An American scientist has sparked a trans-Atlantic tempest in a teapot by offering Britain advice on its favorite hot beverage.
Bryn Mawr College chemistry professor Michelle Francl says one of the keys to a perfect cup of tea is a pinch of salt. The tip is included in Francl’s book “Steeped: The Chemistry of Tea,” published Wednesday by the Royal Society of Chemistry.
Not since the Boston Tea Party has mixing tea with salt water roiled the Anglo-American relationship so much.
The salt suggestion drew howls of outrage from tea-lovers in Britain, where popular stereotype sees Americans as coffee-swilling boors who make tea, if at all, in the microwave.
…
The U.S. Embassy in London intervened in the brewing storm with a social media post reassuring “the good people of the U.K. that the unthinkable notion of adding salt to Britain’s national drink is not official United States policy.”
Ironically the English don’t really know how to make tea. Then dump hot water on a tea bag then immediately throw on cold milk, making it impossible to actually brew.
No one does that.
lol the BBC has literally aired specials on this subject
Fun fact, the modern tea bag was invented by an American. We really know how to throw a tea party.
What’s wrong with the microwave? Heat is heat (except the 1995 movie which has little to do with heat or thermodynamics at all).
It overheats it.
The water in a microwave when boiled forms small pockets of gaseous water whose temperature is more than 100 deg C, so it basically cooks the guts out of the tea.
You boil the water in the microwave. Then pour it. Not with the leaves or the pouch in.
Hold on, about to have my morning cup o Yorkshire, will report back
Edit - it kinda just makes it… rounder. Tea is supposed to be a little bit bitter, the salt makes the softer flavours more pronounced so it kinda stops tasting like tea
Edit 2, second cuppa. Just realised the prof probably doesn’t realise that a pinch of salt is actually quite a bit, so I tried an actual tiny pinch. You know what, it actually does improve it a tiny bit, but no enough that I need more salt in my life.
Does that daft cow not realise how much tea we drink? This is diabolical
You need to drink more (average modern human drinks too less). Then you need more salt.
Thanks for your research, I was too lazy to get off the chair and try myself
Now don’t leave us hanging, won’t you?
“agitating the bag”
If you want to create a better cup of tea at least begin with tea leaves, not tea bags.
Care to elaborate? I don’t see how having the leaves in a bag is inferior to having them loose
A decent guide to tea grades here. Even with higher end teabags, any tea dust created (e.g. if the teabag gets squashed) gets trapped inside the bag. The tea dust makes for a more bitter cup.
With very few exceptions the tea used in teabags is of much lower quality than loose leaf tea. Often it´s just fannings and dust, swept from the floor.
Somehow I doubt tea companies are sweeping dust off the floor and putting it in tea bags. C’mon.
I am not an expert but I have read about such practices again and again over the years. It´s also common knowledge that food companies do much, much worse things.
Dust is what remains after the tea has passed through the grading machine. It is powdery in texture and is often swept off the floor. Dust is considered the lowest grade of tea.
I’ll just assume my bro Steven Smith is one of those exceptions.
Sure looks like it.
I could not agree more. However, a lot of tea drinkers love their dust filled paper bags.
Ok.
So make Tea in the microwave with plenty of salt.
I got it. Brits, you good? Boffins? Cheerio, pip, pip?
Kinda surprised this is just now coming up for tea drinkers. 3rd wave coffee nerds have been using saline solution to cut down on bitter flavors for like a decade now.
Step 1, grab some tea
Step 2, throw it the fuck out
Step 3, make coffeeI live a few hours from the nearest harbor. will a lake work?
Im a few hours away from Boston too, lets have a tea party!
