My tea preparation prescriptions says to prepare it using water heated to 96 Celsius degrees.
When water heated in standard, typical electric kettle reaches this temperature?
Is it (always?) immediately after switch turns off? Or is it 100 Celsius degrees, and I need to wait approx. 3-5 minutes to get to cool to 96?
Best Answer
Seconds, not minutes. Just the act of pouring the water will cool it slightly. At sea-level pure water will be 100C at a full boil, the temperature will drop immediately when it's no longer being heated.
This is unscientific at best, but just for giggles I put an accurate digital thermometer into a room temperature mug, and brought a couple of cups of cups of filtered (not distilled) water to a boil in a saucepan. I poured the water into the mug and held the thermometer in the center of the mass of water. In the time it took for my thermometer to stabilize on a reading (30 seconds), the water was at 92C.
I repeated the mini-experiment using a hot mug that I had heated by boiling some water in the microwave, and pouring it out just before I poured in the boiling water from the saucepan. This time after the 30 seconds it took my thermometer to stabilize, I got 96C.
I'd say that just by doing this (with a warmed ceramic teapot), you'd have your 96C if you moved quickly.
Photo from Instructables