1. For a really superior cup of tea, you can slice open a teabag (I find that scissors work best) and pour the contents directly into your mug. This is called “loose leaf” tea, and it’s a pretty neat trick when you want to show off in front of guests.
2. Always pour the milk in first. If you’re drinking Earl Grey, the ratio should be at least two parts milk to one part tea.
3. Be sure to follow this rule of thumb: one dip of the tea bag is more than enough. You don’t want to overwhelm the flavor of the water with an overlong steep.
4. Alternately, you can buy a can of iced tea and heat it up on the stove or microwave (be sure to pour it out of the can into a microwave-safe dish first!).
5. Remember, all teas are herbal teas. Tea is an herb, so don’t worry about the name on the label. If it says tea, it’s tea.
6. Be sure to let the water cool for at least ten minutes after boiling before adding tea. This way it will be cool enough to drink right away.
7. If you’re putting sugar in, be sure to use the same spoon for scooping sugar out of the jar and for stirring the tea. This brings good luck.
8. Be sure to leave the tea bag in the mug until you’re completely finished. The bag will repeatedly bump into your lips the more you drink, delivering a more concentrated tea flavor directly to your mouth.
Tags: food trolling, how to do things right, suck it george orwell, tea
This — you — how — so trolled —
much trolled. so pain.
I was cringing all the way through this. But then I got to number 8. I totally do number 8.
but how can you stand it so bitter!
Years of practice. Tea never tastes right to me unless it’s steeped at least 10 minutes
my jaw is so dropped. 3.5min is too long for me when drinking black teas
My husband steeps his tea for so long it tastes like boiled shoe leather. I don’t know how he does it. He drinks so much black tea that his bottom teeth are permanently lightly discoloured.
you’re killing me!
I guess at least with black tea you can just add a ton of milk and honey if it gets too bitter but green tea…
Yeah, I only drink black tea. Green and white tea absolutely do not work with this method.
Over-steeped my green tea once, never happened again. It was so disgusting and there was no way to save it. It made me a more responsible tea maker though
Pfffff “over-steeped” green tea.
Look, if it doesn’t smell like boiled grass clippings and seawater from your office door, you haven’t made your green tea properly.
You can keep the tea bag hanging up at the top of the mug so it’s above the level of the liquid after you’ve drunk a bit. Then it’s a game of tipping the mug back slowly so you can get a sip of tea without the bag crashing into your philtrum*. The tea bag always wins in the end.
*I had to look this word up. The more you know!
Huh. See, my smom leaves her teabag in and doesn’t do that, it just swirls around until the very bottom. She mostly prefers tisanes, though, not black teas.
I actually use loose leaf myself and have giant paper filters from Adagio Teas that are too inconvenient to leave in the mug, especially if I want to reuse it for a second or third cup later, so I’ve never even tried it before.
I can’t hear the word tisane without thinking of Hercule Poirot.
me either. bless him.
I drink loose leaf too, but use these (or something just like them):
http://www.amazon.com/Finum-Brewing-Basket-medium…
Washable and reusable, and handy if you like steeping the same leaves again.
I have a couple things like that to use, but to be honest, cleaning them is a pain in the ass and then they get moldy and gross.
Also, sometimes I used to “save” the leaves for another steeping (especially with my fruity tisanes that are better the third time around), then forget, and some well meaning person would put the basket in the cupboard without realizing it wasn’t empty and that was really unpleasant.
Ah, yeah that would be unpleasant. I haven’t found them to be too much of a hassle to clean myself, usually even when I leave them they just dry out instead of getting moldy (I have seen them get moldy a couple times though when leaving them around too long).
Where do you typically get your teas? I use Upton Teas and have about 30 bags to get through.
Adagio.com!
I’m pretty loyal to them because of their Frequent Cup Points system, where tweeting with their handle (if you’re connected) gets you points, and buying tea/reviewing tea gets you points, and 100 points = $10 or something off an order. Also, they have a make-your-own blend system that is awesome. I have a flavored black tea blend that’s orange-strawberry I really like for breakfast/mid-morning with toast.
Their customer service has consistently been fabulous, too, which isn’t something I can say for other tea retailers I’ve visited.
I’ll check them out, thanks! The make-your-own blend option sounds like a great idea.
They have a TON of blends made by other people with fandom themes that are fun to explore, too!
Adagio’s Irish Breakfast is my all time favorite black tea, and it’s how I start my day whenever possible (brewed strong, no sugar, splash of milk). Goes out of stock all the time, which breaks my heart.
The strawberry black tea is my favorite. I don’t really like most of the other flavored black tea, but strawberry is so good.
The Darjeeling Sungma Summer is my second favorite, with two sugar cubes and a splash of milk. The Assam Melody just takes a single sugar. Both are rich and “tea” without being too bitter or grassy/dirt flavored. I grew up on super-sweet ice tea (as I described downthread), so it’s been a slow process to reduce the sugar in my cups.
I have one with a sort of fabric sac instead of a metal mesh basket, and it’s much easier to clean because I can turn it inside out to rinse off the last tea leaves. It’d be harder to not notice that it was full, too.
But I mean, it does still need a little cleaning, so there’s still a reason to prefer the disposable ones.
I should look for a fabric one. I hadn’t thought of that, but a mesh that can be flipped inside out would probably solve half of my problems.
Thanks for the tip!
Ball and chain diffusers are a great way to leave loose leaf tea in the mug to steep for hours.
If you press the bag to the side of the mug it will just stay there, too. Mostly
Some tea bags just don’t get bitter even if you let them steep 5ever. I use PG Tips as my “lazy” tea for precisely this reason! It can stew all day and not get crotchety. (But yeah the flavor is kind of half-assed for my taste.)
That is fascinating!
I might have to see if someone can give me one to try.
/currently drinking a cup of cold PG Tips with a bare splash of milk. MrChouffe makes immense fun of my builders’ tea.
I drink PG Tips because my tea store stopped carrying my Scottish Breakfast tea. And yeah I leave the teabag in and drink my giant mug during the ~30 min driving leg of my commute.
Typhoo is good for this as well! My mother, who is not a morning person, used to make a pot of tea for my father for breakfast every day. Her method went like this:
1. Put a teabag in the pot.
2. Put the kettle on to boil.
3. Remember you have forgotten to put a teabag in the pot, and put one in.
4. Get out a cup and saucer.
5. Put a teabag in the pot, because you probably forgot to earlier.
6. Realize the kettle is whistling and take it off the stove.
7. Put a teabag in the pot before pouring the water in and steeping for the next ten minutes until your husband has finished getting dressed.
My father was eventually persuaded to make his own damn tea. But as someone who routinely drank the last dregs of his pot after the bags had been steeping a good twenty minutes, I can attest that Typhoo gets stronger with time, but not bitter.
Tetley’s is great for this.
I do, too. What can I say? I like my tea strong.
It barely tastes like anything unless you do steep for ages.
Sammmme. I mostly drink black tea with milk, so the milk really keeps it from getting overly bitter, and I get too lazy to discard the teabag. If I don’t have milk (or if the tea is of actual high quality and I care more about treating it well) I will actually take it out after an appropriate steeping time.
SISTER.
PG Tips is delicious when left in the cup.
It is not bitter because there are two tablespoons of raw sugar in my 20 oz. mug of tea.
And also glorious cream.
You joke about two parts milk and one part tea but that’s practically how I do it and I am at home right now in a zebra print robe, luxuriating with my weirdass milk tea, and living My Best Life.
Yesssssss mine is like one third sugar one third milk one third leaf water and I’m definitely living the dream here.
From what I understand the ‘proper’ way to make chai is to heat the tea / spices directly in milk, so you may be onto something there.
Milk tea is friggin’ amazing. There are a ton of variations out there, but the black tea + condensed milk one is my favorites: http://www.wikihow.com/Make-Milk-Tea
*internal screaming*
I don’t know WHY this makes me so angry, but it does. Me, the peaceful tea drinker.
Oh god Mallory, I hope you don’t have any events in the UK any time soon. I’m pretty sure that about 75% of these are actual crimes there.
As someone whose whole family drinks tea all the time but who has,personally very little patience in making it (“what do you mean I have to wait for the milk to boil?? Ack, I’ll just throw in some uncut ginger, no need to grate it”), this list speaks to me.
Oh you could do a whole other article trolling people making masala chai! I would love to see that. I’ll start:
Much like Japanese matcha, powdered ginger is designed to dissolve more easily in water, so it’s perfect for making tea! Just remember to add it right before serving for the best taste.
My mom got me into making ginger tea, but she minces it and I just poke some holes in it with a knife and stick it in my mug.
You’re trying to give all British Toast readers a collective aneurysm aren’t you
Just in time for Downton Abbey!
i think you mean downtown abbey
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wZb4vwMV8lY
As a British toaster who hates tea, I am CACKLING.
Is… is this you?
Be honest.
Bloody bastard paparazzi. It’s not my best side.
Is your best side the buttered side???
3. Be sure to follow this rule of thumb: one dip of the tea bag is more than enough. You don’t want to overwhelm the flavor of the water with an overlong steep.
8. Be sure to leave the tea bag in the mug until you’re completely finished. The bag will repeatedly bump into your lips the more you drink, delivering a more concentrated tea flavor directly to your mouth.
Direct contradiction! You’ve been caught out, Ortberg! *twirls evil villain mustache*
Not a contradiction at all! If you leave the teabag in the mug until you’re completely finished, then by definition you are dipping the teabag in the mug only one time. MALLORY REMAINS CONSISTENT.
My Dutch colleagues all pour in the water first, then put in the tea bag for like 30 seconds. I guess they just like drinking scented water?
haha have dutch heritage so maybe that’s where I get my tendency to understeep (also save the bag for a second/third/fourth cup)
oh they definitely do that, my office-mate has a little plate for her one teabag of the day
one teabag a day? i’m pretty sure that’s below what a civilian populace should consider acceptable for wartime rationing… how do they find the energy to get up and move around?
My dad says that’s how his dutch supplier does it!
My mom pretty much does the “let cool” and “one dip” thing–I think she basically just wants to drink warm water but feels weird about it.
I drank a lot of warm water last winter during the Plague That Would Not Leave, when I wanted to get the congestion moving but didn’t have the energy to, like, hunt down a teabag and plop it in there.
Sometimes a mug of warm water is SO NICE.
Then I wonder why I am channeling some chilly ascetic and have a glass of wine.
My first college roommate had a water-heating apparatus because she NEVER drank cold water. I was like “so, are you making tea or something” and she said “no, cold water makes my tummy hurt, I always drink warm water” from a neat metal bowl that was also an eating bowl.
She was a weird, sweet human and she always shared her hot water. The hardest thing about living with her was how much she worked (so long, so late, every night, it is Not Great if you happen to be dealing with a brutal bout of insomnia).
I drink warm water by itself all the time! I find it so cleansing and comforting. No reason to feel weird about it!
I had a high school teacher who would always drink huge mugs of hot water. At one point, she was featured in a school newspaper feature interviewing teachers about their “celebrity crush” and she said “my mug of hot water.”
Do not feel weird! Us Azns drink warm water all the time, it is totally legit.
Fun fact: Tommy Wiseau’s favorite drink is a glass of hot water.
This is beautiful and so very wrong but that only makes it MORE BEAUTIFUL.
I’m typing One Direction lyrics practically is how much I appreciate it.
SO VERY WRONG.
The Meels has spoken.
#8 is spot on
I’m going to say it’s impossible to make good tea at home. You need to order it off the bottom of the back page of an American restaurant menu. Only the specialized brewing apparatus of a restaurant can achieve the tepid, mouth-savaging bitterness of a proper cuppa.
“can of ice tea”
i’m sorry but even for trolling, that is a low blow.
those things are horrible and nothing like proper ice tea, especially not the sweet kind. i made the mistake of trying a few varieties recently.
also, i had a fight not too long ago about properly preparing ice tea and did you know that some heathens don’t brew their tea in a simple syrup made from 2c sugar per 1c water, boiled until there’s mostly no crystals on the bottom (stirring regularly).
and then some people are like “but if you brew it in plain water, you can add sugar later!” but seriously people
“i think i would like some bitter brown water with sugar dust at the bottom” said no one ever.
the worst part is that by the time you finish your cold, bitter brown water and get to the sugar dust, it has become BITTER SUGAR DUST and you guys “bittersweet” in this instance is in no way “sweet” it is all “bitter” and this is no way to live.
my 9th grade chemistry teacher taught us about solutions and density and related concepts way at the beginning of the year by having us brew different kinds of iced tea, btw. it was one of the most interesting ways to learn science i had ever experienced.
Or you could just drink unsweetened iced tea
No.
Mom? Is that you?
Yes. The sweetened stuff is vile, and I have just made myself persona non grata in the South with that statement.
I’m Home for the Holidays from a country that does not believe in unsweetened iced tea (you know what makes horrible Lipton iced tea worse? light carbonation. what the hell Holland) and since coming home I’ve downed like a gallon and a half in less than 2 days. It’s my favorite cold drink in the world.
Carbonated iced tea? Oh, that’s just wrong. I was desperate enough once to buy a bottle of iced tea in the UK. It was abysmal (as are all bottled iced teas in my book, really, but desperation and all), but carbonation would’ve really just pushed it over the edge.
I’m so sorry you have to suffer through that. Being without reliable iced tea is difficult.
Wait wait I need clarification. Do you actually immerse the tea bags in the simple syrup and let them steep there?? I have always been firmly of the “cold steep in plain water, add simple syrup later as desired” school. Iced tea being the *only and best* way to drink tea, I need to be sure I’m doing it right!
Yep!
It’s the way I’ve made it all my life. Sugar water + tea bags, put a lid on the pot on the stove and let it sit there good and hot for like twenty minutes, then let cool enough to pour into your pitcher. It should be about 1/2-2/3 of the way full. Fill with ice until it’s at the top of the pitcher and when the ice is melted, it’s ready to go.
(Sometimes I like to add water instead of ice but not all the way up, then pour it over ice in my glass while it’s still warm. The mix of hot-and-cold sweet tea is oddly refreshing.)
Brew it in *with* the sugar, you say? Hmmm. Usually I just brew the tea in plain water and then add sugar while it’s still hot so it gets properly dissolved, but brewing the tea in a simple syrup would be a lot quicker.
Yeah, that’s how we make it if we’re doing a big batch of sweet tea that we plan to last more than one cup. If I’m just doing a regular cup of tea (hot), I don’t use nearly as much sugar!
The other very important thing is that after you brew it in the sugar water, you transfer it to your pitcher and it should only be about 2/3 of the way to the top – finish it off with ice, and when the ice has melted, give it a stir and it’s ready to go. You can use a less intense syrup, as well, but honestly if it’s too sweet, just dilute the finished tea more.
I was probably 15 before I found out that people make hot tea. “Tea” with no modifier meant sweet iced tea, just as you describe it, plus a pinch of baking soda for some reason.
If I wanted hot tea — already a weird thing to want in Texas, but I watched/read enough British things to want hot tea despite the weather — I made it by pouring iced tea into a mug and microwaving it in my Beauty and the Beast on Broadway souvenir mug. I thought I was quite sophisticated.
I’ll be honest: until fairly recently, unmodified “tea” was sweet, iced tea for me, too. But then I was given Ceylon to drink for breakfast with a tartine every day during a 6-week homestay in France, and my world shifted. Plus, the Internet is not the South. 😉
I totally ask for tea-no-ice at McDonald’s and other restaurants to get warm sweet tea straight from the brewer, and have done since I was a teen. It’s oddly good, but a little too concentrated sweet if you’re not wanting that.
Ooh, that’s an interesting addition that makes sense! (begin tangential comment) See, when you put milk in tea, the milk proteins bind to the acids in the tea, such as tannic acid (the same process that lets you make fresh cheese with lemon juice). This is a big reason why the flavor changes. So I bet adding baking soda would cause a chemical reaction that might do something similar…
What I did when I worked in Southern restaurants (and later when I owned a sweet tea home brewer – oh those halcyon days) was start the brewing process and added the sugar after the hot water dripped into the urn (or whatever) just enough to create a thin layer of water. Then stirred occasionally to distribute. I had a black man tell me I made sweet tea “as good as [his] mama” which in North Carolina MEANS SOMETHING.
I am a slacker iced tea maker.
I drink it unsweetened, and I make it by combining loose leaf tea and hot tap water in a jar and throwing the jar in the fridge. It is delicious and I will never change.
Have you ever had sparkling canned/bottled iced tea? It’s horrifying, although it really drives home the fact that canned iced tea is basically soda.
oh Christ, that stuff is the worst.
Come over, and I will teach you the ways of my Drunken Sweet Mint Iced Tea:
Boil 5 qts. of water
Add Many bags of Moroccan mint tea and four bags of plain black tea (stick it all together in a diffuser if you are feeling loose leaf fancy)
Add 5 cups of raw sugar (seriously, that darker molasses edge is AHmazing)
Refrigerate
When cold, add a Lot of fresh mint and muddle the hell out of it, so the oils are released
Pour in dark rum (Kraken or Mt. Gay are my preferences) to taste
Serve in giant glasses with ice and watch your friends fight for the last cup of your tea
I’ve witnessed loved ones come to bitter standoffs over the “milk first” or “milk last” question. This would break their hearts.
DID YOU KNOW that this originated from the types of teaware that used to be used? The porcelain/china was so delicate that the hot tea could shatter the cups, so “milk first” was intended to bring the temperature of the tea down. #themoreyouknow
I heard that it was so the tea didn’t stain the porcelain!
I thought in England it was a class thing. The upper classes had better made china that could stand up to hotter temperatures, so it could take tea poured directly in, whereas poorer people had worse china that needed a cooler temperature, so they put milk in first.
There’s a urban legend, if there are urban legends about Victorian social distinctions, that the upper classes add tea first because servants would pour the tea and then pass it to people, who would then add what they wanted into it, but I’m pretty sure that’s not true, because tea was one of those things that people serve themselves most of the time. (But I’m not sure!)
Milk last, so you can taste the tea and decide if it needs milk at all.
To prevent super-heating the water when you microwave it (which can cause a possibly dangerous explosion), put the teabag in the mug with the cold water and boil the whole thing. Danger averted AND time saved!
My grandmother does this. Actually, I do too if I’m in a time crunch or somewhere strange. But at that point I’m mostly just in it for the caffeine
I swear it does not make a difference, and I’m one of those people who’s pretty picky about scents and tastes. I’m guessing if your tastes ran more toward Ceylon than Assam then it could affect the final product, but I like my tea to approximate non-alcoholic Guinness.
This is literally worse than anything in Mallory’s actual list
This was my introduction to tea: two parts milk, one part tea, more lumps of sugar than you can count. My grandmother called it “party tea” (as in, you serve it at tea parties). It was & remains delightful.
(supposed to be a reply to middlemarch!)
That’s also called “cambric tea”.
A friend taught me this method, it’s called the “Exhausted Doctor in Her Residency” brewing method:
1) Boil water, pour into cup with tea bag.
2) Forget about tea for like half an hour. Tea should now be ice cold, because it’s January in Boston.
3) Find tea; heat in microwave.
4) Forget about tea in microwave.
5) Find tea; heat in microwave again.
6) Enjoy!
This is how my husband eats cup’o’noodles
Funny, that’s super similar to my “Law Student During Finals” method that I’ve perfected! The only difference is that I salt my tea with a few bitter tears.
This is how my mom drinks her coffee, haha!
The Library Assistant Who Doesn’t Want to Go Outside Method:
1. Heat water in microwave.
2. Dip in teabag from stash in desk.
3. Add cream salvaged from staff meeting three days ago. (You only really like milk in your tea.)
4. Suddenly Busy Circ Desk!
5. Chug cold, fatty tea.
6. Profit!
This is also the Have A New Baby method of tea making.
My approach is similar, but it has a few steps before your Step 1:
1) Fill electric teakettle
2) 1 hour later, realize you never plugged it in
3) plug it in and boil water
4) forget about it for 3 hours
5) remember the water, turn on the kettle again
6) Prepare mug with tea bag
7) boil water one more time just to make sure it’s really hot, pour into mug with teabag
8) Proceed from Step 2 of your Exhausted Doctor Friend’s method.
I have burned through 3 perfectly good stovetop teakettles, and when I moved out, my mother bought me the electric one probably because she was haunted by visions of her daughter engulfed in flames.
My partner frequently leaves his tea to cool and then forgets about it, remembering only when it is too cold to be nice. A lot of tea gets wasted.
Beverage Trolling with Mallory
Tea doesn’t taste like anything so if you were for some reason forced to prepare a cup of leaves I can’t imagine it matters whether you follow these rules or George Orwell’s.
If you follow Orwell’s tea-making rules, you will DEFINITELY taste tea. You will not get the taste out of your mouth for days.
This list made Uncle Iroh cry.
It’s just hot leaf juice!
There is a tea porn tumblr titled “Hot Leaf Juice”. The world is as it should be.
The only proper tea:water ratio is 342 crates per harbor.
Milk and sugar as desired.
I wish I could upvote this 342 times.
HUZZAH!
I actually whooped and lolled
As an American who hates tea but knows many people who are smugly passionate about it, I am delighted and filing these away for future use.
I am an American living in the UK, and I so resent being expected to offer to make people tea when they come into my home–like, I’m definitely going to get your gross English Breakfast wrong, maybe consider a hot beverage that isn’t complete garbage–that when I offer, I say “we have tea, but no milk.” They always decline.
You are an evil genius.
“Do you want tea John? said Sherlock, his upper cupid’s bow lip quirking.
“Tea would be bloody dandy” said John Watson. “Very bloody dandy indeed, you roguish detective.”
“I’ll make black tea” said Sherlock impishly. Alhough Sherlock preferred coffee and sometimes drugs, Sherlock was still the best at at making tea, and third best at drinking it, after John, and then after Mycroft. Greg Le Strade brought up the rear.
“When you eliminate the worst parts of tea” shouted Sherlock over the whir of the tea grinder, “whatever is left must be great tea.”
Just then, Mrs. Hudson showed Moriarty in. (Moriarty was friendly now ever since “The Adventure of a Murder at Tea.”)
“Could I have tea?” said Moriarty. “And if so, can you…Irish it up?” He laughed in his Irish brogue.
Moriarty requests that his tea be prepared differently every time, because
i want 10,000 more words of this fic
I had to start fanning my face so I did not actually start crying. AMAZING.
I like the parenthetical most of anything.
I would read and/or watch Adventure of a Murder at Tea, probably obsessively and at least once a week.
holy crap
Bless you.
So this is when I tell the horrible story about how I had a roommate who made tea by getting hot water from the tap and then adding it to ice tea mix. Also her mug of choice was a big plastic one from Bush Gardens in Florida, which was my mug. I shudder to think about it.
You made me cry. Bleah.
Say what you will but this list is much better than the less-popular Eight Steps to Proper Teabagging:
1) No
2) Stop
3) Ew
4) Well maybe if it’s their birthday
5-7) Just kidding no
8) With a hat on
4b) Only if you promise to shave that thing very carefully
checked the “suck it george orwell” tag and this was the only post?? do better, the toast
Mallory Hortberg and ‘er herbs.
In ‘artford, ‘ereford, and ‘ampshire,
Hortberg ‘ardly hever eats ‘er herbs.
Regarding #3, I’m totally outing myself here, but that was basically the thing that annoyed me most in Fifty Shades of Grey (out of all the MILLIONS of things to be annoyed by) – the fact that she drank her tea with the teabag dunked exactly once. Like, what? How is that not just hot water with the faintest scent of tea? Stupid.
You must care about tea very much, if that is the detail that annoyed you the most in that entire godforsaken trilogy.
Sometimes it really is the little things.
According to my (Dutch) sister-in-law, that is “Dutch wedding tea”. Except you take one tea bag and dunk it once each in a row of fifty or a hundred cups of hot water. Highly cost-efficient but not very nice.
I was saddened by this posting, however, as I was recently given loose tea from Kenya and just bought a fresh new teapot with a strainer ad hoc and was expecting some real tips.
;op
I am making terrible, gasping noises trying to not laugh aloud in my very very quiet office, in front of my very very staid bookkeeper omg dying
TROLOLOLOLOLOLOLOL
Troll them Mallory! Tea is garbage and tea drinkers are annoying! WHEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE
ALSO:
“He had found a Nutri-Matic machine which had provided him with a plastic cup filled with a liquid that was almost, but not quite, entirely unlike tea.”
Eight steps to raising the angry, vengeful shade of George Orwell from the grave.
Regarding the milk first/last question: I read something recently, not sure if this is true or just a fun myth to trick Americans with, that in England the rich people would do “milk last” because if they shattered their china with hot tea it didn’t matter because they could just BUY MORE CHINA with their infinite gold coins or whatever, and they wanted to demonstrate this fact to their guests I suppose?? Milk last, the original tea troll.
I hope this is true.
A Belgian professor of mine told this story about when his wife, a doctor, went to go work in a Dutch hospital. On her first day of work, she went to lunch with her new colleagues, all highly-paid doctors, as was she. Each doctor got a cup of hot water and one pulled out a teabag, dunked it once and passed it to his neighbor. Four or five doctors each dunked their teabag once, and finally it came around to her. She demurred, pulling out her own fresh teabag. “Ah!” said the head doctor, “you must be Belgian!”
as someone who lives and works in the Netherlands I can confirm this is pretty much 100% accurate, what the hell is wrong with them
“Zuinigheid met vlijt bouwt huizen als kastelen.” That’s why 😉
Thus, Calvinism.
I’m confused because some of these are great tips
I haven’t read this yet, but I’m going to guess that Steps 1 – 7 involve the various intermediate steps toward throwing it in the garbage/pouring it down the sink, and Step 8 is about Making Coffee.
You don’t want to overwhelm the flavor of the water with an overlong steep.
This is how I feel about tea. Why turn lovely water into something that tastes like you steeped dirt and sticks in it?
George Orwell is coming for you, Mallory. And he is not amused.
Is he ever?
Eh, she can take him. I mean, does/did he even lift?
fucking gold, tbh
This is basically how they make tea in Kenya- throw loose tea into a pot with a bunch of milk and a shitload of sugar, boil into oblibion, serve.
But seriously, MILK FIRST.
Whyyyyyyyyyy?!
I am AMAZED that nobody has posted this yet: Doc Brown (British comedy rapper) rapping about tea: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FtK_vfp8po8
I see your Doc Brown and raise you Professor Elemental! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eELH0ivexKA
Just imagine what that rap would have been like if someone told him Americans make tea IN THE MICROWAVE
I grew up in the UK and now live in the US. When I talk about having a cup of tea I mean a British style cup of tea. I drink several cups a day. I use a teapot and tea bags (I have no patience for loose leaf tea) and have an electric kettle from which I pour boiling water (filtered as I live in the DC area…) into the teapot – the teabag already being in the pot. I let it sit for a few minutes. Teabags are imported from the UK. I will drink herbal tea (with the h pronounced…) but when I have that I don’t think of it as a cup of tea. It’s a cup of herbal tea.
Anyway, for my fellow Americans, below, courtesy of the late Christopher Hitchens, is the definitive guide to making a proper “cuppa”. There’s nothing like it. Unless you know someone from Britain, the chances of having ever had a decent cuppa is pretty much non-existent. You have probably had a decent cup of green tea, pu-erh or whatever other style of tea, but probably not a nice cup of char.
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/f…
Is this comment also a parody…?
Sorry. Not sure what you mean. I’m from Scotland – what you see is what you get. Where are you from? Take what I wrote at face value. No need to be cynical about it.
Ah, the cynicism of the internet. I’m sure that Hitch wouldn’t have been surprised. I am though…
You’re very good.
but what KIND of imported tea
/Yorkshire Gold or nuthin’
uuuuuuuuuuuugh, don’t bring Hitch to The Toast. Just don’t. It’s rude.
Oh hey, Hitch likes tea exactly the way Starbucks makes it! That’s such a timesaver! Cool.
This made me cringe, but not out of ‘purism’- but because I have, in fact, had under-steeped, over-milked and brewed-with-cool-water (black) tea before and recalling the taste makes me gag. Protip: there is little worse that a mixture of lukewarm water and milk. Uggggh.
EDIT: oh, and I dunno what my fellow Brits always get so uppity about when it comes to tea. Culturally, we’re kind of shite at it. Our tea has so much milk/sugar in it to hide the fact it typically tastes vile in and of itself because it’s just dustings after the real tea leaves are used, for god’s sake! We have nothing to brag about!
No idea what kind of tea you drank back in Blighty, Genny, but as far as I’m concerned no sugar, and add the milk at the end so that there’s not too much. (And it should be 1% so it’s not too cow like). You may be right about the dustings in the tea bags but you know what I like a cup of builder’s tea. Anyway, you can always buy some poncy Taylor’s of Harrogate if you want the “better” stuff. 🙂
So yes, you can get (and unfortunately you seem to have had) some crap tea in the UK. But even the tea at a Little Chef in Britain will be better than any tea at Starbucks or Cosi.
When I was a kid my father added six (yes, six) teaspoons of sugar to his mug of tea. His teeth weren’t that great, not surprisingly….
YES the British need to let the “tea! We’re a nation of tea lovers! We’re so good at tea!” thing go. There is one kind of tea here and it’s awful.
SERIOUSLY! thank you, god. british tea is strong and omnipresent, but that doesn’t make it especially *good*.
I visited a tea factory in Nepal once and they told me that the full, nice leaves are sent to China, the broken leaves drunk in Nepal or India, and the sweepings of tea leaves from the factory floor go to the US and UK.
It’s marvellous for getting a person up in the morning and on their way, or downing eighteen cups of while you work. But it’s like calling McDonald’s cuisine- even the ‘posher’ British-distributed stuff is usually utter shite. I should know- I’m on ten cups of cheap Earl Grey a day!
I typically go looking for Chinese and Japanese blends to get shipped out when I want to restock good quality tea, and the difference is like night and day, even restricted to lower quality/cheaper stuff. You’d never know they were the same drink!
I don’t know how to make a proper cup of tea and still am not sure which parts of this aren’t good tbh
Fiber arts trolling, tea drinker trolling… I think Mallory is coming for you next, Librarians of the Toast.
She doesn’t have to. All she needs to go after next are cat owners and she’s got 99% of librarians covered. As it is, she’s only at 90%.
I bet she shelves all her books with the spines in just to fuck with us.
don’t give her ideas. I’m a librarian with a coffee addiction and no cats, but this made me cringe so hard.
My circ department shelves tall books with the spines down and INSIST this is the correct way.
Yeah, spine down because storing a book spine down rather than spine up will prevent the text from pulling out of the binding due to its weight. That’s right.
so you’re telling me that all my coworkers hate each other SO MUCH they would rather confuse the new girl than just say “that lady over there is a bitchlord but unfortunately she is right about that one thing”
If it’s anything like my library… yes.
Seriously, though- if you’re gonna be worrying about weight, just shelve them flat on the shelf. It looks a mess, but no worse than having books lying around spine-down/up all over the place.
I have a weird allergy that sometimes makes my mouth swell up. I combat it by sucking on a tea bag. The astringency helps reduce the swelling.
I love this. I work in a tea shop and sent this to my boss IMMEDIATELY. She may not survive reading this list.
The only proper way to make tea, according to my very Chinese grandfather is:
1. Pour loose tea leaves into a bottom of a cup
2. Add boiling water
3. Drink the tea
4. Add more boiling water
5. and under no circumstance can you add milk into your tea.
Nobody can troll me like you, Mallory. Nobody.
I’m having a physical horror reaction.
I used to work at a Tea Shoppe of Snootiness. This list very nearly gave me an apoplexy. When I worked there, I used to delight in taking a leaf – a full, lovely leaf – of tea out of our brewers and showing it to people to let them get an idea of ‘THIS is tea, philistine! What you have at home is GARBAGE. THROW IT OUT.’
Basically, my mental image of myself working there is the Fug Girls’ Karl Lagerfeld, with less non-sequiturs. I’ve gotten much more mild-tempered about tea now – I barely flinch when my husband puts milk (bleh) in his earl grey (double bleh).
MALLORYYYYYYY
You tea-haters need to try some nice tea. Try Mariage Frères or Kusmi. If you don’t like Mariage Frères something is wrong with your tastebuds, I’m convinced.
Also, I went to Hong Kong a few years ago, and during the more formal tea drinking times, the loose tea was only steeped for a very short time. But then it was used two or three more times. It was just too bitter if you let it steep much longer.
Badmuthahydra’s Steps to Drinking Tea at Work
1) Bring in tin of delicious loose leaf tea, due to irrational belief of teabags being somehow inferior.
2) Consistently forget to bring strainer.
3) Pour boiling water over leaves and let steep for appropriate amount of time.
4) With leaves still in tea, filter liquid into mouth using own teeth as strainer, not unlike a baleen whale ingesting krill, eating several leaf fragments by accident.
YO!
That’s basically it. Added bonus when you’re doing ginger tea (I like the bits to be big) you get to suck on the stuff that´s stuck to your [s]baleens[/s] teeth.
*whispers* wait, what’s wrong with number 7? I don’t know! I thought I knew all the tea things!
You’re going to get your sugar gross if you reuse the spoon? I got nothing, otherwise.
Yes, if you have more than one spoonful/put the spoon back in the sugar (often the spoon lives in the sugar bowl/bag) it will make the sugar wet and gross. It happens a lot in workplace kitchens, and is unpleasant.
How did you know?? This is exactly how I make tea
(Especially the one about reusing the spoon, oops)
one teabag a day? i'm pretty sure that's below what a civilian populace should consider acceptable for wartime rationing… how do they find the energy to get up and move around?
Ooh, that's an interesting addition that makes sense! (begin tangential comment) See, when you put milk in tea, the milk proteins bind to the acids in the tea, such as tannic acid (the same process that lets you make fresh cheese with lemon juice). This is a big reason why the flavor changes. So I bet adding baking soda would cause a chemical reaction that might do something similar…
I swear it does not make a difference, and I'm one of those people who's pretty picky about scents and tastes. I'm guessing if your tastes ran more toward Ceylon than Assam then it could affect the final product, but I like my tea to approximate non-alcoholic Guinness.