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Tea Tales

Washing Tea: What Is It And Why You Shouldn’t Do it

“You should dump the first brewing!” I’m sure a lot of you have heard someone, sometimes from “tea masters” even, teaching you to dispose the first brew of tea, and for various reasons. In fact, a lot of people still have the custom of “washing tea”, pour out the first brew without drinking. There are a lot of different sayings as to why people wash their teas, and we are here to debunk the myths!

Myth #1: Washing tea can wash off the pesticide residue?

To debunk this, let’s get to know how pesticides were used on tea trees. First of all, what we need for pesticides to do is to prevent the insects to eat up the new buds. Therefore, the timing for spraying pesticides is after picking and before the next budding. All the authorized pesticides will naturally break apart after a certain amount of time, which we called “safety period for picking”. The time period will differ due to enduring the rain, the sun, and also the speed of the tea tree’s metabolization. Generally speaking, the safety period is around 21 days, while the harvest cycle (the time needed for the teas to grow after one picking) is 45 days. By this time, all the pesticides are already long gone before picking, with very little chance of leaving a residue.

▼ Photo by Rinaldi Wibowo

Furthermore, the pesticides used on tea trees are mostly fat-soluble as suppose to water-soluble. For example, there are around 110 authorized pesticides to use on tea trees, and only less than 5 are water-soluble. This means that unless you straight up eat the leaves (such as grinding them into powders to brew), it’s mostly impossible for any pesticide to dissolve while brewing with water, even if there is residue on the leaves. But what about the water-soluble types? The Tea and Beverage Research Station has done experiments this too, taking the one water-soluble pesticides with the highest concentration to see how much residues there is. They found out that the residue is so low that you will have to consume at least 9L of teas in a short amount of time for it to do anything to your health. For reference, daily recommended consumption of water per person is 2L. Therefore, let alone tea, drinking 9L of water in a short amount of time will hurt you!

Today, pesticide residue is constantly monitored by the government. Not only do the tea farmers have to have their teas tested every season, we in the shop sometimes get “mystery shoppers” to sample our teas. Hence, you don’t have to worry too much about pesticide residues when you are buying from a reputable tea shop. If you still have concerns and want to be 100% sure, you can always choose to get the certified organic teas or wild teas. These two types of teas are pesticide-free. However, their price point is usually higher as the yields are normally lower.

Myth #2: Washing tea can wash the dust off the tea leaves?

Well for starter… dust is everywhere in our lives, and the dust found in our tea leaves is no more than the dust we breath in everyday. These dusts are so tiny, there’s no way to tell if you can actually wash it off. Not to mention that with the small amount of tea we drink everyday, it really doesn’t make any differences. If we leave the cup out for a while without a lid, there might be more dust falling down into the cup than the dust coming out from the tea leaves. Washing tea to wash off the dust is actually unnecessary.

Myth #3: Running hot water over the leaves can help prep them to release more flavor later?

But if the purpose is to allow the leaves to expand, why not just steep longer then pour to enjoy? The recommended brewing time for most of Taiwanese teas are 30-40 seconds. However, since the leaves hasn’t fully expand on the first brewing, especially for ball-shaped teas, the taste is usually a bit lighter. The second brewing is the most flavorful. If you want to get a rich taste on the first brew, try steeping the teas for 40-50 seconds, leaving enough time for the leaves to expand. This way you won’t have to discard the first brewing! After all, the first brewing has a lot worth enjoying!

The Feature of the First Brew

First of all, there are a lot of Vitamins and anti-oxidants that are beneficial to our body. These elements will come out the most in the first brew, and diminish afterwards. So, dumping the first brewing is essentially wasting the nutrients. Apart from the health benefits, tea leaves release the best flavor during the 1st to the 4th brewing, then the flavor will gradually gets lighter. Thus, make sure to enjoy each and every brew, so that you can savor all the good flavors your tea has to offer.

Hope that this article can answer your questions about tea-washing. If you have a friend who is not sure about washing tea, feel free to share this post with them! Let’s all enjoy the beauty of each brew of tea.

◀ Photo by Rinaldi Wibowo