Crimes Against Tea
I follow an Irish musician and comedian named Garron Noone on Instagram, and I enjoy a lot of his stuff, much of it culturally targeted. That said, one of his recurring bits is "Crimes Against Tea" in which he overdubs exasperated commentary for videos by other creators (usually feckless Americans) who are, in his opinion, committing horrible, hot beverage atrocities.
On the Old Ship, I once began an inquiring thread about tea shortly after purchasing a new tea kettle. I can't confess to ever having reached aficionado status with it, as I was then and still am, primarily, a coffee drinker. That said, without pouring a second cup of boiling water onto a spent teabag, let's chat about Tea, and why we're probably still doing it wrong over here, LOL.
On the Old Ship, I once began an inquiring thread about tea shortly after purchasing a new tea kettle. I can't confess to ever having reached aficionado status with it, as I was then and still am, primarily, a coffee drinker. That said, without pouring a second cup of boiling water onto a spent teabag, let's chat about Tea, and why we're probably still doing it wrong over here, LOL.
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There are few things worse than being presented with a cup of hot water with a tea bag* next to it. You know the teabag is shite, and it'll never get a chance to brew to what little potential it has as the water is already to cool for a good brew.
* tea bags have their own circle of hell, but they are convenient.
(a) Tea bags are an invention of the evil one. Use loose, but not finely ground, tea leaves (from a proper shop). I'm fond of Assam.
(b) water (hard or soft, etc and not stale, i.e boil it from cold) ideally to suit the brand of tea, but filtered is usually OK.
(c) boiling water straight from the kettle. Needs to be close to 100 deg Celsius. Can't make proper tea on a mountain or in an aeroplane.
(d) warm the pot first.
(e) brew for 5 min.
(c) add milk first
(d) do not add sugar.
Moi, a tea snob? Surely not?
I could also go on about 'Instant coffee', any oxymoron if ever there was one. It's not coffee and it's not instant.
I really should get out more .......
I've been developing photographic film in it recently.
Really.
It really works!
I would quibble that brew time also depends on the tea. 5 minutes is too long for a Darjeeling. But, to be honest, it has been a long time since I bothered to actually time the brewing. I have come to trust the little instinctive timer in my head that suddenly goes off to tell me that the tea has brewed enough.
And I cannot stand milk in my tea. Or cream.
But other than those points, we are in agreement.
Where do folk stand on flavours like earl grey and lapsang?
I like both, though for Earl Grey at least it depends a lot on what base tea they use. The Canadian Twinings Earl Grey is pretty meh (can’t speak to the UK version which may be better), but the non-branded “Earl Grey Premium” we get from our local tea shop is excellent.
Loose, yes! We have two varieties of loose tea in the house at the mo.' I dare not say what they are though, or it'll be 1812 all over again.
Electric kettles are pretty much ubiquitous in North America. I don’t think there’s any practical difference between 110 and 220 volts in terms of what the kettle does (having used both in recent memory).
Years later I saw the kettle-looking things that were in fact electrified. But not till I moved cross country. In my experience, people who wanted hot water used a stove, a microwave, or a coffee maker without the filter and coffee.
They're more common than they used to be, but I wouldn't say they're ubiquitous, at least not in the US. I only acquired one a year ago, and I know plenty of people who just microwave water. I've seen the explanation that our lower voltage means stovetop kettles are just as fast as electric, but that is not my experience. I love how fast my electric kettle is and that I can specify a temperature.
I occasionally order tea in restaurants, and I nearly always regret it. There is one horror you've left out: the second cup that's made with the not hot enough water and a spent teabag. A lot of times now they at least give you a little caddy of teabags; before that became a semi-regular practice, I once got a server to bring me a fresh teabag by pointing out that the coffee drinkers didn't get a second cup made from re-used grounds.
I have to admit it's not something I notice, though I spend much more time in 110-volt-land than 220-volt-land (and have never had the opportunity to be in both places at once for an A-B comparison
I wouldn't have guessed there would be any difference between Canadian and American habits on this point, but it looks like I may have been wrong... or possibly wrong about Canadian habits I suppose. I've owned an electric kettle for as long as I can remember and I don't think of that as being particularly unusual...
EG or Lapsang? I can imagine someone perceiving Lapsang that way but EG not so much.
I like Lapsang though probably preferably in a Russian Caravan blend than all by itself.
<tangenting away from crimes>
My usual go-tos for everyday teas at the moment are Assam or Keemun. There was a Yunnan we both really liked from our local purveyor of teas but somehow during Covid it became a paler version of its former self and no longer worth the premium we were paying for it. I like Sikkim and Darjeeling but they’re expensive and it can be hard to find one that works well with milk. For flavoured teas Mariage Freres Marco Polo is guilty pleasure, though not readily available in North America as far as I know.
We have hard water here too. We do use a water filter, but the old kettle was still building up scaling residue. With the electric kettle, we can whip any residue straight away.
One thing we learned is do not reheat coffee in an electric kettle. It will change the taste of the water. Gets too hot anyway. We did not do it ourselves. A friend did it with hers. Had dispose of the kettle.
OMG did she sound like Angela Lansbury? And how is Chip doing?
However, if you like stronger / bitter tea like you get in England, it's still not easy to find because the French don't usually put milk in their tea. If you want to find the English brands, your best bet is to find the South Asian people (my source is a corner shop run by Sri Lankan people).
Ha ha.
On the loose leaf question, I use an infuser. Still needs cleaning, but I find after dumping the leaves the remainder wash out easily.
Ah, Lipton. Guaranteed quality. You know when you see that yellow bag that it's going to be so weak you have to take your jacket off to help it out of the cup.
I haven't seen it since ye plague, but in the Netherlands "real" tea was usually grim, but their mint tea was a handful of fresh mint leaves in a glass of hot water, and it's fabulous!
Thanks. I figured I couldn’t be completely out to lunch on this but the last time I studied anything about electricity was in Grade 9.
We keep two clean teapots on the counter, one large and one small, ready to be deployed at short notice. Ms. Marsupial also has a strainer she can use if making only one cup.
A local coffee roaster also sells loose tea, so I buy tea there, mostly Earl Grey. I haven't seen Russian Caravan since I was a kid and there were a lot of Twinings loose teas in the grocery store. I loved it.
Does anyone in the US have a place they like for ordering tea online?
I’ve been doing a lot more with coffee for sometime now, but I will say, and I know some people will react with horror to this, but I will take a 16 ounce (473 ml) Pyrex measuring cup of water, add three tea bags (I like PG Tips best for regular tea) or an equivalent amount of loose tea, microwave that sucker for three minutes (I hear everyone shriek 😈), and then I have my tea, strained through a little strainer if it’s loose (which I still hate cleaning—I have tried the tea ball thing but it’s even more of a mess to clean, which is why I was hoping for something better than my method), whether into a teapot (another thing to wash, sigh) or just a mug. I’ve usually had it with milk (put in first) and sweetener (I used to put in a level of sugar that would supersaturate into a sort of sludge at the bottom), but since I’ve gotten used to coffee without milk (I was on an antibiotic some time back which disallowed dairy within four hours of taking it for a while), I now prefer coffee without milk (it was always an absolute requirement for me all my life till like a year ago), so I’m not sure how I will prefer my tea these days.
We sometimes drink Lady Grey as it’s not so heavily flavoured as Earl Grey . Lord P only drinks Earl Grey.
We have a rather nice kettle from Lakeland after seeing one at our holiday cottage this year.
The Little Red Cup is my all time favorite.
I agree with @Nick Tamen's son! I have several favorites from The Republic of Tea. Sometimes they have a special for ordering a certain amount and they send another tin for free. Those are always tea bags, which is OK for when I travel. I use loose leaf tea every day.
Those times I was on the other side of the pond, I had wished that we had electric kettles here. That wish did finally come true! I love my electric kettle, and have gifted them to my daughter and my best friend!
Earl Grey is fine in certain circumstances, as long as you don't attempt to put milk in it. That's just nasty.
Had not heard of sun tea. Interesting.
Confirming myself as someone for whom there is no redemption, I do occasionally go for store-bought (no added sugar) iced tea. One day I will try some proper stuff if I get back to the States; I have the impression, perhaps erroneously, it is a Southern thing.
@Climacus, not exclusively Southern thing, but definitely associated with the South, especially “sweet tea” (which many in the South consider redundant). I will simply say that I find bottled iced tea undrinkable, and unsweetened tea pointless.
That reminds me of a work canteen that always made me think of the drinks machine aboard the Heart of Gold spaceship, in that the liquid it served was almost exactly, but not quite, unlike tea. It was warm and brown, but shared no other common factor.