What happened to Stella Liebeck was terrible, but it was no one's fault more than her own.
Stella's coffee was served within the temperature range that was, and still is, recommended by professional coffee associations like SCAA and NCA [1]. As of 2019, the NCA recommends that coffee be held and served at around 180-185 deg F (~80-85 deg C), which is likely near the temperature at which Stella was burned. This is a perfectly reasonable service temperature, widely used by coffee shops, restaurants, and home brewing machines to this day.
Stella Liebeck took her cup of coffee and squeezed it between her legs in order to fiddle with the lid. The result was tragic, but completely expected. If I spill a fresh cup of Starbucks coffee on my crotch today, I fully expect third-degree burns. So I take a little extra care with it until it has cooled to drinking temperature, which happens pretty quickly.
Tea is generally even hotter. Any good tea shop will serve a pot of freshly boiled water, at least twenty degrees hotter than hot coffee. Spilling that on yourself is guaranteed to melt your skin. Great care is warranted.
Again, what happened to Stella was terrible. She didn't deserve it, and she didn't deserve the hate she got afterward. But she did something really stupid. I sympathize, because I do stupid stuff all the time, and I have the scars to remind me.
We're surrounded by extremely dangerous things that require great care to use properly. It's useful for coffee to be held and served hot, just as it's useful for knives to be sharp and cars to be able to reach highway speeds. There will inevitably be accidents, but making the world completely safe for people who use these things carelessly would mean depriving everyone of their proper use.
> Tea is generally even hotter. Any good tea shop will serve a pot of freshly boiled water, at least twenty degrees hotter than hot coffee.
Depends on the tea. Most of the recommendations I see are below boiling:
> white and green teas are best at 70°c. For black and oolong teas use water around 85°c. For herbal infusions use 100°c water, and 90°c for Chamomile.
That's a really odd quote from Twinings - who should know better. So I had to go and look - silly me.
They contradict themselves multiple times within the page. For your quote, they may have meant to add for green teas - which definitely does prefer water off the boil. If you scroll down the very same page, they say:
"...a black tea is fully oxidized which means that it prefers boiling water and a longer brewing time. The same goes for processed teas such as Oolong. So pour on your freshly boiled water at 100 degrees", complete with graphic confirming this. I'd agree - only for black tea. But again they contradict themselves on Oolong - which should be just off the boil - and as confirmed in their graphic. There are others, like not recommending "one for the pot" - especially as Twinings tea bags contain less tea than most.
Ugh. I'm just going to assume a non tea drinking junior wrote that page. :)
"Depends on the tea" is absolutely right, but that website makes some odd claims. It reads like a content mill. Their claim that black tea should be steeped at 85 deg C is simply wrong. I don't know where they got that. Black teas are universally recognized to require the highest steeping temperatures, to the point that high-altitude brewing is a problem for many folks. The claim that green tea is best steeped at 70 deg C is similarly useless, simply because there are so many kinds of green tea. Really sweet, amino-heavy teas like a good gyokuro are definitely better done at lower temperatures. But most green teas are quite forgiving, and are commonly brewed at near boiling temperatures. Freshly boiled hot water is also often necessary for herbals, especially short-steeping acidic herbals like hibiscus and fruit.
Mate is uniformly prepared and served at around 180 deg F in my experience. Don't spill that shit either.
I've noticed a trend in recent years for tea retailers to lace their marketing with fancy instructions that treat their teas like autistic children, demanding gentle temperatures and strict timing rules. This started as a uniquely American bit of marketing wank, but it seems to be spreading recently. For a rebuttal with the credibility of an old-fashioned Englishman, here's Ginger Baker in an interview in Forbes a few years back:
> One thing that really bothers me in America is the inability of restaurants to make a good cup of tea. The instructions printed on the bag say, "Pour boiling water over the tea." How simple is that? No, they bring you an empty cup with an unopened tea bag beside it – how nice - and a pot of water that may be hot, but boiling it isn’t. So tea you have not. It’s boiling water that brings out tea’s flavor, and perhaps a dash of milk. But the brown liquid you end up with here looks like gnat’s pee, and has nothing to do with a really good cup of tea.
Even notwithstanding individual preferences, if you go to any good tea shop you're highly likely to be served a pot of freshly boiled water, which may still be well over 200 deg F by the time you pour it. A hazardous substance to be sure.
Agreed. Black tea will never brew properly at 85° - personally I'd throw that gnat's pee away and try and get it right the second time.
As near to 100 as you can manage, which means warm the pot or mug first - though most don't. Pot with loose leaf is much preferable. Let it brew to taste.
Yeah, it's kind of hit or miss at restaurants. The Chart House that I frequent is good at bringing boiling hot water, but they have only one tea-drinking waitress who always makes sure the cups she brings out are hot. The little tea shop near my house always brings everything hot, of course.
How do you feel about steeping times? There are some green teas that get nasty if I steep too long, but otherwise, for me, stronger is almost always better, so I've rarely paid attention to steeping times. Sometimes I make a big french press of tea and let it steep until drunk. Do you keep track of the time?
No, I don't time it - and I also prefer it good and strong. I suppose it roughly works out at 5 mins in a pot with loose leaf, and I'd guess around 3 mins with a teabag. Shorter as tea bag tea is so much nearer dust. Just not so long as to let it get stewed.
Green tea and some of the lighter black teas - like Darjeeling - definitely prefer a bit less time. Lapsang souchong seems to magically avoid stewing no matter how long you leave it. :)
Good to know. "Stewing" does sort of describe the way I make tea sometimes.
Where do you like to buy? I used to get great stuff like single-estate Darjeelings and Assams from a mail-order company that was later sold to (and destroyed by) Teavana. I mostly use Davidson's Organics now, but the selection is smaller.
Ooh, I avoid that change of flavour when it gets the stewed bitter edge and after taste. Wouldn't surprise me if that's British English separating us by common language though. :)
Can't help you too much on where - I'm in the UK, even most supermarkets take tea slightly seriously. Then we're spoiled rotten with a great tea shop nearby with loads of loose coffees and teas, including their own blends. https://www.johnwatt.co.uk
At the risk of repeating myself: when Stella was injured, McDonalds' corporate policy required coffee to be held at 180-190 deg F [1]. This is pretty well in line with the range recommended by professional coffee associations like the NCA, who currently recommend that coffee be held and served at around 180-185 deg F (~80-85 deg C) [2].
This temperature range was, and still is, used by nearly every coffee shop, restaurant, and domestic coffee machine. Starbucks regularly serves even hotter coffee. My Mr. Coffee machine holds coffee at around 185 deg F. So does your's. Look it up. And like I said, any good tea shop will serve you a pot of much hotter, nearly boiling water. Well over 200 deg F.
So if you really think McDonalds was negligent in serving coffee in compliance with recognized industry standards, then you must think every other coffee shop, tea shop, restaurant, and home coffee machine maker is also potentially guilty of negligence. Is that what you think?
Thankfully, the verdict against McDonalds in Stella's case was a pretty isolated result, and personally injury lawyers have moved on to suing over defective lids, rather than excessive temperatures [3]. Notice that in the linked case, Starbucks served 190 deg coffee, hotter than what Stella was injured by, yet they were not sued for the temperature, but rather a lid that came off too easily.
> Why would you argue that it is a binary choice between personal responsibility, or complete abrogation of responsibility?
That's the choice forced on us by frivolous lawsuits like this. Thankfully, that false choice has been thoroughly ignored, and we can still get appropriately hot coffee from establishments and our own coffee machines.
Stella's coffee was served within the temperature range that was, and still is, recommended by professional coffee associations like SCAA and NCA [1]. As of 2019, the NCA recommends that coffee be held and served at around 180-185 deg F (~80-85 deg C), which is likely near the temperature at which Stella was burned. This is a perfectly reasonable service temperature, widely used by coffee shops, restaurants, and home brewing machines to this day.
Stella Liebeck took her cup of coffee and squeezed it between her legs in order to fiddle with the lid. The result was tragic, but completely expected. If I spill a fresh cup of Starbucks coffee on my crotch today, I fully expect third-degree burns. So I take a little extra care with it until it has cooled to drinking temperature, which happens pretty quickly.
Tea is generally even hotter. Any good tea shop will serve a pot of freshly boiled water, at least twenty degrees hotter than hot coffee. Spilling that on yourself is guaranteed to melt your skin. Great care is warranted.
Again, what happened to Stella was terrible. She didn't deserve it, and she didn't deserve the hate she got afterward. But she did something really stupid. I sympathize, because I do stupid stuff all the time, and I have the scars to remind me.
We're surrounded by extremely dangerous things that require great care to use properly. It's useful for coffee to be held and served hot, just as it's useful for knives to be sharp and cars to be able to reach highway speeds. There will inevitably be accidents, but making the world completely safe for people who use these things carelessly would mean depriving everyone of their proper use.
1 - https://www.ncausa.org/About-Coffee/How-to-Brew-Coffee