Should You Rinse Your Tea?

October 16, 2016 12731 view(s)
Should You Rinse Your Tea?

should you rinse your tea?

Getting rid of the first brew is also known as ‘rinsing’ tea as the water is discarded right away. But why is there such a habit among tea drinkers?

Many people believe any teas must be rinsed due to the possible impurities that might be left as a result of production process, others are afraid of the presence of pesticides.

Those who drink tea for health worry that some healthy substances of the tea are rinsed away. In addition, the second cup of tea might suffer from some loss of aroma and flavour.

So who’s right? Is rinsing tea just a habit that has no meaning? Is it something that’s inherited from the past with no use?

How will rinsing affect the health benefits of tea?

There’s strong evidence from the academic world that drinking tea can bring many health benefits. All those benefits are mainly attributable to the polyphenol, theanine, and caffeine content.

why rinse your tea?

When rinsing a fresh and tender green or black tea for let's say 20 seconds, about 20% of the polyphenols and caffeine content will be lost. In addition, about 15% of the theanine is extracted as well. This is based on a study by CCTV in which green teas are soaked for 20 seconds in hot water.

So pure from a health benefit perspective it’s not beneficial to rinse tea. However, for those that are quite sensitive to caffeine, a first rinse can reduce the caffeine content significantly. It’s pretty wasteful way to reduce caffeine in this way though. To avoid caffeine, it would make more sense to just go for a herbal tea during the evening hours.

When you do decide to rinse, keep the washing session below 20 seconds to avoid losing too many healthy compounds.

Can pesticides be rinsed away?

The answer is: it depends whether the pesticides in question easily dissolve in water. Modern pesticides often don’t easily dissolve and stick to the surface of the tea leaves, so rinsing in most cases don’t work!

The good news is that even if the teas do contain pesticides, they don’t easily end up in your cup of tea. Let’s say we detect high amounts of pesticides in a specific tea, and we steep it and test the resulting brew, it’s hard to find any traces of pesticides. So the general answer is that pesticides can’t be rinsed away, neither will it affect your health. Note: this might be different for tea in powdered form or extracts that are present in pills and capsules, since you're consuming the actual tea.

Should I Rinse Tea To Avoid Impurities?

Tea processing is complex, and with many steps involved it's possible that some kind of dirt is present in teas. However, the complexity shouldn't be an excuse for farmers and we believe it's mainly a result of a bad attitude to hygiene. Every year during every harvest season, we continue our search for excellent farmers, and sanitary conditions are the first things we look at. Over time, we actually find that sanitary conditions have some predictive value on the quality of tea. It really says a lot about the farmer and how committed he is.

Getting back to the question, in reality we do see teas with more and more complex processing steps to have higher chances to contain impurities. We particularly are careful with oolong and ripe pu erh teas. The latter being the most tricky because of the wet-piling step. If you're not sure about any presence of dirt in your tea, and you didn't buy the tea from us, then it's a good practice to rinse oolong and shou pu erhs. They need a good wash anyways, if you want to 'awaken' the tea, which we discuss in the next section.

One other reason you might want to rinse is because you see foam appearing on the surface of your tea. This isn't related to impurities though. Read this article for more information: foam on surface of tea.

Rinsing versus Awakening tea

So if rinsing doesn’t flush away any potential pesticides and actually reduces the healthy components, why do we do it? How come so many tea lovers as well as tea ceremony artists actually rinse their tea?

rinsing awakening tea impurities pesticides

Traditionally, people rinse for the purpose of ‘awakening’ the tea, while rinsing away potential impurities is just seen as an added benefit. It’s especially those tightly rolled and compressed tea cakes that require awakening. By doing this, the leaves will have better contact with the water for a better optimised second brew (or first 'real' brew).

It’s also good to know that less healthy components will be lost when compressed tea are awakened. Above, we mentioned that 15 to 20% of healthy compounds are lost when we rinse loose leaf green and black tea. If we would measure the same compound extraction for a tightly rolled Tieguanyin oolong or a pu erh cake the extraction will be just about 5-10%, which is already significantly less.

To sum up, awakening tea can highly benefit the aroma and flavour of a better first real brew for tightly rolled or compressed teas.

Conclusions & Takeaways

  • There's a difference in meaning between 'rinsing' (or 'washing') and 'awakening' teas.
  • A rinsing or awakening session should be less than 20 seconds.
  • Green tea and black teas generally don't require rinsing and if you do, there will be a 20% loss in healthy compounds after a 20 second rinse. Do rinse, if you worry about impurities.
  • Oolong and ripe pu erh tea have higher chances of containing impurities, and it's a good practice to always rinse.
  • Tightly rolled tea, oolong tea and pu erh generally taste better if you awaken them first. In this way, the leaves will unfurl and loosen a bit, so they're ready for a perfect brew. Yes, they'll loose a slight amount of healthy compounds, but they'll taste much better!
Comments
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Juliette
May 5, 2021
I had never heard of rinsing or awakening tea before reading this article. Thank you so much for the information!
Maria
January 28, 2022
I am getting ready to place an order for some teas and am very interested in finding out if there are preservatives (like sulfites) used?
Teasenz
January 28, 2022
No preservatives are applied to our teas. Tea is a dry product, and like herbs won't easily decay. In the tea industry, preservatives may be used, if flavours, colouring and other ingredients are added. However, we don't sell blended teas, and our teas aren't coloured, flavoured (except for milk oolong and ginseng oolong). Regarding sulfites, it could be that for some teas, it may naturally contain very minimal low amounts of sulfites. However, sulfites aren't part of our lab tests. So we can't say for sure that whether there are traceable amounts or not. The goal of our lab tests are to make sure no pesticides are used, because conservatives in our segment of teas aren't a concern.
Rudy
January 26, 2024
If I'm pouring water on 12oz cup of tea is the rinse throwing it all out?
Teasenz
January 26, 2024
Because a rinse is very short it may not rinse away a lot of flavour, especially if the tea is tightly rolled (such as Tie Guan Yin oolong). Rinsing is normally applied to gongfu brewing, steeping small portions of tea (e.g. 4oz). With normal steeping, rinsing is possible, but we would still recommend using less water than what your steeping vessel can hold.
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