xkcd #3022: Making Tea

:(
- You disgust me

Where's throwing it into the harbor fall on this chart?
- Far left
  
  The USA was apparently built on communism.
- A war was started because of that

Ok, but, why is microwaved water any different the water warmed in a kettle?
This seems like a pointless thing to get worked up over.
- Went to see Randall doing his book promo and being interviewed by Matt Parker (in the UK) recently and this was his exact position on it
  The audience were not on his side 😆
- Water warmed in a kettle has much more even temperature in all points, which affects the brewing process. Generally, the more even the temperature is, the more consistent and rich is your brew.
  I would consider microwave boiling as a makeshift method to produce a mediocre result when you need it anyway, not as a daily driver.
  
  How does a kettle warm the water more evenly but a microwave doesn’t? When a kettle has it’s heating element only at the bottom but a microwave blasts the entire mass of water with energy because it sits on a rotating plate.
  
  I'm asking this from a place of genuine ignorance: how does the evenness of the heat distribution matter when microwaving a pure liquid? I'm familiar with the microwave's uneven heating qualities. I'm sure we've all bit into food that is scalding hot on the surface and still lukewarm at best in its interior. However, I've always presumed that is a product of microwaving a heterogenous, predominantly solid substance.
  So, sure, the microwave applies heat unevenly to the water. But wouldn't the tiny little bits of water which get "over" heated simply diffuse their excess thermal energy into the rest of the homogenous volume in very short order? Furthermore,wouldn't an uneven heat distribution in a mug of water simply lead to convection currents flowing from hot to cold, therefore promoting a relatively even distribution?
- In my experience you won't actually boil water in the microwave because it takes an eternity so you end up with tea in "warm" water instead. Or apparently some people also put the tea bag in the microwave ¯(ツ)/¯
  
  Brother it takes 3 minutes to boil water in the microwave. I have done this without fail.
  It cools down much faster though. Not sure how that works.
- Could be a problem if you microwave it together with the tea bag.
  Also I find microwaves to not heat up the water properly, leaving some cold spots.
  
  Hard to believe that cold spots could stay for more than a moment with the Brownian motion.
  
  The microwaves will heat your water more evenly than a kettle.
  Liquids have this amazing property, that if you heat them , they auto-stir just by themselves.
  (But personally, I'm uneasy about microwaving a tea bag with paper on one end, or worse, a staple. There's probably no problem at all, but it doesn't feel that way.)
  
  So give it a quick stir? Also if it's at a boil, the bubbles are going to mix the fluid well.

How about someone who leaves the tea bag in the mug, sometimes for multiple days? Sips the tea with multiple bags still in it? It creeps me out and I am not even a big tea drinker.
- What the fuck
- Made me think of that eternal stew, but you instead add in more and more tea bags
- I once had a colleague who would get hysteric when someone would clean the coffee machine. People are weird. Not cleaning tea potts and even mugs is also quite common among elder germans. They argue it tastes better that way. (They drink the tea without sugar or milk, so it probably isn't thaaat bad.)
- I've done that a few times. Mostly when the previous bag was used the night before, and I was super sleepy in the morning, so didn't even bother ditching it, saving 1.3 seconds and thinking it would make my new tea stronger.
  ...yeah, I don't do that anymore. But this is why I used to.
  UPDATE: I just made my tea just the regular way this morning. While stirring, I realised I had left the previous night's red berry tea bag in it. I didn't want to waste an otherwise perfectly fine bag of Earl Grey, so I did it again. Not intentionally, though. Also, note to self: red berry Earl Grey is not great.
- But sugar!!!

I’m an American who drinks tea. I’d love to hear from our distant countrymen on how accurate this is.
- 100% spot on. Microwaved tea is comparable I would say to microwaving a steak
  
  The state of education is extremely depressing holy shit.
  
  It’s foul. Cup of Tannin, more like.
  
  Aww fuck. Now that you put it that way, I get it.
- For a start, you don't make tea in a kettle, you boil the water in that, then either pour into a mug or a teapot
  
  I refuse to believe that Randall doesn't know how tea is actually made, so it has to be a meta-joke / troll.
  
  That’s how I do it. Electric kettle. Glass.
  
  Jokes on you, my kettle comes with a built in steeper, so I make my tea in the kettle!
- Not British, but in my experience... accurate.
  I mean, I'm also not British and am roughly aligned with this spectrum myself.
  Look, if you can tolerate the absolute nonsense you hear from Americans about how to make coffee you can deal with me having a spice rack specifically to make tea.
  
  What nonsense do you hear about making coffee?
  Everyone has their own way, but there's no wrong way.

The patriot in me smiles every time I microwave the water. Yankee Doodle, motherfuckers.
- What does the burns unit do?

is it even on the chart when my water cooler at home has a hot spigot that dispenses water at just the right temperature for tea brewing? it's basically like having a kettle that's always ready...
- I fucking love the water cooler heaters, mine does ice cold on one side and boiling on the other and it's heavenly to have both immediately ready with water other than my horrifically heavy (and thus fuzzy) tap water
  I got mine for less than $60 at Walmart like 5 years ago and it's still going strong, highly recommend to anyone
- In the neighboring State from where I live in Brazil, a lot of gas stations have publicly accessible hot water taps. Even some parks and plazas have them. It's for the Mate drinkers to refill their Thermos.

Patrick Stewart once said American tea was one thing he would never get used to. "For a proper cup of tea the water must be boiling when it hits the leaves." He really didn't like being brought a carafe of somewhat hot water with a teabag next to it. Even as an American I can relate.

My husband is Northern German, close enough to England that he was horrified at the thought of making tea in the microwave. And he doesn't even really drink tea when he's not sick.
- Austrian here and I too would never make tea in the microwave. (I too drink tea mostly when I am sick.)
- Ha, my sister lives in Germany and the weirdest thing she finds about German tea habits is that they only drink tea in winter, which I guess is kind of on a par with being sick. In the UK tea is a constant but in Germany it seems to be more of a special circumstances thing (illness, cold weather...). Even the person my sister buys her tea from shuts up shop in the summer because there's no market for it.
  
  Tea is an inefficient delivery system for caffeine. If there's no caffeine in it, it's a warm beverage that relaxes you. So why would the industrious German worker bee want to bother with tea bags when coffee is right there? Unless of course the bee is sick and needs to relax, doctor's orders, to get back to work as soon as possible. ;)

Yeah the kettle is just for boiling the water, nobody makes tea in it, that would wreck it. Yes, I'm English.
- Kettle boils the water, the TEAPOT steeps and serves the tea. Somehow people end up thinking they're the same thing.

Loose leaf or bust! Keep the tea bagging to online shooters

Not perfectly relevant, but I've always enjoyed Professor Elemental's take on tea.

tea@feddit.uk

Do Americans make tea in a kettle? Teabag inside the kettle?
- Apparently I'm committing all the tea sins. I definitely make tea in a kettle. But if I do that, I boil the water before adding the tea bags. Isn't that pretty standard? I'd only do so if I'm making a lot of the same tea (or iced tea), usually for a group of people
  
  For that there is a teapot. Some can be continuously heated up, just through external heating methods, such as a candle!
  Making tea in a kettle severely decreases life of the kettle and even after washing, some amounts of aroma compounds will remain, affecting the taste and aroma of whatever you boil water for next
- Surely putting tea inside a kettle would stain the kettle?
- At my university time I had some student friends who brew loose tea in a kettle. Was kinda disgusting tbh.

So, where do I put my gaiwan on the spectrum?
- For when you actually want 10 tiny cups of tea.
  
  Rookie numbers! Try 20-50 tiny cups.

Needs to map sweet tea that the south enjoys.

<Shaking the head with a samovar, smiling slightly disgusted about the paper taste.>

You boil water in a pot if you want to drink a cup off tea late at night and don't want the loud kettle to wake up the whole house.
- Your kettle is that loud? The loudest part is the 1s jingle it plays after reaching my desired temp...And the volume isnt much louder than the microwave.
  
  What tf why does it play a jingle and why does it have temp settings?
  Didn't know my electric kettle was outdated since it just turns off when it reaches boiling temp.