Summary
A California jury awarded Michael Garcia $50 million after he suffered severe burns from a spilled Starbucks hot tea, requiring skin grafts and causing permanent disfigurement.
Garcia’s lawsuit alleged a Starbucks employee failed to secure the drink in a tray, leading to the spill. Starbucks offered a $30 million settlement with confidentiality, which Garcia rejected.
The company plans to appeal, calling the damages excessive.
The case echoes past lawsuits over hot beverage burns, including the famous McDonald’s coffee case from the 1990s.
It’s not “straight up false”. You’re literally brewing your tee under the accepted norm. Most anyone who makes black tee knows the correct brewing temperature is around 205f. There’s so many sources that it should be brewed over 195f there isn’t even a valid argument you could try to make against this. Same temps for herbal teas.
White, yellow, and green teas get lower temps. Not black or herbal. Heck, just Google search “black leaf tea brewing temperature”. I doubt you’ll be able to find a single real source that states under 195f
Physics doesn’t care about “accepted norms”. Tea can steep well under boiling. Yes, even black tea. There are countless recipes online for sun tea that specify that the tea be steeped at ambient temperature. I think you’d be hard pressed to find a location where that gets far above 50°C.
So no, tea, even black tea, does not require near-100°C water.
There’s nothing wrong with enjoying an unconventional recipe for tea, but this is not what most people around the world are looking for when ordering tea. I guess suggesting that fast food places switch to lower brewing temperatures and different recipes to avoid this issue is interesting if that’s what you’re suggesting. The taste would be different though.
It doesn’t require such hot water per se, but you get a lot more flavor in a shorter period of time when brewing hot tea or coffee. You see this with cold brew coffee recipes taking hours to brew and still producing different flavors from iced coffee. (Coffee brewed hot, then cooled.) I searched up some recipes for sun tea, and they also take hours to brew. That doesn’t work for a fast food restaurant trying to make tea on demand. If you lower the temperature to even 85 C for black tea you will be able to taste a difference.
Confident stupid people are why trump is in office.