Wednesday, February 24, 2010

Orwell on the subjet of tea

Here is a link to one of my favourite essays by George Orwell: http://www.booksatoz.com/witsend/tea/orwell.htm

This is the one point I disagree strongly with:
"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 tealover 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."

In the previous points, Orwell mentions adding milk to his tea. Does that not change the taste? I guess I like my tea in the Russian style - without milk.

Tuesday, February 23, 2010

From the Beginning...

I actually don't know when I started drinking tea, but I do remember my first cup of coffee, which was more like a sip. After a primary school function at the local church, a friend and I decided to try out the coffee from the dispenser. Not sure if I had creamed and sugared it, but that sip was pretty much my last. I have drunk cups of moka (half hot chocolate and half coffee) but they made me so jittery.

So that's my history with coffee.

My history with tea is more foggy. It seems like I've been drinking it forever, and at some point in time, I tried English Breakfast and got addicted. Ever since I have been exploring the different kinds of teas, and mostly learning about them with my taste buds, and from whatever I read on Wikipedia.

My prefered tea is English breakfast with two lumps of sugar.