5 Tea Hacks That You Need To Try

Decaffeinating Tea

Love Tea but can't stand the extra caffeine kick? You can reduce it by 50-70% using just one simple hack. All you need to do is steep your loose leaf tea in boiling hot water (100C) for 30 seconds and throw-out.

The caffeine diffuses quickly at this temperature, and removes more than half! This is great news considering we can reduce green tea to have less than 8mg of caffeine per cup, which is the same range as decaffeinated coffee.

Smoother Tea... Using Egg Shells?

If you're drinking a particularly astringent tea - like a fresh green tea - you can make your brew smoother and lighter by adding clean eggshells to your loose-leaf and brewing normally.

This isn't magic or myth - adding the eggshell imparts minerals that alter the brew. If you don't believe us, do a blind taste test (like we did) and you'll be just as surprised as we were. 

All it takes is the shell from half an egg, crushed a bit.

Green Tea Re-Brewing Hack

When brewing in the Chinese style (basically less water & more tea) you can improve the flavour of your second, or third, infusion by leaving a bit of water behind rather than straining it all. Also, it might be helpful to watch this video on how to brew Green tea in the Chinese style (called Gong Fu Cha) before reading this point.

 

Infinite Puer Trick

You might not have heard of Puer before - it's a unique category of fermented tea. In Chinese tea, it is the only category of tea that is fermented. If you haven't tasted it before.

While this isn't necessarily a "trick", it's something that many people don't realize. Like all high-quality loose leaf tea, it can be steeped multiple times. Good puer, though, is special. It can be re-brewed 30+ times, usually far more than you could possibly ever want to drink.

So whatever you do, don't throw your Puer away after your 3rd brewing like you would for Green tea. This one can be 10x'd!

The "Kill Brew"

Speaking of multiple brewing, once the tea leaves start to lose their taste - and you're about to throw them away, stop yourself... You still have one brew left, but you're going to need to change your strategy to get it.

In order to extract every last drip of goodness inside those leaves, we'll need to do a final brewing at a higher temperature, for a longer duration. Just pour boiling-hot water (100C) over the leaves and let them steep as long as you possibly can before the water gets too cold to be enjoyed. 

A few minutes will usually do it. You patience will be rewarded with a final, delicious brew that you might have missed out on. With that said, this really is the final brewing - which is why we call it the "Kill Brew."