A Proper Cuppa, According to the ISO, the Royal Society of Chemistry, or George Orwell (Take Your Pick)

I am a tea lover! Being raised by two Hampshire born women, and having lived in Canada, where the tea urn is just as ubiquitous as the coffee pot in communal settings, it would be surprising if I weren't. 

In my wanderings round the 'net, I discovered that there is a scientifically designed 'standard cup of tea'. Here is a short video about ISO 3103.

And the Royal Society of Chemistry doesn't necessarily agree!

How to make a Perfect Cup of Tea, according to the Royal Society of Chemistry.

Ingredients: Loose-leaf Assam tea; soft water; fresh, chilled milk; white sugar. Implements: Kettle; ceramic tea-pot; large ceramic mug; fine mesh tea strainer; tea spoon, microwave oven. 

Draw fresh, soft water and place in kettle and boil. Boil just the required quantity to avoid wasting time, water and power. While waiting for the water to boil place a ceramic tea pot containing a quarter of a cup of water in a microwave oven on full power for one minute. 

Synchronise your actions so that you have drained the water from the microwaved pot at the same time that the kettle water boils. 

Place one rounded teaspoon of tea per cup into the pot. 

Take the pot to the kettle as it is boiling, pour onto the leaves and stir. 

Leave to brew for three minutes. 

The ideal receptacle is a ceramic mug or your favourite personal mug. 

Pour milk into the cup FIRST, followed by the tea, aiming to achieve a colour that is rich and attractive. 

Add sugar to taste. Drink at between 60-65 degrees Centigrade to avoid vulgar slurping which results from trying to drink tea at too high a temperature. 

Personal chemistry: to gain optimum ambience for enjoyment of tea aim to achieve a seated drinking position in a favoured home spot where quietness and calm will elevate the moment to a special dimension. For best results carry a heavy bag of shopping – of walk the dog – in cold, driving rain for at least half an hour beforehand. This will make the tea taste out of this world. 

Recommended ideal reading to accompany The Perfect Cup of Tea: Down and Out in Paris and London by George Orwell. 

Dr Andrew Stapley of Loughborough University writes: · 

Use freshly drawn water that has not previously been boiled. Previously boiled water will have lost some of its dissolved oxygen which is important to bring out the tea flavour. 

Avoid “hard” water as the minerals it contains gives rise to unpleasant tea scum. If you live in hard water area use softened (filtered) water. For the same reason do not use bottled mineral water. 

To achieve perfection, we advocate using a tea-pot with loose tea. The pot should be made of ceramic as metal pots can sometimes taint the flavour of the tea. Tea bags are a handy convenience, but they do slow down infusion, and favour infusion of the slower infusing but less desirable higher molecular weight tannins (see below). 

It is not necessary to use a lot of tea. 2 grammes (a teaspoon) per cup is normally sufficient. 

Tea infusion needs to be performed at as high a temperature as is possible, and this needs a properly pre-warmed pot. Swilling a small amount of hot water in the pot for a couple of seconds is not enough. Fill at least a quarter of the pot with boiling water and keep it there for half a minute. Then, in quick succession, drain the water from the pot, add the tea and then fill with the other boiled water from the kettle. A better alternative is to pre-warm the pot using a microwave oven! Add 1 /4 cup of water to the pot and microwave on full power for a minute. Then drain, and add tea and boiling water from the kettle. Aim to synchronise events such that the kettle water is added immediately after it has boiled, and just after you have drained the water. Taking “the pot to the kettle” will marginally help keep the temperature high. 

Brew for typically 3 to 4 minutes (depending on the tea). It is a myth that brewing for longer times causes more caffeine to infuse into the tea. Caffeine is a relatively quick infuser and caffeine infusion is largely complete within the first minute. More time is, however, needed for the polyphenolic compounds (tannins) to come out which give the tea is colour and some of its flavour. Infusing for longer times than this, however, introduces high molecular weight tannins which leave a bad aftertaste. 

Use your favourite cup. Never use polystyrene cups, which result in the tea being too hot to drink straightaway (and will also degrade the milk, see below). Large mugs retain their heat much longer than small cups in addition to providing more tea! 

 Add fresh chilled milk, not UHT milk which contains denatured proteins and tastes bad. Milk should be added before the tea, because denaturation (degradation) of milk proteins is liable to occur if milk encounters temperatures above 75°C. If milk is poured into hot tea, individual drops separate from the bulk of the milk and come into contact with the high temperatures of the tea for enough time for significant denaturation to occur. This is much less likely to happen if hot water is added to the milk. Once full mixing has occurred the temperature should be below 75°C, unless polystyrene cups were used. 

 Lastly add sugar to taste. Both milk and sugar are optional, but they both act to moderate the natural astringency of tea.

The perfect temperature to drink tea is between 60°C and 65°C, which should be obtained within a minute if the above guide is used. Higher temperatures than this require the drinker to engage in excessive air-cooling of the tea whilst drinking – or “slurping” in everyday parlance. Leaving a teaspoon in the tea for a few seconds is a very effective cooling alternative.

And here's the method used by a real, non-scientist English tea drinker. For the record, I agree with Orwell, tho' if I'm only making one cup, I use an infuser. 

George Orwell, A Nice Cup of Tea

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:

First of all, one should use Indian or Ceylonese tea. China tea has virtues which are not to be despised nowadays — it is economical, and one can drink it without milk — but there is not much stimulation in it. One does not feel wiser, braver or more optimistic after drinking it. Anyone who has used that comforting phrase ‘a nice cup of tea’ invariably means Indian tea. Secondly, tea should be made in small quantities — that is, in a teapot. Tea out of an urn is always tasteless, while army tea, made in a cauldron, tastes of grease and whitewash. The teapot should be made of china or earthenware. Silver or Britanniaware teapots produce inferior tea and enamel pots are worse; though curiously enough a pewter teapot (a rarity nowadays) is not so bad. Thirdly, the pot should be warmed beforehand. This is better done by placing it on the hob than by the usual method of swilling it outwith hot water. Fourthly, the tea should be strong. For a pot holding a quart, if you are going to fill it nearly to the brim, six heaped teaspoons would be about right. In a time of rationing, this is not an idea that can be realised on every day of the week, but I maintain that one strong cup of tea is better than twenty weak ones. All true tea lovers not only like their tea strong, but like it a little stronger with each year that passes — a fact which is recognised in the extra ration issued to old-age pensioners. Fifthly, the tea should be put straight into the pot. No strainers, muslin bags or other devices to imprison the tea. In some countries teapots are fitted with little dangling baskets under the spout to catch the stray leaves, which are supposed to be harmful. Actually one can swallow tea-leaves in considerable quantities without ill effect, and if the tea is not loose in the pot it never infuses properly. Sixthly, one should take the teapot to the kettle and not the other way about. The water should be actually boiling at the moment of impact, which means that one should keep it on the flame while one pours. Some people add that one should only use water that has been freshly brought to the boil, but I have never noticed that it makes any difference. Seventhly, after making the tea, one should stir it, or better, give the pot a good shake, afterwards allowing the leaves to settle. Eighthly, one should drink out of a good breakfast cup — that is,the cylindrical type of cup, not the flat, shallow type. The breakfast cup holds more, and with the other kind one’s tea is always half cold before one has well started on it. Ninthly, one should pour the cream off the milk before using it for tea. Milk that is too creamy always gives tea a sickly taste. Tenthly, one should pour tea into the cup first. This is one of the most controversial points of all; indeed in every family in Britain there are probably two schools of thought on the subject. The milk-first school can bring forward some fairly strong arguments, butI maintain that my own argument is unanswerable. This is that, by putting the tea in first and stirring as one pours, one can exactly regulate the amount of milk whereas one is liable to put in too much milk if one does it the other way round. Lastly, tea — unless one is drinking it in the Russian style — should be drunk without sugar. I know very well that I am in a minority here. But still, how can you call yourself a true tea-lover if you destroy the flavour of your tea by putting sugar in it? It would be equally reasonable to put in pepper or salt. Tea is meant to be bitter, just as beer is meant to be bitter. If you sweeten it, you are no longer tasting the tea, you are merely tasting the sugar; you could make a very similar drink by dissolving sugar in plain hot water.

Some people would answer that they don’t like tea in itself, that they only drink it in order to be warmed and stimulated, and they need sugar to take the taste away. To those misguided people I would say: Try drinking tea without sugar for, say, a fortnight and it is very unlikely that you will ever want to ruin your tea by sweetening it again.

These are not the only controversial points to arise in connexion with tea drinking, but they are sufficient to show how subtilised the whole business has become. There is also the mysterious social etiquette surrounding the teapot (why is it considered vulgar to drink out of your saucer, for instance?) and much might be written about the subsidiary uses of tea leaves, such as telling fortunes, predicting the arrival of visitors, feeding rabbits, healing burns and sweeping the carpet. It is worth paying attention to such details as warming the pot and using water that is really boiling, so as to make quite sure of wringing out of one’s ration the twenty good, strong cups of that two ounces, properly handled, ought to represent.

1946

THE END

____BD____

George Orwell: ‘A Nice Cup of Tea’

First published: Evening Standard. — 

GB, London. — January 12, 1946.