Read on for History of Tea, Tea Grades, Storage, Brewing, Heat Transfer, and Serving:
History
People have been drinking tea (and/or tisanes – herbal infusions)
for thousands of years. As for tea
brewed from the leaves of the tea plant, that would have begun in the southeast
Asia regions where tea grows natively.
Then tea went west when trade and exploration started becoming
more interesting than sitting around at home, quibbling over the price of
barley. A lot of the typical top teas that
westerners prefer are Indian-grown black teas such as Assam and Darjeeling. But here’s something interesting – tea growing
was brought to India, not something native to the area. This was mainly because Britain owned most of
India and were tired of paying China for tea.
Imperialist and generally impolite as this may have been, it’s why we
have some seriously good teas today.
My personal preference and definition of “tea” is a good
black tea. I will have herbal, “flavored”
teas sometimes and occasionally will go for a green or white tea. Black tea is my “default” tea, anyway, and
what I’ll be concentrating on through this series.
To get started, I’m going to share some general brewing
tips, information, and terms that you’ll see throughout the series.
Grades
In Sins of Another,
Padrig refers to his advocate Geoff as “a good mate who knows exactly what a
good cup of tea is all about (and knows that a string and a paper tag are “in
case of emergency” only).”
You know you’re a tea snob when a collection of letters like
this: FTGFOP, means something to you.
Let me break that down. It means,
“Far Too Good For Ordinary People” and means you are on the right track! Actually, FTGFOP is a grade of tea which
describes the quality of leaves used in a “loose” tea blend. Though some higher-end bagged teas like
Harney and Sons or Tea Forte which tout “silk” bags will have higher grades of
leaves, you don’t need to worry about tea grades when comparing Lipton and
Tetley.
Grades are as follows:
Dust – You know what you have in the bottom of an empty tea
box? That.
Fannings – Often what’s used in basic market bags. A box of fannings will often leave you with “dust”
leftovers.
Pekoe/Orange Pekoe – No, this is not a flavor, it is a
descriptor of the leaf used. When broken
up to be used in bags, these become B(O)P and the bits that are left over are
fannings and dust. So, really, even
fannings of a highest quality tea can be better than a full-leaf of a lower
quality or poorly stored tea. And even
dust and fannings have their own grades.
I’m generally going to skip “broken” OP tea grades here and
hop into whole leaf. You’re not brewing
these from a bag, but from an infuser in your tea pot (or cup, I suppose, if
you must). Anything “above” an OP grade
is a higher quality tea.
The first grade above whole leaf OP is Flowery OP
(FOP). Imagine at this point we’re an
ant climbing up the top stalk of a tea plant and each level up is a “station.” As it goes up, so does the portion of “tips”
in the blend. Flowery OP will have nice
long tea leaves, but not a whole lot of tips.
The next stop up from FOP is GFOP, Golden Flowery OP. More tips than FOP.
On from that is TGFOP, Tippy Golden Flowery OP (note these
vary between growing regions which won’t always produce one of each grade –
Assams and Darjeelings usually come in TGFOP but rarely in GFOP). As the name implies, this is getting toward
your best. Long, high quality leaves,
and a good bit of tip.
Then we get to FTGFOP (that’s the “Far Too Good…” I mentioned
earlier), Finest Tippy Golden Flowery OP.
Quite a lot of tippage going on here.
These highest grades will usually come from very early harvests referred
to as 1st or 2nd flush.
Sometimes S(pecial)FTGFOP(1) is used, but that’s just
getting affected and silly.
Storage
Remember that even FTGFOP isn’t going to be good if it’s not
stored and brewed properly. A good tea
probably won’t be cheap. A few ounces
will probably run you at least 5USD
and one of the few commercial FTGFOP’s I’ve seen (Republic of Tea’s 1st
flush Darjeeling) comes in a 3.5 oz canister and goes for 25USD. Granted, a latte at Starbucks is getting
around 4.50USD these days, but that’s one drink. You’ll get close to 50 cups out of 3.5 oz of
tea, depending on how you like your brew.
That canister is good for storing in a dry kitchen
cabinet. Tea shops will sometimes have
similar tin canisters or boxes. These
are definitely appropriate for storing tea whole, loose leaf teas. Sometimes you’ll see nice tea boxes (that
usually come with some bagged brand such as Bentley’s or Taylor’s of
Harrogate). Those are generally more
than necessary for wrapped tea bags, but unless you’ve got little tins that fit
in the slots, I wouldn’t use them for loose teas which need a seal. Sealed, “ziplock” style bags are also ok, but
tins are really the best way to go.
I don’t imagine I need to say “don’t get tea wet” until you
brew it. Keep it well away from the
counter “spill/splash zones.”
Brewing
So now you know something about the sort of tea you’ve got
and you know how to keep it in good condition.
That can all go to shit if you don’t watch what you’re doing when you
make it.
First thing you need to know is how much you’re going to
make. That’s alright if you’re brewing a
pot for yourself (I gave up making tea by the cup a long time ago!) but if you
are hosting a few people you’ll want to make it all at once. With this, I’m talking mainly about heating
water and pouring it into a teapot with the tea in an infuser basket or tea
ball (I recommend a basket). It should
be safe to assume at least two cups per person, so for a party of four, one of
those little two-cup pots isn’t going to work so well. You’ll want a nice big 8-cup pot (which works
just as well for making yourself a couple cups when you’re in a rush).
How much tea to put in the basket? The general guideline has always been a
teaspoon (see that?) per cup being made.
Just personally, I usually only do about one heaping spoon per pot
(which I make in about 3-4 cups at a time).
Heating the water.
Traditionally this is what a kettle is for. You put the correct amount of water in the
kettle (8 cups for that party-of-4 again) and either put the kettle on the
stove or switch it on if you’re a modernist.
Some people are charmed by that kettle whistling thing. That’s far too inexact for me. I boil mine in a pot on the stovetop (bonus:
no scaling to deal with!) With electric
kettles (fine and dandy for a cup of Lipton or hot chocolate or something) they
often automatically shut off at a certain temperature (so you don’t burn the
house down). But then you lose the
proper brewing temperature. Far too
inexact.
Little top tip: When boiling without benefit of automatic
shut-off or screaming kettle… pay attention.
Don’t wander off and do something else and forget for half an hour you’ve
got something on the stove. The water
will boil down to nothing and burn up your pot.
Yes, I know that.
For a standard cup of most black teas, you want a good,
fast, rolling boil. Greens, whites, and
most herbals shouldn’t be brewed with boiling water as it tends to make the
more delicate tastes bitter.
I’m going to say this once and only once (yeah, right) – do not microwave a mug of water, even if
you are making yourself a single cup. We’ll
talk about heat transfer in a moment.
Your water’s getting close to a boil. You’ve measured out your tea leaves into the
infuser. Now, take the infuser out of
your nice, clean tea pot, set it where it won’t get wet or topple over, and
wash the pot out with hot water.
Really. Run hot water from the
tap, fill the pot, swish for a second (careful not to splash on yourself), and
pour it out. That’s called “warming the
pot.”
Your water’s boiling good now, so return the infuser to your
warmed pot and pour the boiling water in.
And don’t go anywhere! This is
the MOST IMPORTANT PART!!! Depending on
the tea and the strength you prefer, you’ll want to let it steep anywhere from
3 minutes to 7. Most teas you buy commercially
will tell you optimum brew times somewhere on the packaging. Loose teas you buy in bulk probably won’t. Check what kind of tea you’ve got, but four
is usually fine for most black teas. And
while it’s infusing, don’t do anything to it.
Don’t swish or dip or prod. Just
let it sit. And at the appointed time,
remove the infuser.
You may now pour the tea.
Mind the drips.
A word on heat
transfer
This is why you warmed the pot and didn’t microwave the
mug. Heat transfer. Sounds like some complicated engineering
thing, and it can be. But when it comes
to tea, I’ll simplify. You want to warm
the pot just before brewing because pouring boiling water into a cold/room
temperature pot is going to immediately lower the temperature of the water and
you’ll miss that perfect brewing point again.
You don’t particularly want to “warm” the cup in the same
way because the tea is already brewed when you pour, so you don’t need that “perfect”
temperature, but you do want the hot tea to get to drinkable temperature soon
so you can enjoy without burning your mouth.
Pouring it off into a room temperature cup facilitates that.
Microwaving is what I’ll do if I’m at home and need to
reheat a cup that’s cooled off too much.
If you “boil” a cup in the microwave you’ll likely either not heat it
enough for the brew or heat it too much to get it cooled down and drinkable any
time soon (mostly because you now heated the mug with the water and get no
heat-transfer from the pour off).
Serving
When people think of afternoon tea, they usually imagine
people setting around a small table with a tray or tier of treats in addition
to their Royal Doulton cups and saucers.
You can go all out on that, and it’s one of my favorite treats to go to
tea with friends once or twice a year.
You’ll sometimes find tea service at high-end, old-school hotels or
cafes, complete with tea sandwiches, scones or biscuits, and sweets.
A lot of people call that “high tea.” That isn’t high tea, it’s low tea. The high/low is supposed to refer to the
height of the table on which it’s traditionally served. Low tea (or, easier, afternoon or formal tea)
is usually served on a little “coffee table” or a regular dinner table. High tea (or just “tea” in northern areas
like Yorkshire) is a casual late afternoon/early evening meal that was often
eaten at a raised pub-table. People by
now have “high tea” so ingrained in their minds as something fancy that it’s
almost impossible to disabuse this notion.
I usually just say “afternoon tea” if I want to indicate “fancy”
tea.
For the at-home server (or solo drinker), you might want to
scale it down a little (or not, if you like doing the whole show!) Within each segment I’ll offer my personal
suggestions of what goes well with each tea.
Some things typically taken with tea are biscuits (not the buttermilk or
cornbread variety – think closer to a Graham cracker), cookies/cakes/pastries, small
sandwiches, and chocolates. What people
take in their tea is very individual to taste, some prefer milk/cream, sugar,
lemon, or flavored syrups.
Just make sure you don’t put the milk in first.
Just make sure you don’t put the milk in first.
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