bloodygranuaile

During the earlier days of the Cough That Never Ends (the cold I've had for three weeks now), in fits and spurts I managed to read How to Make Tea: The Science Behind the Leaf by Brian R. Keating and Kim Long. Ironically, during this period I was only drinking herbal/medicinal teas, which are technically not tea since they are not made from the tea plant, but are tisanes. C'est la vie.

I'd gotten the book as a birthday gift from my lovely roommate Angela. Our house drinks a LOT of tea. We drink a lot of tea and read a lot of books. It's a good house this year.

While the title of the book makes it sound like an instruction manual, only the last third or so is actually instructions on making tea. It fills up a third of the book because there are different types of tea that require different methods. The first parts of the book are about the history of tea, and explaining what the different types of tea are and how they are made, and what kinds of tea are grown in different parts of the world and how they differ from each other, and a bunch of other interesting tidbits like that. There was a lot of stuff I didn't know since I am not actually much of a tea connoisseur; I just consume a lot of it, but most of what I consume is pretty cheap. I learned about flowering tea, which I had never heard of before and which is served in glass teapots so you can see the flowers unfurl as it steeps. Coincidentally, my other lovely roommate, Meghan, got me a glass teapot with some flowering tea balls for Christmas. I have not tried it out yet, since mostly I have just been sucking down mass quantities of Throat Coat and peppermint bagged tea, for reasons. But I am looking forward to being able to use it and appreciate it properly!

The book also has a section on chemistry, some of which goes slightly over my head, but apparently SCIENCE says you should put the milk in first. VINDICATED. The section on the "basic necessities" of tea has a less basic definition of "basic" than I do, since my "basic" tea-making involves a kettle, a mug, a teabag, tap water, milk, and sugar. Stuff like tea balls, loose-leaf tea, and teapots are for when I'm feeling fancy (and I hope to feel fancy SOON since in addition to the glass teapot I also got a gorgeous red Le Creuset infuser pot for Christmas) (THAT'S RIGHT BITCHES I GOT TWO TEAPOTS FOR CHRISTMAS. GO ME). This book recommends things like a tea scale and a timer and filtered water and a pH scale and a thermometer and NO. Tea is supposed to be relaxing. I would fuss too much with all that stuff. I can barely remember to take the teabag out sometimes. Hell, sometimes I forget to actually drink the stupid stuff after I've made it. Clearly my tea game is super weak.

Anyway, it is a delightful book and while it may contain way more information than I will actually use, it is good to have it! I learned stuff, and I like learning stuff.