What happens if tea steeped too long

Dating back almost 50 centuries, tea has held a special place in humans' diets for a long time, so it's no surprise why the drink is still so popular and so prevalent now. But its longstanding place in human history isn't the only reason why people drink tea. It's also because the brewed beverage has some incredible health benefits. Dozens of studies and thousands of years of anecdotal evidence have found that antioxidant-rich tea has numerous beneficial effects on health, including the prevention of many diseases such as cancer, diabetes, arthritis, cardiovascular disease CVD , stroke, and obesity.

With nearly 21 percent of the adult American population considering themselves tea drinkers, we thought it would be useful to share the most common mistakes people make when brewing a batch.

Making these mistakes may not completely cancel out tea's benefits , but they're certainly not doing anything to help this miracle drink out. These mistakes range from ruining flavor to preventing the extraction of the most beneficial compounds. Keep these in mind the next time you put the kettle on the stove, and if you needed any more convincing to order some tea leaves, it might be worth taking a look at What Happens to Your Body If You Drink Tea Every Day.

You shouldn't be relying on that whistle of your tea kettle. If you are, that means your water has come to a boil—and it's too hot. The heat can make those delicate tea leaves taste bitter and less sweet. Studies show that hot water can also destroy delicate, health-promoting compounds like catechins.

For the perfect cup of tea, you want your water to be just under a rolling boil, you can eyeball to be around when small bubbles start to form alongside the kettle. Now, there isn't one temperature that works for every tea—each is different. For example, green tea should be brewed between and degrees Fahrenheit while the water for black tea should come to degrees, according to the Art of Tea.

To be this precise, it might be worth investing in a tea kettle with a thermometer. Loose leaf tea usually consists of whole leaves, while most teabags are filled with broken pieces of tea leaves called dust or fannings, which have less-nuanced flavors and infuse fewer antioxidants than whole leaves, no matter how long you let them steep.

So if you have a choice, go with loose leaf. But if tea bags are all you have on hand, don't bother adjusting your brewing method: The difference in taste and antioxidants isn't something that can be fixed with a few extra minutes, and according to Sang, you should follow the same steeping times for both tea bags and loose leaf. To calculate the perfect brew times for what's in your mug, first consider what you want most out of your drink.

Tea leaves are packed with beneficial compounds. Research indicates that flavanols such as catechins and epicatechins, found in both green and black teas, help suppress inflammation and curb plaque build-up in arteries. Drinking tea may improve vascular reactivity , which dictates how well blood vessels adjust to stress. According an analysis of multiple tea-related studies published in the European Journal of Epidemiology in , drinking three cups of tea a day reduces your risk of coronary heart disease by 27 percent, cardiac death by 26 percent, and total mortality by 24 percent.

Polyphenolic antioxidants in tea may also protect against diabetes , depression , and liver disease. Past research has shown that it takes to seconds to extract half the polyphenol content from green and black tea leaves. According to a study published in in the journal Beverages , you can get more polyphenols into your drink if you allow the leaves more time to steep. However, the returns may not be worth the extra effort: Most of the compounds the researchers measured after 10 minutes of steeping were extracted in the first 5 minutes.

Sang makes another argument for not waiting too long to drink your tea. Antioxidants are slightly unstable, which means they will eventually break down and lose their healthy properties after infusing with water.

So if you brew it in the morning, then you drink it in the afternoon, that's not good. Though less potent than its rival coffee, a properly brewed cup of tea packs a caffeine punch. According to a study published in the Journal of Analytical Toxicology [ PDF ], letting your tea brew for at least a few minutes has a big impact on the caffeine content. In addition, as an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.

Steeping is the process of unlocking the flavor within a certain kind of tea. Generally speaking, the steeping process is somewhere between three and five minutes depending on the kind of tea in question. The result is a hot, delicious tea of a huge range of flavors. But there is the possibility that you can oversteep the tea.

Perhaps something takes your attention away and you let it sit in the hot water for longer than required. This is what it means to oversteep the tea and it can potentially ruin the flavor of the tea.

When you steep your tea, there are a lot of tiny particles that get released, they are called tannins. The tannins are what give each of these teas the astringency that it has. During the steeping process, the tannins will flow at a continuous rate from the leaves. The idea is to keep those tannins at a reasonable level by limiting the steeping process.

The thing is that oversteeping your tea can lead to the production of too many tannins. Think about any time that you have had a cup of tea that left your mouth dry and lacked flavor. This is indeed caused by those aforementioned tannins. The tough thing is that each tea has its own unique and ideal steeping time.

Most teas contain caffeine; however, the longer your steep the tea leaves, the more caffeine is imparted into the liquid. Caffeine is bitter and may be a reason why people don't over-steep tea. Unfortunately, you will miss out on the benefits of caffeine if you choose a shorter steeping time.

Research from The National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine states that caffeine has been shown to increase mental alertness. This can lead to improved concentration and focus.