My Simulator/England/Everyday Traditions

English Tea
Brewing Simulator

Find your perfect balance of time and temperature.

3:00

Interactive 3D • Tea Brewing

Orbit view

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Lab & science

Drag to orbit, wheel / pinch to zoom, tap objects to inspect them. Tap the lid or the teapot while steeping to take the lid off or put it back. Keys (when the scene has focus): Space = brew / pour, R = reset.

Setup

Leaf dose per 500 mL pot

Milk in the cup (mL)

Warm the pot first (traditional English way) Put the lid on while steeping

Model-time speed (1 s of real time = N s of tea time)

Camera

Graphics (High on every device; Low = 1x pixel ratio, smaller shadows, less rain)

Live readout (model values)

Missions

Mission 6: a 500 mL pot of 95 °C water is poured into a cold 0.55 kg china teapot (c = 800 J/kg/K, water c = 4186). What temperature (°C) does the water drop to?

The science

What you see

Hot water pulled through tea leaves carries away soluble compounds. Two groups matter for taste: the fast group (aroma, sweetness, colour) comes out in the first minute or two; the slow group (tannins, catechins, caffeine: the bitter, astringent part) keeps coming out as you wait, and much faster when the water is hotter. Brewing well means stopping when the first group is nearly finished and the second has barely started.

Equations

Extraction (each pool i = fast, slow)
  dC_i/dt = k_i(T) (1 - C_i)       C_i = fraction extracted
  C_i(t)  = 1 - exp(-k_i t)        (constant T)
Arrhenius rate
  k_i(T) = k_i95 exp[-(Ea_i/R)(1/T - 1/T95)]   R = 8.314 J/mol/K
Pot heat balance at pouring
  T0 = (m_w c_w T_kettle + m_p c_p T_pot) / (m_w c_w + m_p c_p)
Newton cooling in the pot
  T(t) = T_room + (T0 - T_room) exp(-t / tau)    tau = 40 min lid on, 18 min lid off
Cup strength
  TDS [%] = 100 * dose * (a_f C_f + a_s C_s) / water_mass
Cup temperature: energy balance of tea + cold milk + china
Balance score = 100 exp(-1/2 [(dA/0.20)^2 + (dB/0.13)^2 + (dS/0.075)^2])

Symbols: a_f, a_s soluble mass fraction of dry leaf in each pool; dA, dB, dS the distance of the aroma pool, the (milk-adjusted) bitter pool and the TDS from the target of the chosen tea.

Assumptions & honest simplifications

Only two lumped pools and one rate per pool; real tea has hundreds of compounds and leaf size, stirring and water chemistry matter too.
All rate constants, activation energies, soluble fractions, the strength range (TDS 0.10 to 0.40 %), cooling time constants and the scoring targets are illustrative model values chosen to behave like a typical pot of tea, not measurements of a particular tea. [verify against a source before quoting]
1 mL of water = 1 g; leaf water uptake and evaporation are ignored. Kettle water is assumed to be exactly at the slider temperature when poured.
Milk lowers the perceived bitterness in the score (casein binds polyphenols) by a made-up 35 % at 40 mL; it does not change extraction.
Sugar, stirring and milk-first versus milk-last are not modelled. The room, garden and book are decoration.

Independent numerical checks

The same checks run in node: node check.js (RK4 reference integrator, closed forms, energy balances).

Sources

Arrhenius kinetics and first-order extraction are standard food-process-engineering models; tea chemistry (theaflavins, thearubigins, catechins, caffeine) and typical brewing temperatures and times from tea-industry and food-science literature; Newton cooling. Specific constants are model values. Not affiliated with any tea brand.

English TeaBrewing Simulator

English Tea
Brewing Simulator