
US woman sparks transatlantic tea war with brutal online brew - SirLJ
https://www.theguardian.com/food/2020/jun/24/us-woman-sparks-transatlantic-tea-war-with-brutal-online-brew
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nkurz
Oddly, I came across this story yesterday when I happened to be searching for
information about making tea with a microwave. Most sources tell you not to,
but the usual reason (the temperature might be way off) doesn't seem to make
much sense. Surely if you have a thermometer and use a consistent amount of
water, you can come up with a time for your microwave that hits the mark?

Which leads me to ask: is there a good way to make tea with a microwave? If
(not hypothetically) I had a variety of samplers arriving in a couple weeks
from teavivre.com by China Post, and that I didn't like using my old whistling
tea kettle, what's the best way for a beginner to make good tea using only a
microwave and (initially) a thermometer?

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shaftway
I thought one of the reasons not to use a microwave is that it's way to easy
for the water to get superheated. Especially in a ceramic mug that is smooth
on the inside, with no nucleation sites for the water to form steam it can get
way over boiling point fairly easily. Then when you put something in (like a
teabag or sugar) you're dropping a ton of nucleation sites in and the water
will flash to steam, occasionally exploding the mug.

But maybe that's just an urban legend. /shruggie Mythbusters took a look:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1_OXM4mr_i0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1_OXM4mr_i0)

Could you use a small saucepan and bring water to the desired temperature if
you don't want to use a microwave or teapot? Maybe a small coffee maker
without any coffee in it, just to get the water up to the temperature you
want.

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nkurz
I read the superheating theory too, but I don't think it's really a concern,
especially if you are using a timed heating of a measured amount of water. If
you've figured out how long it takes to get to 185F, you aren't going to
unexpectedly reach 220F. More generally, I'm not worried about boiling water
in the microwave for other purposes, and if it was a problem, I could probably
avoid it by throwing a couple marbles in.

Definitely there are other ways I can heat water to make tea. I was asking the
question in an open-ended manner in case someone had a microwave method that I
wasn't aware of. For example, there was an Australian study that got some
attention a couple years ago suggesting that one got the best extraction by
microwaving with the tea in the water. This dodges the question though of
whether the "best extraction" equals the "best cup of tea".

