"Is this the result of your research?" Lawrence looked curiously at the two small bags that Nora took out from behind. In one of the small bags, there were some dried tea leaves that were roughly shaped into strips and full of wrinkles.
The contents of the other small bag didn't even look like the tea leaves he had in mind, but just some reddish-brown powdery items with very coarse particles.
"That's it. This is the best solution I selected after experimenting all night last night and trying hundreds of methods." Nora looked at Lawrence's expression and quickly explained, "Don't look at these two packages.
It doesn’t look good, but I tried brewing it and it tasted really good. The reason why these tea leaves look like this is because my special method of fermentation ensures the taste but not the appearance.”
"This should be black tea." After looking at it carefully for more than ten seconds, Lawrence realized what this tea was. In his memory, all tea leaves sold in this world no matter where they are sold.
It's green tea. There's no such thing as black tea. So when I saw these powdered teas before, I really didn't think of other ways to drink tea besides green tea.
Different from Lawrence's previous life, different regions had different ways of drinking tea. There is only one kind of tea in this world, green tea. And the methods of drinking tea have all been unified into the green tea brewing method in the Sinian Empire. It is not as different as in the previous life.
A variety of tea varieties and ways to drink them.
After a brief thought, Lawrence also roughly understood why the drinking methods of tea in the two worlds are so different. The reason is very simple, that is because there is magic in this world. It can solve many problems like Lawrence's.
Problems in the world that were difficult to solve in ancient times.
For example, in the world of Lawrence's previous life, the reason why Westerners drank black tea was because after early exposure to Eastern green tea, they found that green tea had a short shelf life and was difficult to store and transport back to their hometowns for a long time. So they could only choose those
Black tea can be stored for a long time after fermentation. Then I was lucky enough to find another way to drink tea that suited me, and finally black tea became popular in the West.
The problem of tea preservation was not completely solved until later generations, and it affected many things. For example, Lawrence remembered that in his previous life, some varieties of fermented Pu'er tea were sold at sky-high prices and became luxury goods.
.The price of green tea is far lower than that of these black teas.
The reason for this is that as a luxury product, a very important feature is that it needs to be able to maintain its value. Unfortunately, green tea is often only the freshest tea leaves of the year that are the most valuable, and then it will continue to increase over time.
depreciation. But black tea does not have this weakness and can be stored for a long time.
However, in this world, magical power can make green tea that has been stored for dozens or even hundreds of years as fresh as when it was first stored. As a luxury drink that comes from afar, magic can be used to keep it fresh.
Tea is obviously a worthwhile thing.
This also resulted in the fact that the tea leaves in this world did not encounter the complicated preservation problems of Lawrence's previous world from the beginning. Then the brewing and drinking methods passed down from the East completely unified the entire world. Even the most elegant ones
The elves also adopted the drinking method from the East, but they made the drinking procedure a little more complicated and had the so-called elf elegance.
But today, when faced with the vast swath of tea leaves in the central hilly area that cannot be brewed as green tea, Nora thought of the fermented black tea from her previous life. She thought that perhaps fermentation could be used to solve the problem of astringency and bitterness in these tea leaves.
Things like phenols and caffeine.
Naturally, the experiment was not smooth sailing. Not only was it unable to reduce the bitterness at first, but the tea also became more bitter due to over-fermentation or fermentation failure many times, and sometimes a large amount of unpleasant rancidity was incorporated into it. But it was good.
The little doll can use her magic power to accurately control the fermentation environment. At the same time, she can also accurately judge the ingredients of each part of the tea. So it only took a few hundred experiments to come up with the current one.
Finished product.
After someone sent a small pot of boiling water, Lawrence waited for the boiling water to drop to about 85°C and used it to brew the first black tea. Unlike green tea, in his impression, brewing black tea required
The water temperature should be higher. After waiting for three to five minutes after brewing, a cup of tea soup will appear in front of you. The color of the tea soup is orange-red and bright, and there is a golden halo around the soup surface, which looks like a golden crown.
"This tea seems to have the aroma of some kind of fruit, and it smells quite pleasant." After seeing the color of the tea soup and putting his nose close to the mouth of the cup to smell it, Lawrence said to Nora next to him, waiting for the temperature of the tea soup.
After it came down a little, he picked up the tea cup and took a sip. "It has a faint aroma and a very mellow taste. By the way, what's up with your other bag of powdered black tea?"
"These powdered black teas are made from the older leaves of the tea leaves, and have a richer flavor." Nora said and flew out, and after a while she flew in with a can of milk. "When making it,
I have been trying to make these older leaves with greater yields as suitable for drinking as the previous tea, but later I found that if I increased the intensity of fermentation to remove the bitterness, the unique aroma of the tea would not be there.
Already."
"So I tried to change my mind, and then I thought of British-style afternoon tea. That kind of black tea is drunk with milk and sugar, which can highlight the flavor and reduce the unpleasant bitterness through the taste of milk and sugar.
.”
"Milk tea, it's been a long time since I've had it." Lawrence whispered as he watched the little doll use magic to brew the powdered tea leaves, although in his previous life he was worried about how many times he drank milk tea because of the sugar content.
Very rarely, but now that I'm in a foreign country, I'm starting to miss that taste. "By the way, do you mean that for milk tea, do you pour milk into the tea, or do you pour the tea into the milk?"
"Uh-" After hearing Lawrence's sudden question, Nora's hand movements became sluggish and she turned her head and said. "If I remember correctly, even in the UK where this method of drinking tea is the most popular.
There was no debate and a final result came out.”
"From a more scientific perspective, according to a 2003 paper by the Royal Society of Chemistry, hot tea should be poured into cold milk. Because if milk is poured into boiling tea, the protein in the milk will be denatured, and the tea's
The bitter taste will not disappear, and the protein will deteriorate when heated and easily coagulate. Not only will the taste no longer be smooth, but hydrogen sulfide will also be produced, giving off a milky smell; "
“In contrast, if you infuse tea into cold milk, the bitterness disappears because the temperature of the mixture of tea and milk is not, at least initially, higher than the temperature that denatures the proteins, so the proteins can complex with the tannins.
"
"But traditionally, the British aristocrats prefer to pour cold milk into hot tea, thinking that this can avoid adding too much or too little milk. More importantly, this method has stronger cultural blessings. For example
The Queen of England belongs to this group."
"Then let's add the tea to the cold milk. After all, from a scientific point of view, it tastes better this way." Lawrence thought for a while and said. "As for tradition, there is no one in the world except the two of us.
People know how the British drink tea, they don’t even know what Britain is. And the method we use is traditional.”
"You're right." Nora filtered the brewed tea through a filter from the laboratory, then poured it into the milk, and then poured it into two cups, one large and one small.
"The most important thing is that it tastes good. After all, it is just a drink."