What tradition brought together households, neighbors who suddenly appeared and even pioneers on major holidays? Of course, tea with a samovar and dryers, bird’s milk and gingerbread. In the Soviet Union, both adults and children loved to drink tea.
It was not easy to get tea leaves of decent quality. On the shelves most often met Tea No. 36, Tea No. 20, Krasnodar tea of the highest, first, second and third grade, Georgian tea of the highest, first and second grade.
Each of these drinks has its own characteristics. Georgian tea “looked like sawdust, it smelled of tobacco and had a disgusting taste,” complains a member of the livejournal.com forum under the nickname torin_kr. Krasnodar was used for brewing chifir. For “thirty-six” had to stand in line to get only two packs on hand. But Indian tea was a cherished rarity, which was given and re-gifted, considered the most fragrant and rich tea drink and treated with great respect.
Due to the rarity and difficulty in acquiring, Soviet housewives brewed tea leaves until the tea lost its color. How harmful such use was discussed with Dr. nutritionist, gastroenterologist Evstigneeva Guzel Gareevna: “To date, there is no scientific evidence that it is harmful to brew tea several times. There are even such teas, such as milk oolong, which, on the contrary, reveal their taste after repeated brewing. Another issue is that if you brew black tea several times, it loses its taste.”
If earlier this habit was harmless, now it cannot be called such. It’s all about tea bags. Experts do not advise to brew them again. Dr. Andrei Yakushev told Gazeta.Ru that a re-brewed tea bag can cause an “intestinal infection.” The thing is that after the first use in a warm favorable environment, harmful bacteria begin to multiply. Especially dangerous is re-brewing with cooled water: “If you put a tea bag “colonized” with harmful microorganisms in such hot water, then it will no longer be tea, but a cocktail dangerous to health,” says the doctor.
Although the Soviet tradition of re-brewing tea was quite popular, innocuous and harmless, today’s conditions and knowledge about hygiene and safety emphasize the importance of caution in such practices with tea bags.
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