The Teapot and I

Tea preparation involves a bit of necessary ritual. I suppose one could be a pig about it all, throw a cup of water into the microwave and then drop in a teabag. But how gauche, how unimaginative, how unperceptive. Settling for swill when a banquet is practically right at hand—oh, it breaks the heart.

Tea bags may be more convenient but even the best of them—say, Taylor’s of Harrogate—cannot even approximate the fine quality of a proper cup of tea. You can’t get there from here, so don’t try. Now, I’m the first person to acknowledge that one isn’t always in a situation where proper tea-making is appropriate or even possible. Work may be one of those. But that’s work. At home, one needn’t compromise.

The ingredients are absurdly simple. There are really only two critical issues: the tea itself, and the water temperature. Everything else can be finessed or worked around. But no amount of fine teapots, infusers or strainers, or careful observance of pot-warming and water temperature, can make up for poor tea leaves. So a few thoughts from a long-term tea-drinker are in order.

Blends vs. Single Estate: there’s something to be said for both, but for my everyday fare I prefer a blend from a reputable merchant, and I do mean reputable. A blend isn’t necessarily thrown together haphazardly from the leftover odds ‘n’ ends. Fine blends are like fine anything else; they’re constructed of first-class ingredients and assembled with skill, experience, and loving care. My regular staple is a whole-leaf Assam blend from Upton Teas in Massachusetts; if you’d like to try it, you can go here to get some. It’s neither spectacular nor expensive, but I don’t want either for my regular tea.

BOP vs FOP: "orange pekoe" (OP) refers not to a specific type of tea, but a leaf grade—the standard leaf grade for commercial teas. If the tea is "broken" (BOP), then you won’t need as much, and it will brew more quickly. However, I find that broken teas tend to produce a murkier-tasting tea. The "flowery" leaf (FOP) will require longer steeping, and you might need to use more tea, but it will produce a clearer brew. My staple tea is GFOP—i.e., golden flowery orange pekoe.

India vs China vs Africa vs Everywhere Else: My own tastes run strongly towards Assams, which are a product of India. After Assams, then Kenyans. In other words, I like strong black teas. But other folks have other tastes. Darjeelings, also from India, are generally much lighter than Assams and can often seem nearly like green teas. I’m OK with, but not wild about China black teas—Yunnans, Keemuns and their ilk; I find that they have a certain woody and dark flavor that doesn’t appeal to me as much as the maltier flavor of Assams. I’m fine with Ceylon teas, although when ordering I invariably pass them over for India proper. It’s worth experimenting to find out what you like. Dealers such as Upton’s sell samplers that may be perfect for explorations.

Black vs Green vs Oolong vs White: Most folks tend to gravitate to either blacks (which are fermented), or greens (which are not). Oolongs can be amazing creatures; I have a Woodbridge Oolong from a Chinatown tea merchant that I trot out for special occasions—it has a sandalwood undertaste that’s extraordinary. I’ve never been big on white teas myself, but if your taste runs towards the extremely delicate, they might be just the thing.

Big-name Commercial Vendors: you can’t get good teas from the supermarket as a rule. A certain company’s nasty, harsh Irish Breakfast blend could sour you on Assams for life. However, the occasional higher-quality vendor just might show up in the supermarket—in particular, Tao of Tea produces a dandy Assam blend and several Darjeeling varieties that are well worth their high price. Generally speaking you need to get your tea from a vendor, either a walk-in tea shop or online. Upton Teas and Todd & Holland are my personal favorites.

Price: tea prices can run high, but unless you’re really a hardcore fancier, you just don’t need to go there. However, don’t expect $2.99 for a month’s supply. That fine Tao of Tea Assam blend is $15.00 for a quarter pound (about the usual size of a tin of loose tea as you’d find in the supermarket), about the same price as my regular Upton’s blend, while the same amount in Todd & Holland’s Estate Blend #133 runs $46.00.

So: preparation. A few tips:

Water temperature: boiling or very nearly so for black teas; less for greens. I use a fancy-pants Zojirushi hot-water dispenser that gives me precisely the right temperature I want, and keeps the water ready throughout the day. Hardcore tea fanciers might insist on boiling the water fresh for each pot, but I’m fine with the Zojirushi. Electric kettles that keep the water at one set temperature are common nowadays, and are a very good idea. Nor do I need to use filtered water or anything like that; I go right from the tap.

Pots: your basic ceramic tea pot with a good-sized infuser really can’t be beat. You put the tea in the infuser (typically a wire-mesh affair that fills most of the inside area of the pot) and fill the pot. Once the tea is finished, remove the infuser and there you are. You needn’t use a full-sized teapot; a lot of stores sell smaller pots that make about 2-3 cups total. Bodum makes some interesting variants in which the infuser comes with a plunger on the top; once the tea is brewed you press down the plunger and it blocks the tea into the bottom of the infuser, where there are no flow holes. However, you can always use a standard pot without an infuser, using a strainer for the finished tea—but that means you have to strain out the tea as soon as it’s brewed, or it will keep on infusing merrily until it becomes a vile brew suitable for killing aphids rather than drinking. Ditto improvising a teapot of materials at hand, such as using a big coffee mug; it will work just fine, but you need to keep your wits about you.

Tea-ball infusers: I’ve never found that a tea-ball infuser, of the sort that you drop into a cup, produces a decent cup of tea. I think that’s because the water can’t maintain the temperature well enough (the teaball-thing itself has a catastrophic impact on the temperature, don’t forget), and also the tea can’t open up fully. Maybe teaball infusers represent a step-up from tea bags, but frankly they make almost as much a mess as a real teapot, so either use tea bags and avoid messes altogether, or use a proper teapot and put up with dumping the used tea out of the infuser. There’s just something pathetically half-way about those tea-ball infusers, either the ones with hooked chains or the ones that look vaguely like escargot-eating utensils.

Warming the pot: no, it isn’t just a silly British affectation. It makes a big difference, because the warmed pot doesn’t leach the heat out of the brewing water. All you have to do is splash a half-cup of boiling water into the pot and let it sit for a few moments. I usually start the pot warming while I measure the tea into the infuser. Then you dump out the warming water (important!), put in the infuser, and then fill the pot. Tea brewed below the optimal temperature tends to taste papery. That’s particularly the case with black teas, which benefit from full boiling temperature or very nearly so (208–212°).

Using a tea cozy: also not just a silly British affectation. A tea cozy keeps heat more inside the pot while the tea brews. That said, it seems that a bit of heat loss is a good idea; otherwise, tea fanciers would recommend leaving the pot on a warming plate. You can purchase a cute flowery British cozy, or you can do what I do and use a folded-over flannel dish towel.

Brewing time and tea amounts: it’s a matter of personal preferences. Personally I like a very robust tea, so I use a bit more than the recommended amount (about a large-ish teaspoon per cup, or a heaping soup-spoon’s worth for your basic 2-3 cup teapot) and let it steep for about 7-8 minutes instead of the recommended 5 minutes for black teas. Green teas require shorter infusions. Broken teas steep more quickly than whole leaf. Start out making any new tea precisely as recommended, and then experiment. One of the reasons I swear by my regular Upton’s Assam blend is that it has a remarkable tolerance for long steeping times, which is a good thing because I have a tendency to let it go for as long as 10 minutes.

Skeptical? Try an experiment. Make two cups of tea: one using a quality Assam full-leaf loose tea, and the other from a microwaved cup of water with a Twining’s English Breakfast teabag tossed in. Add a bit of sugar if you want. Taste ’em. Unless you’ve either really screwed up making the full-leaf tea, or you simply have no tastebuds whatsoever, the difference will be profound.