Sparkling sencha, sparkling oolong, and other adventures with carbonation and tea

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debunix
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Mon Jul 27, 2020 12:48 pm

This has been discussed in a number of other topics here and there, but maybe it finally deserves its own topic.
thommes wrote:
Mon Jul 27, 2020 6:16 am
We were gifted a soda stream many years ago and used it for several years. .... Interesting that you use if for tea. Can you share details?
I bought mine specifically for use with tea. Victoria mentioned making some sparkling tea, and that sounded so good that I bought a few bottles of sparkling water and started dropping some inexpensive sencha in the bottles as quickly as possible (to avoid losing the carbonation), capping them, and leaving them in the refrigerator for several hours to overnight. I liked my sparkling sencha enough on hot summer days to finally buy a soda stream, hoping the environmental impact of the refillable CO2 cylinders would be less than bottling and shipping all the sparkling water around.

I have played with doing it in different ways, and what I do now is

1 set up a porcelain gaiwan with some dry leaf, cover it with hot water, and let it sit a few minutes.

2 I take a sodastream bottle and add some cool tap water to it so I'm not pouring near boiling water directly into the plastic bottle.

3 with a funnel, pour the tea and leaf right into the bottle. Pour additional cool or room temperature water through the funnel to get all the tea into the bottle. Fill the bottle to the fill line.

4 Put the bottle in the refrigerator. Wait.

I often start the night before to have it ready midday if I know I will be doing hot work in the morning (e.g., serious gardening/yard cleanup).

5 carbonate the chilled tea with the sodastream, directly.

I ignore their warnings about carbonating water first and then adding flavorings only to the bottle after removing from the carbonator, because I'm not putting in sugar or particles of foods and I'm not worried about a bit of tannins building up on the spout.

6 wait a minute or two with the bottle sealed.

7 Pour through a strainer into a chawan or larger yunomi.

enjoy!

A few other points

How much tea to how much water?
I prefer my teas relatively dilute, so I probably use less than you will want. Chilling mutes flavors a bit, but it's also a single long steep, so you need to find your own balance for each tea and your taste buds.

What teas?
I love sparkling sencha, and sparkling gyokuro has been a really marvelous treat on one or two special occasions. My favorite right now is Norbu's Red Alishan Oolong, a spicy, fruity, darkly oxidized but I suspect lightly roasted gem that is no longer available (Greg stopped running his retail shop right before Coronavirus hit, and I hope his new venture is doing well). I've also found that genmaicha is acceptable this way, especially if I increase the leaf to toasted rice ratio; it's not brilliant, but it's my favorite way of using up the genmaicha that comes as part of my Obubu subscription, which otherwise sits for a long time. It doesn't appeal as much with an earthy puerh, although a fruitier plummier shu pu (lao cha tou) can be OK.

And inspired by the mention of root beer in another topic, I'm going to start playing with other herbal & spiced infusions/tisanes, and will report back here if I come up with anything special.

Hope that helps!
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Victoria
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Mon Jul 27, 2020 1:49 pm

Thanks for sharing this instructional. Sounds so good I’m tempted to get a soda maker now. Recently on a trip to my local Japanese marked, I picked up a bottled roasted Hojicha and a chilled oolong from Ito En. They both would be really tasty with carbonation. Also, I could see mixing less desirable older teas with other herbs and flavors to carbonate. I wonder if anyone is using any other type of soda maker, besides Soda Stream? A few are reviewed here Best Soda Makers.
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debunix
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Mon Jul 27, 2020 2:28 pm

Victoria wrote:
Mon Jul 27, 2020 1:49 pm
I could see mixing less desirable older teas with other herbs and flavors to carbonate.
I use inexpensive pouches of Ito-En and Maeda-en sencha for this, mostly, because they are 'good enough' for this use, although it is better when made with finer stuff. When my goal is to have something cool and tasty after hot & sweaty exercise, and I know I'll be gulping whatever, it's time for the cheaper versions.
Victoria wrote:
Mon Jul 27, 2020 1:49 pm
I wonder if anyone is using any other type of soda maker, besides Soda Stream? A few are reviewed here Best Soda Makers.
I did a little research before I got my sodastream, but couldn't really get a strong sense of one being better than another, and ended up with analysis paralysis. I picked Sodastream because I saw both the device and refills at Target. So no idea how it compares to other brands.
thommes
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Mon Jul 27, 2020 3:09 pm

Thanks for the info. I was wondering how you got the tea into the bottle after adding CO2. The instructions on the soda stream says to add the CO2 before the flavoring. Wasn't sure if this was due to keeping the machine clean or a real safety concern. I do know that if you add the syrup flavoring too quickly to the carbonated water, it can turn into the menthos in the coke bottle situation. I also thought I accidentally added flavoring to a bottle once and tried to charge it and had the same experience of exploding beverage. I may give it a whirl. Haven't had a good kitchen explosion in 2 days. :)
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pedant
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Mon Jul 27, 2020 3:41 pm

i am a big fan of chilled, carbonated tea. especially sencha.

regardless of if the tea is brewed hot or cold, i recommend chilling and filtering the tea first before carbonating, preferably through a coffee filter.

chilling increases the solubility of CO2 in the tea liquid. this lets it carbonate faster and more easily.

filtering out suspended particles reduces the amount of available nucleation sites at which the CO2 may evolve. ime, trying to carbonate anything with suspended particles (bits of fruit or tea leaf) just results in a foamy mess. i like heavy carbonation, though.
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debunix
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Mon Jul 27, 2020 4:33 pm

Not getting a foamy mess with my small quantities of leaf, but I'm not using powdery matcha either!
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wave_code
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Tue Jul 28, 2020 3:51 pm

thommes wrote:
Mon Jul 27, 2020 3:09 pm
Thanks for the info. I was wondering how you got the tea into the bottle after adding CO2. The instructions on the soda stream says to add the CO2 before the flavoring. Wasn't sure if this was due to keeping the machine clean or a real safety concern. I do know that if you add the syrup flavoring too quickly to the carbonated water, it can turn into the menthos in the coke bottle situation. I also thought I accidentally added flavoring to a bottle once and tried to charge it and had the same experience of exploding beverage. I may give it a whirl. Haven't had a good kitchen explosion in 2 days. :)
I think this is more so that the sugars in the soda syrups to get on/in the corbonation tip and get it sticky and gunked up. probably not great to get other small particles and microbes like little leaf debris up in there either, but maybe a dab with a wet paper towel should keep you ok.
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debunix
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Sat Aug 01, 2020 3:39 pm

A hot day today, and I've already enjoyed a session with sparkling Red Alishan, and some Shan Xi Xiao Ye green tea from a TeaHabitat sampler set of competition teas. Both were LOVELY. In the fridge now: one more Red Alishan, one genmaicha/extra sencha, and one milk oolong.

I have received the first of my yancha orders as discussed elsewhere, but all I want is chilled sparkling tea. I need to refill the latest empty bottle.....maybe this is the time for something herbal/spiced rather than just tea. Hmmmm....
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debunix
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Sun Aug 02, 2020 6:04 pm

First experiment with spicy/herb mix and carbonation was a bit too strong, still a work in progress.

But....just now I have had another wonderful experience with sparkling tea: I used the very tart/fruity Den's Mori-machi Puerh, and it was FABULOUS.
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debunix
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Fri Aug 07, 2020 2:33 pm

Making progress with root-beer like sparkling soda....infusions of mixed spices and sarsaparilla root. Quite interesting stuff. Internet recipes for root beer are varied but all include variable quantities of

Sarsaparilla root
Ginger root
Licorice root
Birch bark
Star anise
Some form of sugar, brown sugar, and/or molasses

And variably included:

Cinnamon
Herbs
Cloves
Vanilla
Burdock root
Dandelion root
Cherry bark

Gamro leaf (Korean hydrangea leaf) makes a wonderfully sweet and slightly spicy tea, and permits sweetening without the sugar. I'll update here when I have another trial ready to go....
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debunix
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Sun Aug 16, 2020 1:41 am

The 3rd rootbeer tea trial made some pretty good stuff. I weighed what I added:

Ingredient grams
Sarsaparilla root 10.9
Licorice root 2.4
Birch Bark 3.4
Ginger root (fresh) 10.2
Vanilla bean 1.4
Cloves 0.7
Star anise 3.7
Chicory root 3.3
Allspice 1.7
Peppermint leaf 0.9
Gamro/Hydrangea leaf 1 (sweetens it)

Which looked like this, minus the gamro leaf that I forgot to add until I'd already mixed the other spices up:

Image

and I cut the ginger and vanilla and cracked the allspice berries before steeping

Image

Added the gamro leaf and then covered with about 0.5 L/1 pint boiling water and let steep about 8 hours at room temp.

Image

Image

Then I scooped out about 1/4 cup/60 mL of the concentrated tea and added it to 1 pint chilled, carbonated water. It is just a little bit stronger than I want--probably 40 mL would be better, will try that next time.
Ethan Kurland
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Sun Aug 07, 2022 2:00 pm

2 years after reading this thread, I carbonated some tea. I thank debunix for starting the thread & the other contributors.

During this heat wave, the addition of carbonation to my routine, is most welcome. Cheers
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debunix
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Sun Aug 07, 2022 10:05 pm

Excellent!

When I am at home, I try to avoid using the AC as much as I can and chilled sparkling tea is a very helpful part of that.
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