What determines the "strength" of tea steeped from a teabag (ie steep time, cup size, heat)?

Question

Obviously, you can't drop a teabag into a 1-liter jar and expect 1 liter of tea. During the process of steeping, tea "particles" flow from the bag to the water. What stops this flow? Some sort of osmotic equilibrium? Do the leaves simply run out of "particles" to give?

Answer 1

I think that "running out of particles" is part of the picture.

However, apart from not using too much water relative to the amount of tea, the best tea is made by using FRESH, ABSOLUTELY BOILING water poured into a container (such as a ceramic tea pot) containing LOOSE TEA, that can be kept as hot as possible and stirred and agitated from time to time.

The pot itself should first be partly filled with boiling water several times and shaken and agitated vigorously so that it becomes as hot as possible prior to putting in the tea and filling it with the aforesaid boiling water.

To keep the tea, once made, as hot as possible, a traditional English "tea cosy" should be placed around the pot.

Some purists would have one drain off the tea into another pre-heated container after 3 - 5 minutes, in order to minimize the continued strengthening of the tea with tannins. That is said to preserve the flavour of freshly brewed tea. However, if (like the British working classes whence I came) one loves that increasingly tannic taste, that is pointless, of course.

It is hard to achieve the right amount of agitation of the tea in the confines of tea bags and a cup or glass. Worse yet is to ask for tea in cultures (such as the U.S.) where a request for BOILING WATER is followed by having merely hot, and sometimes only warm, water brought to the table, it having already been poured into a previously cold cup, and with an unopened tea bag only somewhere in the near vicinity!

Boiling water is of course the ENEMY of good coffee; but for tea it is ESSENTIAL.

Live long and prosper.

Answer 2

Strength of the tea is determined by concentration of tea particles, i.e. amount of tea particles per unit of volume, i.e. strength ~ N/volume. If you have larger volume, you would get smaller concentration, because number of particles N is constant in a teabag. Number of tea particles though is roughly propoptional to number of bags nN, so you can reach the same strength by increasing number of teabags:) strength ~ nN/V.

Answer 3

No but I have had a cup of tea with one tea bag but it takes 4 to make a picture!