u/mjones8004

I want to make the move to a Gaggiamate since I believe I have maxed my performance with the stock machine and 9 bar spring. I went to buy it today and the Pro kit with housings and water level sensor is over $300. Is this what people are doing here? That is almost as much as the machine itself which seems wild.

Are there any comparable budget options? I do not want to go the PID appendage route because I want to have profiling and also improved steam. I also want it to look good since this is a focal point of my kitchen.

YSK leaving the tea bag in absolutely makes your tea stronger, and the reason is the same basic principle behind any infusion: as long as water is in contact with plant material, extraction continues.

It shouldn’t really need to be said that if something keeps steeping, and the flavor keeps intensifying, then the concentration of extracted compounds is still rising. Tea doesn’t “finish” at the 3–4 minute mark — that’s just the point where many people stop it.

To give a familiar example, a standard short steep still leaves a large portion of caffeine trapped in the leaves. More importantly, the major antioxidants in green tea — EGCG, EGC, and EC — continue to diffuse for many minutes beyond that. These are catechins (often called tannins), and they’re responsible for both the bitterness and the bulk of tea’s health benefits. Black and oolong teas have their own polyphenols — theaflavins and thearubigins — and those also keep increasing in concentration as long as the bag stays in the cup.

All of these compounds are bitter. All of them are what make tea taste “strong.” And all of them continue rising the entire time the tea bag remains in the water.

Why YSK: If you steep a tea bag briefly and remove it, you’re stopping extraction early and discarding a significant portion of the beneficial compounds tea contains. Leaving the bag in means a stronger cup, more antioxidants, more polyphenols, and more of the compounds people drink tea for in the first place.