A Nice Cup of Tea

George Orwell provides a fantastic tea recipe that demonstrates several reason as to why tea is not enjoyed in North America. The idea is that we’re brewing it wrong.

I cringe every time I see someone be satisfied with grocery store bought tea bags or plunge a dozen teaspoons of sugar or honey in their cup.

Although most of the tea I drink comes from China or Japan and thus requires a different method than the detailed instructions for Indian tea, the same principles can be applied.

If you look up ‘tea’ in the first cookery book that comes to hand you will probably find that it is unmentioned; or at most you will find a few lines of sketchy instructions which give no ruling on several of the most important points. This is curious, not only because tea is one of the main stays of civilisation in this country, as well as in Eire, Australia and New Zealand, but because the best manner of making it is the subject of violent disputes. When I look through my own recipe for the perfect cup of tea, I find no fewer than eleven outstanding points. On perhaps two of them there would be pretty general agreement, but at least four others are acutely controversial. Here are my own eleven rules, every one of which I regard as golden:

 

http://georgeorwellnovels.com/essays/a-nice-cup-of-tea/

 

kylesmyth