Saturday Science Experiment!

To Reboil or Not to Reboil?
Just recently, my Mum was flicking though my 'Modern Household Manual' and snorted when she came across something about not boiling water which had already been boiled (eg. You fill the kettle, make a cuppa and then when you fancy another cuppa an hour later, you just flick the switch and reboil the water that is already in there). Apparently my Grandmother was a stickler for not reboiling and seldom drank tea at my Mum's house because Mum is a 'reboiler'.

So I did some research and found that there is actually a fair bit of stuff written about how reboiling takes oxygen from the water, making the tea 'flat' in flavour. Hm, fascinating! I am a tea drinker from way back, call it my British heritage, call it my Nanna alter-ego, I just love a cuppa....I am also a reboiler. Perhaps I am selling myself short on my tea drinking experience! Time to hit the lab!

I'm going to make 2 cups of tea. One using water from the kettle which has been boiled previously and the other with water that will be drawn cold from the tap and boiled only once. For both cups I will be using tap water.

Both will be made in cups identical in material, capacity, and colour - white bone china (a wedding present from Aunty May - Thanks Aunty May!).

Both cups of tea will be made using Dilmah tea bags.

Both cups will be filled to the same level and will be tasted black.

Tasting will be done by myself and will be blind tested by Andy.

Outcome
Well, I made my two cups of tea and took them both to Andy to have him taste test them. The only difference he picked was that he thought the 'fresh boiled' tea had a very slight metallic taste to it. I couldn't really taste much difference at all, if I did, it was so subtle, that I am not going to bother with emptying the kettle and refilling it with fresh water every time I want a cup of tea.

After all that, I put a slug of chai syrup in each of the cups and we enjoyed a lovely cup of chai each!