Alright Kids, we're back with a new food blog entry, except that it is really better suited to a drink blog. Or a tea blog. This is no longer a music blog, it is a Tea blog. Tea is our primary focus, and I will not hear another word about it. The importance of this will be explained later.
Important announcement: This post is going to be super long, so if you have to pee, do it now.
TEA FACT #1: TEA IS NOT A DIURETIC.
Some people think it is, but those people are wrong. Coffee IS a diuretic, but coffee is absolutely loaded with caffeine. Tea would also be a diuretic if it had as much caffeine as coffee, but it doesn't, so it isn't. Here is an experiment you can do at home to test this: Take a really good whizz before you go to bed tonight. Take another really good whizz in the morning. Now drink only tea for the whole day, and measure your intake. A good way to do this is to measure your water before you brew the tea (spoiler alert:
tea is made mostly from water). Any water lost due to evaporation or absorption into the leaves (spoiler alert:
tea is made with leaves) is negligible. This is much easier than measuring the tea after it is made, unless you make it all at once, which is good for the science but bad for the tea (sometimes). Now when you whizz throughout the day, whizz into an empty milk jug or other vessel of known volume. This is a good experiment to perform at home because carrying a half-full jug of piss with you around town is going to lose you more friends than this science is worth. About 3 hours before you are going to go to bed, stop drinking tea. Take one final whizz right before bed and observe the final volume. Is it more, or less, than your tea consumption? For good science, repeat this experiment 10 to 20 times (total, so 9 to 19 more times). It's important to do this all on consecutive days because any extreme changes in weather or activity level or general health can invalidate a day's results. You should probably just take some time off work if you have any vacation days saved up. It is important to not "chug" the tea, or "shotgun" the tea, or participate in any other sort of "tea-drinking games" (such as presidential speech or bad science fiction movie tea-drinking games) because drinking too much tea too quickly WILL get you majorly hopped up on caffeine and produce a diuretic effect. That doesn't count. This science is all about normal tea consumption, NOT TEA ABUSE. Before you even ask, I will just tell you, the Tea Bong is completely out of the question. Just to clarify, a Tea Bong is like a beer bong, not a marijuana bong. I do not know what happens when you burn tea leaves in a bong in place of marijuana. That is a different type of science which this blog and this blogger do not explore.
TEA FACT #2: TEA IS MADE FROM LEAVES AND WATER.
It's true. If you read the spoilers above, you already know that! Tea (the drink) is actually made from Tea (the leaves) and just plain ol' water! Some people like to use special water for their tea, but these people are snobs. Or they live in areas with really bad water. I've lived in three cities in California and one city in France and I've never had a problem with the tap water, but I'm also digestively incredible. Robust. Stalwart. Rugged. Vigorous. Incredible. Either way, the water gets boiled anyhow, so don't even worry about it. Any micro-organisms are dead, but the heavy metals are still in there. They sink though, so just be sure to always leave a little bit of the finished product in the bottom of your cup or bowl, and in this way you will avoid those. I don't always do this because my water is pretty good, but still, it is a good practice, just like always using your turn signals and stopping at stop signs, even when you are alone on the road. If you are brewing the tea in a larger vessel and decanting into a smaller vessel, it is okay to leave some tea in the bottom of the larger (henceforth called the "Brewing Vessel", capitalization arbitrary) and empty the smaller vessel ("Drinking Vessel", same capitalization rules apply (no rules)).
Ok so the water doesn't have to actually be boiled. Usually you want to get the water to just under boiling, I have heard snobs say 175, 186, 190, 200, whatever. It's still fuckin' hot, so don't drink it right after you make it. If you can drink your tea right away, you've fucked it up with the cold water, just like you fucked up that steak with the cold skillet. At least tea is cheap, so you can try again. Some teas come with instructions on how to prepare the tea, and they will say to use boiling water. This is because they do not want to alienate potential customers by putting some bullshit "186.05° Fahrenheit or 85.583° Centigrade". The customer thinks they are not suited for this product because they do not have the money to invest in a fancy thermo-meter, or some kind of automatic tea-water-heating device with integrated solid-state thermo-meter and a negative feedback closed-loop control system. They think they're just fucked for being a plebeian and are being unfairly targeted by the tea companies who want to keep their product exclusive, and so they put the tea back on the shelf and go home with a six pack of lite beer, which they feel was made for them. No thermo-meter required. And before anyone gives me any shit about significant figures on that °f to °C calculation, I know the god damn rules and I have maintained a consistent number of sigfigs despite the appearance of otherwise since the second number extends further past the decimal point. I know what I'm doing.
So your water is hot. You've heated it on the stove or in the microwave or basically anywhere except the inside of your car's radiator. At this point it is still just water. Now add some tea leaves to the hot water. Or, if your Drinking vessel is the same as your Brewing vessel, put your leaves in the Drinking vessel, and then add the water to them. If both of these are the same as your Heating vessel, you can add the leaves to the heating vessel. Now you wait. You should wait a few minutes. The water should have changed color. This is how you know that the tea leaves are working. If the water does not change color, something is wrong. Is your water hot enough? Do not test this by putting your finger or tongue in the water. Do not put any part of your body or someone else's body in the water. You can check the temperature by the presence of steam rising from the surface of the water. If there is no steam, or not much steam, your water is cold, and you fucked up. If the water is hot and you have waited a few minutes but the water is still clear, you probably aren't using tea leaves. Check your leaves. Oregano will not change the color of the water, so if you thought you were being clever, saving some money by using household ingredients as a substitute for tea, your thought was stupid. You were not being clever. You were fucking up. At least the tea is not ruined, because it is not even tea at all, so there is that small bit of comfort. The tea mafia is not going to beat you up. They don't even know about you.
A BIT ABOUT THE LEAVES:
There's only one kind of leaves you can use for this: Tea leaves. Most tea is green tea when it is picked off of the plant. Sometimes you will see "black tea". This is made by fermenting green tea. I don't know what the hell Oolong tea is. It might be from another planet, I just do not know. Ask Wikipedia, the Online Encyclopedia (free). I like to use green tea with Jasmine flowers in it. This is also known as "Jasmine tea", but it should really be called "tea, with Jasmine". I think this misnomer is due to a bad translation from Chinese or French where grammatical rules and syntax are different. The Jasmine smells nice and also changes the flavor a little bit I guess. That is another bit of science you can do. The tea that I use comes "loose leaf", which means that it is just a box with the leaves and flowers in it. Some teas come "bagged", which is where the leaves (with or without flowers) have been put in a little bag with tiny holes in it which let the water in. These come with a little string on them and are really convenient if you want to remove the tea leaves from the drinking vessel before you drink from it. It is my estimation that the addition of the tea bag adds about 2 cents to the cost of each serving, so make sure you really give a shit before you invest in it. 2 cents doesn't sound like much, and it isn't, if you are buying a horse, or a beachfront condo, or a jet, or an island, or a hamburger, but tea is actually pretty god damn cheap, so the 2 cents represents a significant increase to the "loose leaf" price. If you've got spare money lying around, be my guest. Go crazy. Buy tiny little bags full of tea. Don't come crying to me if someone makes a tampon joke and you reflexively splash hot tea in their eyes and get into a fight and maybe even killed, because I WARNED YOU. There is another joke which can be made in this circumstance because "tea bagging" is a slang term which means to put your testicles into another person's mouth! It originated as a sexual act, but is now used mostly on the internet in juvenile circles as trash talk in video games or discussion forums. Seriously though don't kill anybody over a cup of tea. Tea is a drink of peace enjoyed even by Buddhist monks and also Ghandi before he got shot. Don't be the guy or girl who gives tea-drinkers a reputation of violence. Special note: Do not eat the leaves after you drink the water. They don't actually taste very good.
TEA FACT #3: TEA IS NOT A DRINK OF PEACE.
Chinese warlords and also British warlords have been drinking tea for like a thousand fuckin' years. Their days went like this: Wake up. Drink tea with breakfast. Kill a thousand innocent people. Drink tea with lunch. Sodomize (figuratively) an opposing army. Drink tea (no meal, just straight-up tea, or maybe some small cookies or a bit of light cake. Tiny sandwiches too if they are in season). Subjugate a nation. Drink tea with dinner. Go to sleep. The pacifist tea community is trying to take this one back. Don't be the guy or girl who undoes what is basically like at least 20 years of progress. 25 years? When did Apartheid end? According to Wikipedia, the Online Encyclopedia, it ended on April 27th, 1994, when Nelson Mandela was elected president of South Africa. So that was 18, almost 19, years ago. Don't undo almost 19 years of progress by being violent with your tea. While I was at Wikipedia, the Online Encyclopedia, I looked up Oolong tea. It is made from regular tea which has been left out in the sun for awhile on purpose, then fermented, like black tea, but not as much. Black tea is the most-fermented of all the teas.
What I've described above is what I call "The Chinese Method" for preparing tea. It's pretty plain. It is almost an expression of how frickin' poor those people are (I have heard). They just drink water, dirtied with leaves. You can't get much poorer than that. If you've read The Good Earth by Pearl S. Buck (winner of the Pulitzer prize for her House of Earth trilogy, the first book of which is The Good Earth, and also seemingly the only book of the trilogy that anyone has ever heard of (the other 2 are "Sons" and "A House Divided")) you will know that in Chapter 1, Wang Lung, basically the poorest guy around, is making breakfast for him and his old dad, and they are just having plain hot water for breakfast. They are so poor that they cannot even drink tea unless it is a very special occasion. Wang Lung thinks the day of his wedding is a special occasion. His father explains gently with great patience (JUST KIDDING) that he is mistaken, and a reckless spender and a threat to the survival of their entire family. It turns out that the only truly special occasions are the occasions when a friend or even more so, a stranger, comes into your home, and you try desperately to create the illusion that you are not poor as hell. Anyway, it is said that in the Great House of Hwang even the slaves drink tea, so that is like, a complete mind-blower for Wang Lung. At one point he is so poor that he cannot even afford any tea at all, even on special occasions. Although, thankfully, not many special occasions of the sort I mentioned came up while he was absolutely broke, pulling a rickshaw in the city while his family begged for what would be a nickel in today's money. Anyway, I drink my tea this way because even though I am not poor like Wang Lung on his wedding day, I like to pretend that I am. Then I feel very wealthy when I drink the tea. This is how I have amassed such a fortune by age 24: CHEAP HABITS. Also my parents paid for my collegiate education, but this blog is not about that. Cheap habits still help a lot.
There is another method of preparing tea, which I call "The British Method". This is where you make the tea as described above, but you drink it out of a special Drinking Vessel which could cost as much as FIFTY FUCKING DOLLARS. There are other subtle distinctions, like the addition of milk, lemon, sugar or honey, and opium, to the tea, but I don't care about that, really. I just can't get past the expensive-as-fuck drinking vessel. They made the cups as ornate as they could, but they were not satisfied, so they put little plates beneath the cups, and made those ornate too. They've got ornate Brewing Vessels, which is stupid because you could just use any pot for that if you aren't even going to drink out of it, and also there are little ornate cups for the milk and sugar and an ornate plate for the lemons probably and an ornate tray to carry it all on and if you are having little cookies or something you need ornate plates for that too and in the end you are looking at FOUR HUNDRED DOLLARS for a tea set for
http://www.dramabutton.com/ FOUR PEOPLE.
http://www.englishteastore.com/fine-bone-china-tea-set-violets-victorian.html
Shiiiiiiiiiiiit.
That's basically all I'm gonna say about tea right now. Don't even ask me about Mate (2 syllables) because even though I do know all about it from when I lived with an Argentinian dude, I do not want to talk about it now. Same for iced tea, tea-balls, green-tea ice cream, and coffee (ask Max, he loves that stuff).
Real quick shoutout to The Association of TeaBaggers
http://www.teabloggers.com/ which handles a lot of online tea publications. I've looked at their charter and I don't qualify for admission into their secret cabal (cartel? clique?) because this blog has not been primarily about tea for at least six months, but that is starting RIGHT NOW, see above (way up there, second line). There have been requests to apply for early membership for the sheer amusement of navigating their application process which I'm sure includes a number of email exchanges, but I am not going to take that route because I am too timid and ALSO because I want to continue to promote the image of Tea as a Drink of Peace, not a Drink of Assclownery, even though the people I'd be trolling are snobs. Those of you who actually know me know that this attitude is a stark departure from basically my entire life thus far, but I actually just came up with the "Drink of Peace" thing as I was writing this, and I'm committed to that now. I'm "turning a new leaf". Heh heh heh.
Here is a snobbish tea blog you can read for actual tea advice if you are into that sort of thing, it should be clear that I am not, but I don't despise you if you are, unless you are a dick about it (this applies to many things, including religion. Mostly religion, actually).
http://teasnobbery.com/
Also here is the tea snob community on reddit. These guys are hilarious. They use words like "tea-ginity" (I AM NOT MAKING A JOKE HERE, THIS IS FOR REAL), so, be warned.
Also here is the tea that I like to use:
http://www.amazon.com/Sunflower-Jasmine-Tea-LB-454/dp/B000NIHZMU It's 7 or 8 bucks for a 1 pound box at any asian market. That's, like, at least 200 cups of tea. Probably 300. I haven't used a precision scale for this, but I use less than a teaspoon (holy shit, I get it now!) for one cup of tea. Do your own science on this one. It's still a shitload of tea for 8 bucks, and also I reuse the leaves for my second cup, so it is even more. You're comin down to about 4 cents for a cup of tea (high side estimate), so now you see how that 2 cents for a special bag and string is pretty outrageous. The tin is pretty cool too after you've used all the tea. I have some on my table filled with coffee and black tea, just to confuse thieves.
I'll post more things about tea here later maybe. I don't know if I have any other interesting things to say about tea. Send your questions to
steakisgood@gmail.com and you might see an answer in the space below this one, or this exact space if I am getting bombarded with emails and remove the request for questions altogether.
First Question comes from reader "KJ", who writes
Dude, that was a pretty nifty. What are your thoughts on doing this as a video? I would be up for helping to plan, film, and edit. This could even be part of a larger "this is how you be a person" joke instructional video thing.
First Answer goes to reader "KJ". I write
Thanks KJ, that is very sweet of you to say. I guess I could do a video, I dunno. I've heard from one reader already that these posts are funnier if you read them in my voice, which she does, because she knows me in the fleshverse. Maybe a video would help capture the spirit of the piece better and help a wider audience appreciate the message here. As an aside, my current employer is doing layoffs and my apartment lease expires at the end of the month, so there is a greater-than-zero chance that I will be living on reader KJ's couch in the near future, which would certainly be conducive as hell to getting a video made. Not conducive to getting a video made would be losing my job and having no income. Will you work pro bono? Will you work for tea?
Second question comes from reader "BL", who writes
You forgot to put in the link to Reddit's bulljive. But overall, good. It was extremely long. Are you bored?
Jk ;)
Second Answer goes to reader "BL". I write
Good catch! Aren't you astute! Will you be my girlfriend? Here is the link, if you didn't guess it:
http://www.reddit.com/r/tea/
Yes, yes it is extremely long. THAT'S WHAT SHE SAID!!!
For the record, in the previous statement she = Karen Thurston, renowned film critic, on the subject of the most recent Lord of the Rings movies. She is praising Peter Jacksons' lengthy adapatations, for their effort to capture as much of the story as possible.
I'm not bored, I just have a lot to say about tea. This post has been brewing (zing!) for almost a week, which accounts for some of its length. I think about it every time I'm on the pot at work since I don't have a smart-phone.
Third Question comes from reader "AS", who writes
You forgot to point out the other advantage of re-using your tea leaves, which is that the tea is now decaf, or at least less-caf.
What follows is purest drivel regarding bacon, her husband, and their unattractive or unavailable friends. Eventually she gets to
Do you like chai? I have a recipe for kick-ass chai tea. It involves lots of spices, and you can taste them all. It is so much better than bagged chai tea.
Thank you, reader "AS". Your point about decaffeinating the tea by pre-brewing is valid, but not endorsed by this blogger. The flavor of the second cup is never as potent as that of the first, and second-brewings should only be used to save money, with the understanding that the second cup was essentially free, so one cannot complain about its flavor. Never pre-brew your tea for the express purpose of decaffeinating it. That is bullshit and a disgrace to the tea. Especially never re-brew your tea if you are doing any diuretic science.
Third answer: Yes.
Here is a special update with a picture I saw on reddit (not in the tea section). It is a special cup for teabaggers.
http://imgur.com/HqJ4q4V . This is not a necessary purchase if you wish to enjoy bagged tea. You can still have bagged tea in a regular cup, you just have to be careful when you remove the teabag because it may swing like a pendulum of near-boiling water, so watch out.
