boy we're gonna make a lot of Brits mad at us for this one looks like leaves aren't the only thing in hot water today take it away live action matpat so first off I want to just ask the question of hey you got the flat paper tea bags you have the pyramidal tea bags and you've got loose leaf tea right so which of these is ultimately going to lead you to a vest I'm so sorry so to eliminate all other variables we're using three identical mugs we've heated the water to the ideal temperature for black tea specifically and we're gonna steep them all for exactly three minutes so everyone tea bags at the ready or tea Bubbles at the ready three two one dip and now we wait for three minutes and I sweep up the loose leaf tea that uh Tom just flung across the kitchen I flung it at him actually to be fair so well Tom and Steph watch me clean up their mess Let Me Explain why this one factor alone may be more important here than you think tea leaves actually have permeable membranes which means that when you add hot water that hot water can essentially go through the leaves in a process called osmosis allowing the chemicals that give tea its signature Aroma and flavor flavinols and polyphenols to infuse with the water 3D pyramid-shaped tea bags are supposed to be better for this particular process as it gives the tea leaves more room to move around during the Brewing process this allows water to permeate the leaves from all sides flat tea bags meanwhile don't expand stopping the tea leaves from infusing properly and leaving you with a dense glob of wet Leaf mush but that can't really make that big of a difference right you can tell that there's just a color Difference by looking at them it's crazy the flavor of the tea is is good it's mild it's like it's nice yep so immediately that's better yeah they're shockingly shockingly there is a clear difference between paper and the loose leaf just like you would expect off of the color this one is by far the strongest oh yeah definitely it's it's a very clear flavor difference so interesting this is wild I did not expect this oh wow yeah no that is it's much stronger yeah and once again I was left Blown Away by the results remember we use the same amount of tea coming from the same brand of leaves and still the bag did indeed make a difference the paper bag restricted the movement of leaves so they just sat in a clump at the bottom well the Bobble and pyramid bag were nicely diffused but when it came to overall taste our winner was unanimous in a surprise upset the pyramid bag was everyone's favorite cup better diffused while still maintaining a straw wrong but not overly tan and filled flavor which left us with one last serving vessel to test teapots alright now comes the battle of the champions my friends we've got pyramid bag versus teapot Loosely floating around in there steep until its Hearts content like a little sauna day for the tea leaves inside of the hot water wow wow wow wow I mean that's really what it is they're going to the gym they're stripping down into their skivvies and they're hopping in with a bunch of the other you know sweaty guys I don't really want to think of my Tia sweetie and then I'm drinking what the juice that's that's left at the end you're drinking The Remnant pool water yeah can you tell that we've already had too much tea and it's only experiment one oh boy it was a long shoot day anyway the point of doing this final experiment was to test our newest winner against the time-honored tradition of tea in a teapot so we filled both our mug and teapot with the same amount of hot water let them bolt steep for another three minutes go little buddy enjoy your gym time and then got to sip in and while the flavor was largely the same there was one unexpected difference it's hotter it's it's significantly hotter the tea in the mug was hotter Brewing of the teapot had actually cooled the tea enough that it was sitting at a perfect sippable temperature it's not just due to the teapot and the fact that there's you know more stuff no but I think that's exactly it I love it when food Theory episodes completely take me off guard because I didn't expect this to make any sort of difference whatsoever I thought these two would basically be equivalent but there is a significant heat difference so I think that ultimately seals the deal the traditional way the British way is indeed the best almost like there's a reason it's been around for several hundred years go figure it's like they already optimized this thing years ago and we're just reiterating the fact ah those darn Millennials always thinking they know better and trying to reinvent the system anyway after round one pyramid bags and teapots were the big Winners so having figured out the optimal way to steep it was time to measure the optimal time to steep you see Brew time matters due to the release of those taste molecules named polyphenols specifically the harder stronger variants called tannins tannins are super bitter which means the long longer you let your tea Brew the more tannins that you're releasing into the drink this is also why you shouldn't squeeze tea bags into the mug after you're done Brewing this directly releases concentrated tannic acid which adds a bitter punch to your cup so brewing tea is basically a balancing act of letting the leaves float around for long enough to get a good amount of flavor in there but not having them soak for so long that they wind up doing the tea equivalent of peeing in the pool so where does that inflection point sit well the UK tea Academy which apparently is a thing has three recommendations depending on the size of your tea leaves small particles like tea bags should steep for one and a half to two minutes medium leaves should be closer to two to three minutes and if you're talking about whole leaves that's a whopping three to five minutes steep time but we don't want ranges we want exact numbers so we ran around of experiments to steep the tea for one three and five minutes with the new experiment set we fired up the water for what we thought was gonna be an overall pointless Endeavor you can tell that there's a very clear color difference between the one minute steep and the three minutes deep between three and five though yeah so much am I missing anything guys I mean there is a slight film which is there is a little bit here as well but this is a little bit stronger and of varying varieties it would seem but that typically I would associate with an over Brew tea I like it a lot better than one minute personally one minute great if you like weak tea yeah that's that's way better that's much better right and then finally Tom thinks that this is going to be over brewed because of that film and I see the film that you're talking about yeah you can see it it's like little just little splotches on top oh yeah oh yeah that aftertaste is really bitter it's really strong that's yeah wow that makes sense in the end as expected three minutes was the perfect time full of flavor but without dipping into the bitter notes that tea can often have but Leaf soup is only half the ingredients to make a true English tea we have to add some milk so how much milk you add to your tea is actually a bit tricky to find evidence for the us-based Tea Company recommends that it should be one part milk to four parts tea for an average mug of 240 milliliters that's talking 48 milliliters of milk that is a lot especially when you compare that to your average tea drinker in the UK one study done across the pond reported that on average tea drinkers would add the very scientific amount of a splash the study found that a splash actually translated to about five milliliters of milk to a cup of tea so that's one part milk for every 47 parts as you can see there is a huge difference between those numbers so yet again we put our conditions to the test but we also mixed in a third Contender splitting the difference between the two by only using 26 and a half milliliters sadly I couldn't enjoy this part of tea time myself I had some very important meetings to attend to I've got a merch meeting I'll be back for the next test anyway I was glad to leave because apparently my thoughts on milk and tea were not appreciated by the room also can definitively say best milk is no milk in tea so with the correct opinion ignored stuff and Tom got to work Brewing up the three different cups and right off the bat the differences were clear looks though mean nothing if they don't taste good I like it but it's not quite enough milk for me if you're adding milk to Mellow it that's not doing this is exactly from milk tea like this is it maybe it'll be maybe it'll be too much for you no that's probably no that's about right that is typically how I'd have my tea but that is again trying to put my personal preferences out the window and go right it was actually a better experience that is definitely coming up up above that for sure yeah that one that one's a little too much for me [Music] yeah so you're starting to lose tea flavor once you get to this now we're getting into Tick-Tock territory there we go once again the middle option proved to be the best so with three experiments out of the way we were finally into the home stretch a pyramid bag or teapot steeped for three minutes with a medium amount of milk but wait friends we still weren't done with the milk it's not just about the amount of milk it's also about whether or not to put that milk at the top or bottom of the cup honestly I'd never heard this one before but apparently putting milk in first was a thing in the early days of British tea drinking those who couldn't afford high-end porcelain would have cheaper cups to drink out of and if you poured the boiling water into those cups they would be more likely to chip or crack apparently adding in chilled milk is the first thing in the cup helped to regulate the overall temperature and thereby protect the cup nowadays though we live in an age where mugs are just a dime a dozen seriously these things are like rabbits multiplying in my cabinets every time I open up a cabinet another 10 mugs fall out so in this new modern age should British tea be updating its traditions where should that milk be going in or does it make a difference it can't make a difference right there really should not be a difference no the shouldn't be but once we took a sip it immediately became clear that we were super wrong huh interesting there's a difference oh wow there is to make sure we weren't losing our minds we did a blind survey of our preference and we unanimously agreed milk poured on top was the superior option there was a weird sour note I got from that one and this one was bit more bitter this one was smoother you could taste the milk and also the tea just smooth all the way down this one just doesn't work as well as this one which is crazy because it was literally just pouring the same thing on the top we've also just upended the entire British history of tea of putting the milk in first yeah we have this is true like the Traditions need to stop I am actually really excited about that though because this whole time we've been building up to basically the conclusion of like hey the British way is the right way yeah you know okay fine we bow to our overseas farmer overlords or whatever great here's our taxes but no there we go changes everything so get dunked on Old School country science let this one hit all the headlines You Doing It Wrong son so far are what we've wrapped up is that actually you don't need to spend a huge amount of time thinking about the order and what type of tea you're using as long as you're using a pyramid-shaped tea bag with a decent quality of tea you just boil your water make sure it's not the microwave steep your tea for three minutes yeah perfect add 26 milliliters of milk on top just splash it on in there and you're done the perfect cup of tea that one made us really excited not only had we thrown off centuries of British tea tradition but it had also put us into the last phase of our grand experiment having perfected everything about the liquid inside the glass it was now time to question the glass itself what is the best thing to drink tea out of so the final possible variable that we can think up here is delivery vessel I told you this is going into the minutia of my nutrition because Stephanie takes this seriously and Tom's national pride is on the line so I have no horse in this race I just stand for scientific Excellence this seems like something inconsequential rights don't worry about what kind of plate you're eating your food off of so why with tea does it really make that big of a difference well yeah or at least that's what the science tells us the t-box website and their series t101 states that the perfect vessel should be non-porous as porous cups absorb flavors from anything that you're putting in them so your Tea's flavor could actually be affected by all the other teas or coffees that you've previously had inside of that mug additionally cups with wider rims and thin cup walls are going to allow heat to escape faster and also won't retain as much Aroma and we consider that 80 of what we taste comes from smell that might be a significant factor on one side we have a China cup which is sort of a classic you know English tea cup sort of deal we have a glass cup which is known for not leeching anything from the liquid or exchanging anything from the liquid at all and then we have ceramic over here which is going to be the most commonly used mug type I'm going to use the smallest one and just do my best to pour that amount into the other two so that way we can maintain as consistent [Laughter] I just stand for scientific Excellence after one final round of steeping we were ready so we've got our three cups all steeped all milked now it's just time for them all to be tasted and believe it or not but we had ourselves a first for this episode there was no difference it was the only variable that didn't affect flavor what the glasses did affect though was heat for me all three tasted identical agree the difference was actually temperature wise this one was the coolest and easiest to drink immediately whereas glass was the hottest I'm assuming that actually released the fact that this one has the widest opening along the top so you're getting more exposure for the surface area thereby cooling it faster this is also insulated glass which means when I touch the outside here it's completely cool but inside it's actually keeping the liquid very hot in summary what we learned today about making the optimum cup of tea if I want to go viral on Tick Tock and make headlines over in the UK how do I do that so you're going to start by not putting your water in the microwave in a mug and then burning your hand off you're going to use a kettle you're going to use Clear pyramid-shaped tea bags so you can get a good quality tea rather than having to go for loose leaf or a flat paper one then you're going to steep it for three minutes not one minute or five minutes and then finally you're going to add just enough milk the the Goldilocks of milk which is in our estimation about 26 millimeters and you add that in after you've poured the the tea in as we wrapped up a long morning of shoots we learned that we weren't the only ones thirsty in the kitchen it's drinking from the avocado there he is we've been trying to sprout that avocado for five weeks in the end it looks like the traditional British way of making tea actually has a lot of scientific backing to support it all they need to do now is just pour their milk on top they've got it maybe sometimes the best way to evolve a tradition is slowly there you have it friends the optimum cup of tea by the world's most picky tea drinker and the world's most picky T Nation she is I guess not even a perfect cup of tea can please everyone but hey that's just a theory a food Theory Bon Appetit do you want to say something in a really good British accent I mean to be fair your queen impression is quite good oh thanks I want to be able to just blend into into the common folk I can't be you know going around giving away that I'm royalty royal tea

Channel: The Food Theorists

Views: 3,613,260

Keywords: Tea, Tea Recipe, Best Tea Recipe, how to make tea, hack, British Tea, Best British Tea, Best Tea, Hot Tea, Hot Tea Recipe, Best Hot Tea, Best Hot Tea Recipes, best tea recipes, black tea, green tea, Best Tea Recipe at Home, indian tea, indian tea recipe, milk tea recipe, Best Home Tea Recipe, DIY Tea Recipe, DIY Tea, spilling tea, Food Theory, Food Theorists, MatPat, Food Theory MatPat, Food Theory Tea, Game Theory, Film Theory, kermit meme, tea

Id: tR-3BMignl4

Length: 21min 31sec (1291 seconds)

Published: Sun Nov 13 2022