Advice for use
Ideal water temperature for hot drinks, soups, broths, etc...
Wether you want to heat up water for tea, coffee or instant products – the possibility to pre-select the water temperature at either 70°C, 80°C, 95°C or 100°C with the ritter kettle fontana5, always ensures the best treat.
A short survey of tea:
All of the about 3.000 known types of tea are made from the Camellia tea plant. Various crossbreeds, different growing areas with their individual climate conditions as well as harvesting and processing result in the vast diversity of different tea flavors.
The freshly harvested tea leaves are being processed by different means, methods and techniques, resulting in total six sorts of tea whose only difference is the way they are processed.
Finally, it’s not only the quality of the tea leaves which decides on the optimal tea savor, but also factors like dosage, water temperature and –quality as well as the brewing time. Every type of tea has a certain brewing temperature at which it fully develops its flavor. For example, if you brew tender white tea with boiling hot water, the precious but easily evaporating flavors will be lost.
Thus, every tea needs its specific water temperature and brewing time. Therefore, please keep to the recommendations of your specialized tea dealer and experiment in order to find your own favorite taste.
The following overview lists the six different types of tea and their approximate water temperature:
- Black Tea: 90 - 100°C
- Green Tea: 70 - 80°C
- White Tea: 70°C
- Yellow Tea: 80°C
- Oolong Tea: 70 - 80°C
- Pu Erh Tea: 70 - 80°C
Mixtures of herbs and fruits are no teas in a narrow sense, because they’re not made from the tea plant but from parts of herbs and fruits. For these brewing drinks it’s very important to have a high water temperature for soaking and releasing the pharmaceutical ingredients.
- Herb Tea: 100°C
- Fruit Tea: 100°C
Tea Master Zhang Dafu knew about the importance of the water quality for the preparation of tea: “The quality of a good cup of tea depends 20% on the tea itself and 80% on the water used”.
In general, tea should be prepared with fresh, unchlorinated, oxigenic and rather soft water. The degree of the water hardness, however, also depends on the region. Water which is too limy causes a blurry film at the surface which prevents the flavor from developing.
Still mineral water is suitable to a limited extent only. It often contains high amounts of calcium and hydrocarbonate which become small white flakes when the water starts boiling while also increasing the pH value. Thus, only use still mineral water with low calcium and hydrocarbonate values.
Besides the temperature of the water, every sort of tea also has its own defined brewing time. Tailor this to your liking.
Nevertheless, there are some basic rules to guide us: The more tea leaves you use and the hotter the water is, the shorter the brewing time. Black teas are not quite as sensitive as other sorts which sometimes only need a few seconds.
Instant Products:
Hot chocolate or instant soups should be prepared at a water temperature of 100°C.
The optimal temperature for pot- or manual brewing of coffee is at 95°C. Instant coffee should be prepared with 80°C hot water.