Sunday, December 25, 2011

Making Tea, Office Style


I've been kind of hyper-busy the past 80 weeks or so, so I needed something to zap my brain to be able to handle mounting work. A good black tea would do the job, and the best tea always comes directly from the source. So I waited for Dav to send me some...




The package with the tea arrived in a week. Not too shabby. Look at all the stamps. Dav really made the effort to deliver the tea ASAP.




I unpacked it right away. Nice tea. I love it already. Let's make some tea!




You'll need a tea cup. Don't mind the dogs. They're there to keep watch on me. If I stray away from my work, they give me some tea to bring me back in line. Kind of like those big wooly alpine rescue dogs with a small barrel of schnapps attached. But schnapps works only on lost mountain climbers, I require tea.




And a tea strainer that we'll use as a tea infuser.




And some milk. You cannot have a proper black tea without some milk.




And the tea, of course. This package opens at the side pictured.




Opening the outer cardboard reveals the inner bag. Nice packaging.




You have to unwrap the bag.




There's some fine Broken Orange Pekoe inside.




Fill the tea cup with water, but not exactly to the brim, leave some space for the milk that we'll add later. Basically, just drown the dog's feet in the water, but not the whole dog. Now put the cup with water in a microwave and engage it at the highest setting for about 2 minutes. It should make the water boil. Black tea is brewed at a higher temperature than green tea.




In the mean time sip some tea in the strainer. Not much, make it two teaspoons for some quite strong zapping tea.




Here, a closeup. I'm not sure whether this is two teaspoons, perhaps a little less. Two teaspoons is really a lot for one tea cup. But then again, I don't know what size tea spoons you have.




Start brewing the tea by putting the tea strainer with tea into the tea cup.




Here is a close-up. Leave it like this for 3 minutes, not a minute more.




And then pull the strainer, that we used as an infuser, from the tea cup.




Now we have the pure freshly brewed tea. But that's not ready for consumption yet!




Pour the milk into the tea cup, just enough so you drown the whole dog.




And the tea is done.




Don't forget to send a Thank You note to Dav, so you get more tea from him.