Material that lightens the taste of tea | HOJO Online Speciality Tea Shop

Niigata Tsuki Do-ki: The external urface is copper and internal surface is tin

Do you know that the material used for teapots, cooking equipment or kettles could affect the taste of the tea or food you prepare?

Some material enhance the taste

There are materials that could increase the after taste of tea, for example: iron, silver, platinum, tin and gold. These materials can effectively increase after taste, thicken the taste and enhance the softness. These days, many people prefer to use cast iron kettles or silver pots to make tea because these materials give positive influences to the taste.

The finding is only based on the tasting

I cannot conduct a quantitative analysis on this conclusion, since I am not working for the laboratory nor do I have analytical instruments to conduct such experiment. However, with appropriate training, one can easily tell the differences.

Some material ruin the taste

On the other hand, some materials that are commonly used could also weaken the after taste of anything that is cooked or boiled in it . For example: aluminum, brass and copper are the 3 major materials that could kill off after taste, sometimes they could even cause dryness on the tongue. I think that many people cannot accept this fact since copper and aluminum are very common materials for cooking equipment. Sometimes, copper equipment can be more expensive than other material due to their efficiency in heat conduct.

You can tell the difference with side by side tasting

If you wish to know the effect of these materials, just conduct a tasting experiment. Prepare your tea in a glass or porcelain teapot and run the tea though these respective materials.

By comparing side by side, the differences are very distinctive. If you compare with glass or porcelain as control, tea that run though copper, aluminum and brass tend to give much lighter taste, less softness and lack of flavor.

The canned beer does not taste greate.

Personally, I never enjoy drinking beer from the can. Beer cans are usually made from aluminum. Due to the effect of aluminum, the taste of beer becomes flatter. If we try the same beer packaged in glass bottle, the taste is obviously different and better compared to canned beer.

Niigata Tsuiki Do-ki uses copper only on the external surface

In Japan, we have a type of traditional tea equipment called Niigata Tsuki-Doki that is made of copper. However the copper is only used on the surface and it is laminated with tin on the inside. As the result, the copper layer on the outside of the pot does not affect the taste of tea.