As a rule of thumb westeners tend to brew tea too hot, don't be afraid of messing around with lower temperatures. Doubly so if you're living in the lowlands, in mountainous regions where the tea grows people might be using boiling water but that doesn't mean 100C: In the Andes, where potatoes are from, they're doing some freezing and whatnot processing to prepare them instead of boiling. Wouldn't really work because you can't get water hotter than 80-85C there.

Also cold brewed, as in refrigerator brewed, Earl Grey is one of my favourites in summer. Needs the right base tea though mine's a decent Cylon. Couple of hours at least, better overnight, practically impossible to steep too long.

[–] Mint@lemmy.one 2 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

I know that cold brew is a thing of black teas, its just that it takes a while to do black cold brews, compared to gyokuro which you can brew it room temp under a min or so if you're using higher ratio of tea to water compared to western brewing.

But yes like I mentioned you can do green tea near boiling its just it depends heavily on where its from, how its grown, how its treated and how fresh it is. The less fresh green tea is, the colder the water you should be using.