Tea

[Hot Pepsi]

So, what's the best set-up for making it?

I have an electric kettle and a stove-top kettle, but it's an electric stove.

Currently, I just heat up the water and put a tea bag or two (if it's a big cup) in and let it sit for a few minutes.

We don't have a massive variety of brands of tea available here, but it's more than just that plain brown Lipton shit you see in places making the smallest effort possible for tea-drinkers.

I can buy loose tea, I think, at Wegmans, but don't have any device designed for that. What does one need? One of those little dangly strainer things?

[Levin]

Tea

Oh boy, this thread is going to raise tempers.

I use something like this day to day. Because it's so big it allows the tea to infuse better than one of the little strainer things.

Actually, t2 (company in the link above) deliver to the US and their teas are pretty good.

A teapot does make the best tea but it's just a bit more of a hassle than making it in a mug. Loose leaf or teabag works fine for both but you'll need a tea strainer for loose leaf.

The best thing I bought last year was a kettle with variable temperature settings. While most black teas brew best at 100°C, oolong, green, white and some flavoured teas are better at lower temps. It's amazing to not have to wait for the water to cool down to start brewing a mug of Iron Goddess of Mercy.

Edit: I forgot to mention that your current method will mirror 95% of tea made in the UK.

[WOM]

Tea

We use an electric kettle and a tea pot. One bag for roughly three cups worth of water. I let it steep for maybe four or five minutes. Black for me, and milk for her.

[San Bernardhinault]

Tea

The best way to make tea is to throw the tea away and have a coffee or a beer or a glass of water.

[Gerontophile]

Tea

San Bernardhinault speaks for me.

Tea is fucking horrible.

However, teabag in a cup, add boiling water, let sit for a minute, then press the teabag if you like it strong. (Milk and sugar/lemon to kill the taste)

If you use the above method, TAKE THE TEABAG OUT BEFORE DRINKING.

[Jah Womble]

Tea

Earl Grey tea bag, in the cup for 3-5 minutes. It doesn't stew, you see.

[delicatemoth]

Tea

Hot Pepsi - that sounds fine for your everyday 'British style' teabag.

As Levin says, if you want to get the most out of many varieties of loose leaf tea you ideally want to brew at varying temperatures, probably using an infuser or a gaiwan. Such tea often rewards repeated brewing, letting it steep for a longer period each time.

The best thing I bought last year was a kettle with variable temperature settings.

Sometimes I think I'd like one of those, but really I do perfectly well judging by sight and sound. I generally turn the kettle off prior to boiling rather than waiting for it to cool down.

Fancy tea is possibly the cheapest luxury product I can think of. You're getting the equivalent of a good bottle of wine or single malt for a fraction of the price - when I got into it last year I found I could finance the habit simply by giving up the bottles of cheap wine. London has some great tea shops (and I don't mean the famous tourist tearooms). At Christmas I had a bag of Big Red Robe oolong, from Beijing Tong Ren Tang on Shaftesbury Avenue, which was one of the loveliest things I've tasted in my life.

[EIM]

Tea

There are so many issues surrounding brewing up. It's steeped in class and ritual and all sorts.

For the rehehehecord, here's how I, a working class man of the North, brews the fuck up:

1. Stick a suitable amount of cold water into a kettle, making sure not to put too much in as we don't want to use up too much energy and kill the polar bears.

2. Select a suitable song on YouTube to listen to until the kettle boils, perhaps some Northern Soul, Hiphop or landfill indie from the 90s. Today I heartily recommend Matoma & The Notorious B.I.G. with 'Old Thing Back' (feat. Ja Rule and Ralph Tresvant).

3. Prepare your mug. Waste no time, people. Life is short and we must work hard as well as smart. Mug, white preferably, one teabag, sugar if applicable. NO MILK YET! Milk goes in after for science and class reasons. If you wish to have a reason, google it. I'm a busy man and need to pop into town to buy jiffy bags to ship miniature Eric Cantona figures around Europe.

4. When the kettle is boiled, fill the mug to just below full level and mash the fuck out of the teabag (forgot to specify, I use Yorkshire or Yorkshire Gold. Occasionally PG Tips, a good Manchester tea. Mam uses Ringtons. It's ok). Don't mash too hard as you may split the bag. No one wants to experience a split bag.

5. Remove bag, add milk to the rich tan colour of Judith Chalmers's thighs, and drink while still so hot you are warned of the dangers of throat cancer by your idiot mate.

6. Never dunk a biscuit. It's the domain of the pervert.

7. Never be fooled into thinking a second brew will be as good as the first. Like albums and the season after a football breakthrough, it will always disappoint.

[Sean of the Shed]

Tea

Jah Womble wrote: Earl Grey tea bag, in the cup for 3-5 minutes. It doesn't stew, you see.

Not 'til you add the water, anyway.
I can't abide black/brown tea, whatever it is.
I've just about got used to green with lemon, though.

[hobbes]

Tea

My wife would insist you need one of these for posh tea.



But basically, EIM speaks for me for the once a month or so I bother having a cup or tea.

[EIM]

Tea

Fuck that loose tea bollocks. Proper Tea is theft.

[Moonlight Shadow]

Tea

Best tea is prepared with filtered bog water, sweet condensed milk and boiled over a tiny gas stove in a tent porch somewhere on a hill...Objectively it tastes shite but subjectively every mouthful is a delight...

[ursus arctos]

Tea

My method is remarkably similar to EIM's, minus the milk, which is a class and region thing

Our market started to carry Yorkshire Tea (and Gold) about 18 months ago; it may be Brexit related.

[EIM]

Tea

I went through a no milk phase last year when I couldn't afford any (this may sound like an exaggeration, but it isn't. There were weeks where I had to make £5 stretch). It was fucking horrible so I added loads of sugar. It was still horrible but at least it was sweet. In the end I'd go to the 24 hour McDonalds at the end of the road and steal the little sticks of milk from them.

[Benjm]

Tea

The Assam tea with cacao shells from the posh selection box we got for Christmas isn't looking any more appealing with time.

[Hot Pepsi]

Tea

I will follow EIM's approach. Can't attest to the music part.

Are you back in Manchester? I need to get back there. I really enjoyed it. Maybe I should move there. Seems like a logical location for the start of the Global Revolution.

I was thinking the loose tea/fancy pot approach would be better for making a whole morning's worth of tea and maybe more cost-effective than bags. No?

I think we can get PG Tips here.

Though, mostly I think I'll be sticking to coffee in the morning and decaf green tea in the evening. Is that sensible?

I didn't go to any tea rooms, touristy or not, in London. Didn't occur to me. I didn't even know those still existed, tbh.

Do normal people use a saucer with their cup? I don't own any cups like that. I just have mugs. Loads that my family acquired at tourist traps and then some that I've bought because I like a big mug. My favorites are my Batman mug, my Penn State Hockey Valley mug, an Eeyore mug that a friend gave me because it matches my personality, a St. Francis (the Saint, not the colleges) mug that a friend gave me and one that says Life Is Good, that the same friend gave me. Our group used to do a mug exchange over Christmas.

But I often use travel mugs so I can have it with me in the car or while out walking with Tonka. I have loads of those too. Two metal ones that say Penn State hockey that I bought for some reason. One super-insulated one from a company I forget, but it's high tech, and a bunch of others including some free plastic ones I brought home from hockey and football games. It's the kind of thing I buy whenever I see one that I think is better than the one I have, but I don't get rid of the old one.

My electric kettle shuts off prematurely when the water is only fairly hot. Then I have to hit the button again and it goes on until boiling. Is it supposed to do that?

I've pressed the bag to maximize the tea. I thought I was the only one who did that.

But I've also always left the bag in while I'm drinking it. I'm usually drinking out of a travel-mug thing with a lid so there's no risk of suddenly inhaling the bag. Sometimes I'll leave the old bag in when making a second cup. The idea is that I want to squeeze every drop of teaness out of the tea. Maximize the use of the resource. But maybe that's going too far.

Once while visiting the poshest people I know - more in terms of their education and accomplishments than money - they offered me tea and I was going to just leave the bag in while drinking it, but my friend (who, in retrospect, I was in love with, I guess - another topic for another time) said something about it and I took it out. I got the impression that she'd have been less appalled if I'd put in a dip and spit on her parents' carpet.

I got into a habit of never putting milk in coffee or tea during my office-working years. There was always so much drama about whose job it was to buy the milk/cream/half-and-half and bitching about who used it up and didn't replace it etc etc. So I just decided to steer clear of all that.

Taking it black makes one sound fairly cool and rugged (in my imagination, at least). Like, I imagine Jack London or Lou Reed drank black coffee. (Why do people ask "how do you take it?" with coffee or tea. It's an odd expression, I think. Nobody ever asks "how do you take your pizza?")

And if somebody else is getting it for you, saying you just want it black reduces the chances they'll fuck it up by putting too much cream or sugar in it.

If you ask for a regular coffee in New England, you'll get cream and sugar in it. A "coffee regular" at a Dunkin Donuts is pretty much the same as a Tim Horton's "double-double."

I used to put sweetener in coffee but now I only put sugar or splenda into coffee or tea if it's a bit bitter or otherwise very suboptimal, but I need the hit of caffeine. That's the same logic that gave birth to cocktails in America. Some of the rank moonshine people drank during prohibition really needed something else to make it tolerable.

Also, I don't like the idea of putting fat in my coffee. I'll sometimes put a little skim milk in just to cool it off if I'm getting it at a Starbucks or whatever and plan to drink it while driving.

[Sam]

Tea

WOM wrote: We use an electric kettle and a tea pot. One bag for roughly three cups worth of water. I let it steep for maybe four or five minutes. Black for me, and milk for her.

Good grief. Why not just have a glass of hot water if you're going to make it that weak?

EIM largely speaks for me, although I have no problem with loose leaf tea, and barely drink it really (since moving to Argentina I've become enthusiastic about mate and, unlike many of the Brits I know here, don't really miss tea at all. When back home I switch straight back to several cups of tea a day and don't miss mate at all).

[linus]

Tea

delicatemoth wrote: Hot Pepsi - that sounds fine for your everyday 'British style' teabag.

As Levin says, if you want to get the most out of many varieties of loose leaf tea you ideally want to brew at varying temperatures, probably using an infuser or a gaiwan. Such tea often rewards repeated brewing, letting it steep for a longer period each time.

The best thing I bought last year was a kettle with variable temperature settings.

Sometimes I think I'd like one of those, but really I do perfectly well judging by sight and sound. I generally turn the kettle off prior to boiling rather than waiting for it to cool down.

Fancy tea is possibly the cheapest luxury product I can think of. You're getting the equivalent of a good bottle of wine or single malt for a fraction of the price - when I got into it last year I found I could finance the habit simply by giving up the bottles of cheap wine. London has some great tea shops (and I don't mean the famous tourist tearooms). At Christmas I had a bag of Big Red Robe oolong, from Beijing Tong Ren Tang on Shaftesbury Avenue, which was one of the loveliest things I've tasted in my life.

A very sensible post Delicatemoth. I'm also a loose leaf daily tea drinker. If you live in a big city, there is always a good shop, either in Chinese neighborhoods or organic market that will sell reasonably priced high-quality loose leaf teas. Oolongs are great, as are Darjeelings. My favorites are the semi-fermented oolongs, which combine the best elements of green and black teas, along with a nice bouquet. It comes off to around 10c-25c per teaspoon, good enough for 3-4 servings, so roughly the same price range as low-grade pekoe shavings used in generic teabags, which will only yield 1-2 servings per.

There are also health issues associated with teabag-grade tea, the fact that they are laced with pesticides, and are pretty high in fluoride content, which is a problem especially in countries that fluoride water to start with (the US mainly). In addition to tasting great, loose-leaf teas are low in pesticides, fluoride and high in polyphenols and antioxidants.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/pesticide-traces-in-some-tea-exceed-allowable-limits-1.2564624

http://www.greenpeace.org/eastasia/news/blog/lipton-tea-laced-with-toxic-pesticide-residue/blog/40093/

http://fluoridealert.org/studies/tea02/

Fluoride is a neurotoxin, affecting parts of the brain, like the pineal gland, which among other functions regulates melatonin. It tends to be concentrated in older tea leaves, as opposed to new shoots that are used in better loose leaf teas, sort of the same dynamic as with tuna or swordfish and sardines, the former fish tend to have high mercury concentration.

http://fluoridealert.org/studies/brain01

As far as preparation, loose leaf teas are very easy to make. You boil side by side a full kettle, and an open pot with about 1 1/2 cup of water. Once the pot boils, you turn the fire off, put it on a cool surface and let it sit for about half a minute, then drop a small teaspoon of tea, and stir very gently just enough to make sure the leafs on the surface fall below the water surface.

You steep it for maybe 2-4 min (depending if it's a black tea or a less fermented one), then serve it in your cup through a strainer. Return the wet leaves from the strainer to the rest of the water in the pot.

After you've finished the first cup, add to the pot (which contains 1/2 cup of warm not boiling water that has been steeping) a cup of boiling hot water from the kettle. You will immediately get a second cup of tea that's just the right drinking temperature and level of steepness. You strain the leaves again and put them back into the pot.

With good quality teas, you will get 3 or 4 cups of good teas from this repeated process, with fairly even steepness, as opposed to normal steeping in a large teapot, where you end up with increasingly steep cupfuls. Like Delicatemoth said, good tea is meant to be steepened at least 3 times. As well, the higher quality loose leaf teas are best drunk without sugar.

You could also use a smaller teapot with a built-in strainer like the one Hobbes posted above, but fill it only with 1 1/2 cups worth of water on the first brew, then add more hot water along the way right before you want your next cup.

[Hot Pepsi]

Tea

I'm not remotely worried about fluoride. Gotta die somehow.

[Sits]

Tea

Great Moments in Tea Writing

12th January 1946: George Orwell's essay A Nice Cup of Tea published.

12th January 2017: EIM's thread post Brewing the Fuck Up published.

Look at those dates. Post of the year so far.

[Diable Rouge]

Tea

Hot Pepsi wrote: I'm not remotely worried about fluoride. Gotta die somehow.

Neither is the Irish government, it's added to water treatments here to prevent tooth decay.

[Snake Plissken]

Tea

Hot Pepsi wrote: Do normal people use a saucer with their cup? I don't own any cups like that. I just have mugs. Loads that my family acquired at tourist traps and then some that I've bought because I like a big mug. My favorites are my Batman mug, my Penn State Hockey Valley mug, an Eeyore mug that a friend gave me because it matches my personality, a St. Francis (the Saint, not the colleges) mug that a friend gave me and one that says Life Is Good, that the same friend gave me. Our group used to do a mug exchange over Christmas.

But I often use travel mugs so I can have it with me in the car or while out walking with Tonka. I have loads of those too. Two metal ones that say Penn State hockey that I bought for some reason. One super-insulated one from a company I forget, but it's high tech, and a bunch of others including some free plastic ones I brought home from hockey and football games. It's the kind of thing I buy whenever I see one that I think is better than the one I have, but I don't get rid of the old one.

Mugs are important. I've found the best brews can often be found in a large mug, nicely stained inside from the tannins, with "Worlds Greatest Golfer" on the outside.

[Hot Pepsi]

Tea

Diable Rouge wrote:

I'm not remotely worried about fluoride. Gotta die somehow.

Neither is the Irish government, it's added to water treatments here to prevent tooth decay.

Same here. Not always added, though. Sometimes it's subtracted because the natural level is too high. Either way, it's managed. It's definitely dose-dependent.