Your ViewsKeep your e-mails pouring in, it's good to know that there are lots of you out there with views and opinions. To help you work out what is what, are now little icons to help you see biscuit related themes. And now you can see at a glance which are the most contested subjects via this graph (requires Flash 6.0 plugin). Please keep your mails coming in to nicey@nicecupofteaandasitdown.com | If you like, you can use this search thingy to find stuff that matches with any of the icons you pick, or use the fantastic free text search, Yay! | Your e-Mails |
Tomsk |
Dear Nicey,
Kate Allen's scientific teabag timing methods could be well employed wherever there is a proliferation of tea bag types, leading to tannin barriers at different points.
We need a graph, probably not one of those lovely 3-D ones that Ex-hell gives you, but one that really helps the bewildered coffee drinker to understand the complex relationship between teabag type, agitation (of the bag, not the tea maker), size of mug, time of day etc.
Here, the other half asks "tea, dear?" to which the answer is inevitably "oh, twist my arm then", but the follow up is more and more complicated "bog standard, decaf, assam or darjeeling?" followed by "how long do I leave it in for?" A graph in the kitchen would do the trick nicely.
Hmm, suppose I'm asking for trouble by not making it myself.
Cheerio
Tomsk |
Nicey replies: Definitely a PhD in there, and possibly a whole new branch of mathematics. |
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Jenny Moss
Abbey Crunch Review |
Firstly I would like to say that I love your site and it has reawakened my interest in biscuits (which is not necessarily a good thing).
Secondly, I am a strong believer in one tea bag per cup however I respect the right for people to drink their tea however they want. My sister merely waves a tea bag at hot water and adds in half a pint of milk so I have learnt to be understanding of other tea drinkers preferences.
Thirdly, I want to share exciting kettle news. I was recently given a new kettle for my birthday and it has changed my tea drinking. Previously I had to swirl the tea bag around non stop and lift it out fairly fast to avoid horrid scum on the top of the tea (I live in a hard water area). However, I now have a filter kettle and it is amazing. I can leave the tea bag for a good 5 mins to brew and no scum at all! The result is much nicer tea as I can properly taste it. I would recommend this kettle to anyone also suffering in a hard water area. I believe it was from John Lewis.
Finally, Abbey Crunch really is the king of biscuits. My boyfriend found a supplier for me last week as I was getting desperate to have an Abbey Crunch (having forgotten how wonderful they were until you reminded me) and I now have 5 packs lined up ready for a nice cup of tea and a sit down!
Yours
Jenny
London |
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Adam |
Hiya Nicey,
Caught the show on UK Food the other day, good showing by your good self as ever - never heard that bit about Iced Gems before . . . nice to know that I can still learn something.
Anyway, onto more important matters.
As you know, I always like to push the envelope and go a bit eXtreme with my biscuit eating - desperately scouring the shelves to find weirder and weirder tea time treats (with disastrous results sometimes like those bloody awful Apple and Cinnamon jobbies from Asda) and have
now moved onto experimental tea drinking thanks to the works coffee machine.
I'm currently running a very nice (and very big) metal thermal mug courtesy of Starbucks. No handle, rubber grip, rubber bottom, doesn't fall over easily . . . very nice all round.
The problem I have with it is that I don't drink tea really hot and due to the thermal properties of the mug it now takes over 30 minutes to cool down to a drinkable temperature (instead of the usual 10 or so). Because of this my tea invariably ends up with a skin on it (which I thought was odd because I always believed that the skin was formed when the tea cooled but it turns out it's a function of time) which I have to scrape off or drink through.
In order to alleviate this situation I have taken to blasting my tea with the coffee machines cappuccino wand to give it a nice thick frothy covering . . . it works quite well, significantly reducing skin formation while I wait for it to cool and surprisingly the covering of bubbles doesn't seem to do anything to keep the tea warm for longer (good job too).
Anyway I've christened my new creation a Cappeteano . . . it's a bit of a faff and I can't do it at home as we don't have a coffee machine but while the technology is here I might as well use it.
Just as a matter of interest . . . What sort of technical advances do you think would benefit tea drinkers in the future???
TTFN
Adam
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Nicey replies: Adam,
The tea is simply trying to form a protective skin to stop you giving it any more abuse than you already have. Possibly in future we might have super powerful computers watching over our every move and advising us when we are in danger of making a really offensive cup of tea by bunging it a cross between a tin can and a thermos then blasting steam through it, I expect.
BTW I'm back on UK Food next Wednesday as apparently we failed to fit all of the biscuit universe into seven minutes.
(Its alright I know Adam personally so you can all be as rude as you like about his misguided tea making) |
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Kate Allen |
dear nicey,
i love the site but am dismayed by your verdict on the Two-Cups-Per-Teabag issue. this is wrong, manifestly wrong and uncivilised, and not what i expected from such an esteemed tea-conoisseur. i use TeaDirect fair trade teabags, one per mug. the packet quite clearly says 'one per mug' too! mind you, the mug i drink from is rather large and i like it that way - perhaps two teabags is suficient for less vat-like cups.
sometimes i drink Earl Grey and that definitely requires one bag per mug cos it's not the strongest flavour in the world to start with and those of us who like it nice and strong with not much milk need to give the teabag a good swirl to get a decent-sized mug out of it.
i don't use Yorkshire Tea so maybe it has just escaped my attention that some brands ARE designed for two cups per bag. what if you only drink tea alone though? seems a bit needlessly cruel to singletons. perhaps they could dry the teabag out and re-use it? i don't fancy that though.
yours indecidedly,
kate,
london
PS. on the issue of how long to leave the bag in for, i swirl it round for more than 'a few seconds' - more like 30 seconds to a minute at least (depending on how badly i'm trying to put off going back to my desk). i like it strong you see, but not stewed (where bits of tannin-y crap appear on the top - yuk!). leaving the bag in long enough to get lots of flavour but taking it out just before it hits 'the tannin barrier' is a skill which takes a long while to acquire, as my non-tea-savouring boyfriend is learning through trial and (mostly) error. i have pointed him towards your site in the hope that this will advance his education a little.
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Nicey replies: Kate,
Its not manifestly wrong, as it is manifestly possible for people who like their tea a certain way to use one bag to two mugs. I would not be after a second go on your bag if it were at the cusp of producing stewed tea, would I? Remember NiceCupOfTeaAndASitDown defends peoples right to make tea how they like it. |
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Rob Byatt |
Dear Nicey,
We get Yorkshire tea, teabags nowadays. Its states on the front of their packets that one teabag makes two mugs of tea. I can confirm this. I too used to be an extravagant one bag per cup man. I didn't believe one bag properly stretched to two cups. Now it seems Yorkshire tea have specifically
designed their bags to make two mugs. Or it could be that their tea bags were extra strong in the first place (which seems more likely come to think of it) and the two mugs per bag boast is a cunning marketing ploy. Trust those yorkshire types to be careful with their tea.
Rob
Newcastle |
Nicey replies: Well it just so happens in our 'Summer lets try some different tea bags' oddessy, that the Wife opened up our pack of Yorkshire Tea Bags this morning, sent to us by Taylors for evaluation. I did notice that they looked fairly large. I'll try my new cramming one onto a spoon and nodding sagely test in a little while. Also from Yorkshire, Bothams sent us some of their very nice Resolution tea bags which worked well and they easily made two mugs.
BTW We were up in Newcastle a little under 2 weeks ago, thats an awful lot of bridges you have there.
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