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Charlie Productions : Make A Cup Of Tea

Introduction - A Brief History of Tea Time - An Overview

The following article retains the following information pointers. Please be advised; making tea is a serious business.

Making Tea
Making A Pot of Tea
Making A Cup of Tea
The Milk Question!
George Orwell


Introduction - A Brief History of Tea Time

 Comforting, consoling, warm, wonderful, wet tea. It is the drink that underpins my life. It is the drink that brings together the English as one nation. No we don't all stop work at four and drink selected fine leafs from India out of fine bone china. No we don't all eat cake or scones or muffin with tea. No we don't all know the Queen, no there are no fogs in London and no we don't prefer to it sex. However it is true that no matter where you go in this country someone will, at some point in the day, offer you a cup of tea. Or beer. Or whisky (as a nation we do tend to drink quite a lot).

Most importantly, whilst making a film there is nothing so wonderful as a cup of tea to revive the senses, freshen the spirit and generally give cast and crew a chance to relax - and, since the production and consumption of a really hot cup of tea takes about ten to fifteen minutes, it is perfectly timed to give everyone just enough of a break to relax and and sharpen their focus without going on so long as to leave people jaded. In filming, especially on a low budget where the cast and crew are probably only being expenses, it is always of vital importance to give everyone a chance to cool off during the shoot. Feed them well, give them plenty of tea, don't start too early (unless utterly necessary) and don't finish too late (unless utterly necessary) especially because that way, if it does become necessary to shoot from 9 in the morning to 6 the following morning people will be more willing (and more able) to go that extra mile.

English tea (like many of the best things about England) comes from India. The expression all the "I wouldn't do that for all the tea in China" is about as close to Chinese tea as most of the English ever get. Chinese tea (green or unfermented tea, also produced in Japan and best drunk without milk) isn't really the same thing at all and the powerful scented taste of a good Darjeeling can be rather disconcerting for someone brought up on the fine powdered mess of largely Assam tea which we know as Tea. (Funnily enough tea and that other Anglo-Indian staple curry rarely go together. I have never been to a curry house and ordered Chicken Madras and a pot of Earl Grey - I don't understand why this isn't done but it isn't.) You can also get teas from Sri-Lanka, which are known as "Ceylon", the name the colonialists gave it, and Formosa (Taiwan). Ceylon teas are black tea (fermented) like Indian and Formosa "Oolong" tea is green but semi-fermented and rather lovely.

Fine tea as available from the fantastic Higgins Co. is classified by leaf size into (largest first) Flowery Orange Pekoe, Orange Pekoe, Flowery Pekoe, Pekoe, Golden Broken Orange Pekoe, Broken Orange Pekoe, Broken Pekoe, Fannings and Dust. Pekoe is an anglisation of the Chinese Pak-ho meaning 'white hair', which refers to the young buds on the plant and Orange refers to orange blossom which was sometimes added for its scent - now though both words simply denote the size of leaf.

Leaf tea comes in gorgeous brown paper parcels (which inspired the "wall paper" of most of the pages on this web site) and the drink is made by adding boiling water to a pot containing the leafs. However Higgins (and many others) do also provide very fine tea in bags which are used for making individual cups of tea. This is how most tea is sold and, of course, made. All tea bags contain very fine Dust grade tea and usually in a blend of leafs rather than a single type. Tea bags range in price from the posh (Like Twinnings which come in black boxes with little paper tabs attached to the bag with string to enable you to remove the bag without burning your fingers) to the sturdy (Like Asda's plain and simple box of 200). Tea bags also vairy in design from the traditional square, to round and now a three dimensional pyramid shape. The round and pyramid shapes both claim to give the tea inside a better chance to mingle with the boiling water (all important for the imparting of taste) by either cutting out the corners for tea to get stuck in or giving the tea more space in which to move. To be honest, with the exception of the really really cheap (which do taste like cardboard) and the really really expensive (which taste better but not as good as leaf tea so what's the point), all tea bags are much of a muchness. Square, round, pyramid, foil wrapped whatever they make water go brown when hot and taste nice.


Making A Cup Of Tea

There are two different ways in which you can make tea - by the pot or by the cup. The single most important thing to remember in all of this process is heat. The tea leafs impart their taste to the water most effectively when the water is actually boiling. To make really good tea you must go to every length possible to exclude coldness from the equation.


A Pot Of Tea

Tea made in the pot is (if done correctly) superior to tea made by the cup. This is partly because you should have access to better quality tea and partly because it avoids the difficult question of when to add the milk (see below).

* Boil a kettle with freshly drawn COLD water.
* Add a little boiling water to the empty tea pot to warm it up. If you were to make tea in a cold tea pot you would instantly spend some of the valuable heat needed for imparting flavour in warming the china and this would have a detrimental effect.
* Pour away the water used to warm the pot and add your tea. Quantities are of course up to you (do you like tea as strong as tar or as weak as water?) but a basic rule of thumb is to add one teaspoon of tea per person and one extra "for the pot".
* When the water is boiling pour it directly onto the tea, taking the pot to the kettle rather than the kettle to the pot. This is done for the same reasons as warming the pot - trying to ensure that the maximum amount of boiling water hits the maxmimum amount of tea in the quickest possible time.
Leave to infuse. Again how long you leave your tea is dependant upon how strong you like it - on average though threeish minutes for small leaf tea and sixish for large leaf teas.


A Cup Of Tea

Tea in the cup is easy. If someone asks you for a cup of tea and you put a bag in a cup and add boiling water no one is going to complain. However... to make a REALLY GOOD cup of tea...

* Boil a kettle with freshly drawn COLD water.
* Add a little boiling water to the empty tea cup to warm it up (for precisely the same reasons as you would warm a pot).
* Put a single bag into the bottom of the cup making certain that the tea takes up as much of the visible surface area as possible.
* When the water is boiling pour it into the cup by taking the kettle to the cup and trying to make certain that as much boiling water hits as much tea as soon as possible. This can be quite hard because sometimes the sudden inruse of water causes air to get trapped within the tea bag and then most of the boiling water runs directly off the top of the bag without instantly touching the tea. This might worry you. Alternatively you might feel that life is too short. (You could well be right).
* Leave to infuse. The tea in tea bags is so fine that two minutes should see you right.
* When making mulitiple cups in this fashion it is up to you if you reboil the water for each cup. This won't take long, since the water will still be nearly boiling, and will make sure everyone has really nice tea. It is however just a little bit anal. It depends if your trying to impress with your mastery of tea (as possibly you are since this is your first job in film or possibly you aren't since you don't want this to be your only job in film - to which end it might be as well to make really bad tea so that people hurry up and teach you how to do something else).

Like I said before no one is ever going to take a sip of tea, spit it out and scream "FOR CHRIST SAKE WHY DID YOU NOT WARM THIS CUP WITH BOILING WATER BEFORE ADDING THE TEA BAG!" unless of course they've got some deep rooted problems stemming from a childhood of abuse.

Always take out the tea bag before giving the cup to someone else especially since if you leave a tea bag in then soon enough all the air caught within it will escape and the tea bag will sink to the bottom of the cup where it will lie in wait for the unwary and then, just as you move to drain the last dregs of the drink, it will rush from the darkness like a some satanic seal desperate to invade your mouth and propigate it's evil children in the cavities of your cheeks. Well may be it's not that bad, but it is really unpleasant to get that big cold wet kiss of a sulking tea bag.

Don't add sugar. Sugar is unnecessary, unhealthy and masks the delicious flavour of tea. If you want a sweet drink have hot chocolate. You wouldn't add sugar to beer would you? If someone asks for sugar in their tea laugh at them scournfully and then slap them once very hard. Unless of course she's your girlfriend because that probably wont do much to underpin the relationship.

Most importantly when making a cup of tea is NEVER (really NEVER) "top up" a cup with more water. Don't do it when the bag has been in there stewing for a bit and certainly never ever do it once you've taken the bag out and realised that, now the bag has gone, the cup is not as full as you thought it was. "Topping up" does not make more tea in the cup it makes the same amount of tea diluted with more water. This will kill the taste of your tea and make you generally hated by all right minded tea drinkers. Be preared when adding the water first - realise that you will have to take the tea bag out and realise that you will probably need to leave a little room for milk.


The Milk Question

Most people prefer to drink tea with a little milk added. Apart from the fact that this milk destroys the wonderful flavournoids found in tea (which help protect your body from cancer ) this simply serves to make the tea even nicer. The hard part is knowing when to add the milk.

Milk should go in first because this way it will become fully incorporated into the drink whereas, if added to the tea, it will likely seperate and not properly mix.

Now this is all well and good when making tea in a pot because, in this situation, you have two liquids - tea and milk and you simply add the milk to the cup before adding the tea.

The problem arises when making tea in a cup because here you have dried tea, boiling water and milk. If you add the milk first then will this cool down the cup and inhibit the infusion process. Add it second and it could well seperate.

Gosh.

No, you're right, it's not much a problem is it. I mean, there are people out there starving to death and I'm worrying about when to add milk to my tea! How's about that for the start of a guilt trip?

Happy tea drinking.


George Orwell

Also has a thing or two to say on this matter.

However before going any further I feel obliged to warn readers of a sensitive disposition that Mr.Orwell is a controversialist in all things. Not content to worry and bedazzle A-Level students with heavy handed political allegory and dystopic futures in the following article he boldly suggests that it is correct to PUT THE MILK IN LAST! (see the milk question...)

His argument, that it is the only method open to the drinker for effectively gauging the amount of milk added is balderdash. Any serious tea drinker should be well equipped for judging the effect of any given quantity of milk upon his drink and no one but the inferm and physically sick should be capable of regulating the gentle motion of milk from cup without suddenly adding too much. Further more I would rather drink a cup of a slightly milkier than intended tea than a cup where the milk and the tea war and quarrel with each other from first sip to last.

And you thought 1984 was controversial! Ha! Click here to read what the great man has to say...



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