A small studio in Ruse making unhurried Android guides. Things to read at the kitchen table, that keep working when the wifi doesn't.
The app
A quiet shelf of herbs and infusions.
There's a world of herbal tea past the supermarket box, and most of us never go there because we don't know how any of it tastes or how to brew it. Teahaven is an unhurried guide to that shelf: every tea gets an honest flavour and aroma note in plain language, so you know whether you're in for something floral, minty, fruity, earthy, spicy or bright with citrus before the kettle boils.
Try a flavour on the cup
Only the colour of the cup, and only here. The app has the real notes.
Every entry is a brewing card: the water temperature the tea likes, how long to steep it, how strong it comes out, the colour it turns, and what it goes with, whether that's a spoon of honey, a slice of lemon or a sprig of mint. Filter by taste, by the time of day a tea suits, or by caffeine-free, and search by name.
Brew this starts a gentle steeping timer already set to that tea's time. It counts down on a soft ring and nudges you the moment it's ready, which is the difference between a cup and a bitter, over-steeped cup.
Your own shelf holds the teas you actually keep at home. Star favourites, and write your own brewing notes so that next time you remember exactly how you like it.
A short "how to brew" page covers temperature, timing and loose versus bag. Switch freely between Bulgarian and English, choose Celsius or Fahrenheit, pick a look that suits your kitchen, and keep the whole thing offline with no account and no ads.
Get Teahaven on Google PlayPackage com.steepleaf.teahaven
Flavour, not medicine. Teahaven is a culinary guide and nothing in it is medical advice. Herbs are not harmless just because they're plants: some interact with medicines, some aren't suitable during pregnancy or breastfeeding, and some aren't for young children. If you take medication, are pregnant, or are brewing for a child, ask a pharmacist or doctor first. Never use a tea to treat a condition, and be careful with near-boiling water around children.
Working out
Brewing cards give a temperature, but the water only holds it for a moment. A cup loses heat towards the room at a rate proportional to the gap, so the temperature falls off exponentially, and extraction slows with it: the rate follows Arrhenius chemistry, here with an activation energy of 45 kJ/mol, typical for pulling flavour compounds out of leaf.
What it's in
In an ordinary mug at 95 °C in a 21 °C kitchen, the tea is drinkable after about ten minutes and lukewarm after twenty-six. Over a five-minute steep it does about 71% of the extraction it would manage if it stayed at 95 °C the whole time, so four minutes in a real mug is worth roughly three at a steady kettle temperature.
The vessel matters more than people expect. A wide shallow cup gives back only 60% over those five minutes and is drinkable in six; a lidded mug gives 88% and makes you wait nearly half an hour. The same chemistry explains why a cup left standing goes on getting stronger long after the timer: at 70 °C the extraction rate is still about a third of what it was at 95 °C.
What's not here: no teas, no brewing cards, no timer. Cooling times use a Newton constant for each vessel, which is a stand-in for a real kettle, a real mug and a real kitchen rather than a measurement of yours, and extraction is modelled as a single reaction when a real infusion is dozens at once. The temperatures and times each herb actually wants are in the app.
A shelf of infusionshover a flavour to tint it
Teahaven is published from Ruse, on the Danube. We build in Bulgarian and English because that's how the kitchen sounds here.
Можете да ни пишете и на български.