Joseph Kubera wrote:

>>>>>If I
>>>>>leave the old, wet leaves in the pot overnight (per normal sometimes)
>>>>>and prepare a new cup in the morning by adding new leaves to the old
>>>>>with hot water, the water seems to turn into a clear thick slimy liquid.
>>>>>
>
>
> I have not had this happen to the extent you describe, but I *have* had teas
> that left a perceptible film on the pot's interior. I commonly just rinse my
> pots out with very hot water, rub the sides with my fingers, and that's
> usually enough. But when I get a tea like this, I use dish soap or detergent.
>
> For me, it always had to do with specific teas. Not that they tasted bad at
> all; just some characteristic of the tea. It didn't take all night for the
> film to form, either.

Tried the following highly-scientific experiment: This morning, at crack
of dawn, brewed cup of tea in pot with fresh leaves on yesterdays
1-cup's-worth of spent. /Teeny/ bit of viscous slime sorta-kinda
detected. Steep time about 3 minutes. Then added more fresh leaves and
another cup of nearly-boiling water (should kill /all/ life forms, yes?)
and drove the kids to school. Returned one hour later. All liquid had
transformed into viscous slime. We're talking the stuff they had
dripping out of the mouth of the Alien.

> Three ideas:
>
> 1) Try saving your spent leaves overnight as usual, and in the morning NOT
> adding new leaves, but just rebrewing the old ones...and see what happens.
> Maybe there's some reaction between the new leaves and old?

Next on the agenda. Jeepers - how complicated can pitching hot water
onto wet leaves be?

> 2) Perhaps your new environment has some unusually vigorous airborne bacteria
> that go to work on your spent tea leaves overnight. I never found wet leaves
> to be an ideal growth medium, but had a heckuva time with this issue when I
> used to do homebrewing.

This is indeed a poser. If there are some mysterious airborne critters
they are unaffected by 90C water. And they grow nowhere else. Not that I
normally keep bunches of wet leaves lying around the place.

> 3) Send Uncle Lee packing. ;-)

But . . . but . . . Ol' Lee has been an old friend for over five years
now! Dependable, inexpensive, easy to obtain. Kind of like an old
girlfriend I used to have.

Besides, Trader Joe's sells this tea by the container-load. If it is
somehow contaminated or comes bearing some evil thermophilic life from
another planet, surely someone would have noticed by now. Also, about a
month ago, the packaging changed to vacuum-sealed bags. Now we have a
life form that tolerates high temperatures and the vacuum of space. My
comparison to "Alien" is starting to look plausible.

--
Mike "Rocket J Squirrel" Elliott
71 VW Type 2 -- the Wonderbus (AKA the Saunabus in summer)