Samovar Tea: Let it brew the whole day? I recently got a samovar tea kettle and am not sure about how to use it. For those of you confused about what I am talking about, this is my samovar (electric):



The metal part is a kettle for boiling water and keeping it warm. On top, there is an opening, on which you put your pot. You make very strong tea in the pot and keep it warm throughout the day by placing it on top of the samovar. When you want to drink a cup of tea you first pour in 1/10 to 1/3 tea from the pot and mix it with water from the samovar.

The point of the whole system is to have tea on demand all day for many people. By having only water in the metal part and strong concentrated tea in the pot every person can mix their own tea and make it as strong as they want to. In addition, you only need to clean the pot, the samovar is only used for water.

With this kind of kettle, you are supposed to brew the tea for a long time, and you need to choose a tea with low bitterness. 

What I don't understand:

Isn't it a bad idea to have tea brew for so long? Am I even doing this right? Does the long-brewing provide any kind of benefit? Isn't it also a bad idea to continuously keep your tea warm throughout the day? I ended up removing the tea from the pot after several hours. It ended up so strong, that even when mixed 1:10 it was pretty much undrinkable for most people. But I guess I probably used too much tea, so this could have been avoided.

Also, would it be OK to put the tea in the samovar, or is the "svarka" (the tea concentrate) an integral part of the whole thing?

For reference, here is a samovar, without a pot on top:



Presumably, in this case, the tea is in the samovar and there is no concentrate?
The problem with black tea is that after a few minutes of brewing, the leaves release very bitter substances. There are 2 general ways to deal with this:


Short brewing time: remove the tea leaves or bag after about 3 - 4 minutes.
Saturation: if the tea water is saturated with non-bitter substances at 3 minutes of brewing time, it cannot take up much of the bitter stuff. Traditional turkish tea is brewed like that as well, so I suppose it should also work in a samovar.


The concentrated tea is an integral part of the system. You should not add any water to the svarka pot after initially brewing the tea or you give the bitter substances a chance to solve into the tea. 

The tea brand is important, too. I'd propose to try an Earl Grey or another tea with a light taste. Ask a tea shop for advice, if you have one nearby.

The ratio of 1:10 sound about right. Most people have to get used to the idea that barely covering the bottom of the cup is enough.

Putting the diluted tea into the big kettle is a very bad idea and probably won't solve your problem. Every green and black tea will get more bitter over time, no matter how it was brewed. I think keeping the concentrate for a whole day is simply too long. 3 - 4 hours is the longest I would keep brewed black tea. You could make smaller portions to use up the concentrate in time.

Experiment with different brands and different amounts of tea, always keeping in mind that you're making a concentrate to keep the bitterness out of the tea. A splash of milk can neutralize a little of the bitterness, but the milk has to be very cold for it to work. If all else fails, brew peppermint tea instead ;)