RKMBs Forums .::Important::. Fortress of Awesome Chat Teabags

Papercut Fun wrote:

I got some Irish Breakfast Tea for Christmas. When I opened the box it socked me in the nose and called me a bloody protestant!

When I finally convinced it I was a good Catholic boy we went to the pub and got drunk together.

And then I boiled it.

Nasty.

I ran out of English Breakfast tea bags last week, so I cracked open a tin box of the stuff I'd had sitting around for 6 months, and brewed it.

It is so much better brewed in a pot, than dangled as a teabag.

I'm never going back...

------------------
Fanfic at DC Anthology"

Mr. Gage wrote:

"My roommate returns from New York on Wednesday, and she may be bringing me a teapot from Chinatown, as a Christmas gift. I shall of course inform everyone of the outcome."

Lord_Savaunt wrote:

So what's a good start for the tea newbie? I'm looking for something a *bit* sweet and the teas I've tried have usually tasted bitter. Any recommendations for a guy with little tea knowledge?

Papercut Fun wrote:

"Can you really go wrong with Orange Pekoe? I think not.

My personal fave is Earl Grey. I'd have liked to have bought stocks in the Earl Grey tea companies when Star Trek's Captain Picard started drinking it every episode. I'd never heard of it before then but now I can't get enough...okay, that last bit's a bit of an overstatement, one cup is enough.

For sweetness just toss some sugar in it and you're good to go.

Papercut Fun (aka ""Teabag Fun"" to the granny set)"

Karon Flage wrote:

"The bitter taste could come from just brewing it too long. Try leaving the tea bag/leaves in the water for only about 3 minutes and then trying it. If it is weak, put it back in for another minute.

I have quite the tea story to share but it must wait as right now I am putting the finishing touches on cleaning the apartment and getting the food ready for friends to come over. The cookie plate is out, the cabernet and merlot on the counter and I just tucked the zinfindel (red - can't stand the pink stuff) in the fridge to get a bit of a chill on it, the crackers are arranged just so on a plate and the cheese is all cut up, arranged on a platter and waiting in the fridge, now to put the pistachios in a bowl. Considering we are ordering pizza, I have once again over-cooked for a party. "

Mike Carey wrote:

"I *love* red Zinfandel. Especially when it's got that kind of peppery after-taste.

Hope the party went well, Karon. Happy New Year.

Now quit teasing - what's the tea story?"

I'll pick zinfandel or shiraz or pinot noir (pinotage if you like South African wines). Anything that tastes like it's been blended with chocolate and pepper. Actually I really love this kind of red wine with chocolate - the hangovers are wonderful. Yes, I do like being hungover sometimes - which is probably just as well at the moment.
Nobody gave me any kind of tea for Christmas, so I haven't had a decent cup for ages. "

Lord_Savaunt wrote:

Well I think we know what can be the next prize offered for a thousandth post. Mike can just get a batch of fancy London tea and what not and send it out. What! I'm not too lazy to get my own stash! No really I'm doing this for the good of the school.

Owing to renenwed weavil infestation, in the kitchen cupboards, I have had to throw out all my tea.

There will be no more tea until monday.

For a while, I did consider chucking the whole lot into what could generously be described as the swimming pool, (with the dead rat frozen into the surface and drowned frogs lying on their backs on the bottom), in the hope that it would turn the water brown. I'm being evicted soon, so anything to raise the property value.

Spare 20p for a cuppa?

------------------
""If that mountain's going to fall on me, it's going to fall on you too."

- Steven Jesse Bernstein"

Mike Carey wrote:

"Just a nudge. Karon, you promised us a tea story. Inquiring minds want to know.

"

Jasmine tea kept my wife awake last night. Who put caffeine in that stuff?

Mr. Gage wrote:

My first guess would be the Illuminati. Or possibly Oprah. Can't trust any of 'em.

GREAT LOST TEAS PARTS ONE & TWO

I Wharfmans' Tea

At the commercial height of the tea trade, there wasn't a clipper in the British fleet that didn't have a permanent carpet of sodden tea-leaves lining the bottom of its cargo hold. These loose leaves were the result of spillage when loading or unloading, and if you picked through the waterlogged morass and studied it with a trained eye, you would know exactly where the ship had sailed.

When there was excessive water in the hold, a strange hybrid tea sloshed around between the timbers. On some ships, it was brought up on decks in buckets where it was either slightly heated or, in warmer climes, left out in the sun until tepid. It was often drunk seasoned with a pinch of salt.

When those big ships docked in England, it was common for the weakened or damaged timbers to be replaced. The old timbers from the hold, which had absorbed large quantities of tea during their lives, were roughly snapped into small pieces by the dock workers and put into hessian sacks with four or five generous handfuls of wet tea taken from the hold of the same ship. The sack was sewn up and the sealed ends made water-tight with a coating of tar. On cold nights, these sacks, stewed in big kettles up and down the wharves; the resulting tea kept the dockers, sailors and night-watchmen both warm and sober and had them picking small splinters of wood, nicknamed 'fishbones' out of their lips and the roofs of their mouths.

A few years ago, I visited Perc Warman at his home in Greenwich. He owned a small sack of Wharfmans' tea originating from 'The Green Lion' - a tea clipper that sailed in the early 19th century.
Incidentally, after its retirement, 'The Green Lion' was purchased by one of its former crewmen, now a wealthy sea captain. Popular folklore has it that when he failed to pay the full amount for the ship, about a quarter of the front section was removed and sold as firewood, leaving him with the remainder. You can still see part of 'The Green Lion' at 'The Sacker's Inn' on Narrow Street, in Limehouse, London. Enter the Inn through the side entrance on Flocks Alley. Looking up at the ceiling, you can clearly see the join, where the after-castle of the ship was grafted onto the rear of the building. It is now a games room, with a full-size snooker table.

Perc and I attempted to cook-up the tea on his grease-splattered gas hob, stuffing the sacking as best we could into a small stainless steel saucepan. Unfortunately, the bag and its contents absorbed most of the water and began to smoulder, filling the kitchen with smoke.
Later, over a cup of PG Tips, Perc told me about 'The Cherrytown', whose timbers made the best Wharfmans' Tea:
""It was broken up in South Africa,"" He huffed. ""They didn't know its value. There was one bag that did the rounds on Liverpool docks. It had a big black tar mark down one side where it split open and then they mended it.""

Perc learned all about Wharfmans' Tea from his Grandfather, whose own father had worked on the London Docks:
""It was like wine, but no-one ever had a proper go at making it. It was all left down to chance - whether it was a good brew. You had to get the right combination of teas mixing together in the hold, in the right order, on top of each other. There's a firm base layer, with fresh leaves lying loose on top of it, pressing it down and then there's other things, like the type of seawater that gets into the hold and the fresh water when you come into port and how long the timbers have been soaking.""

Sacks of Wharfmans' Tea still occasionally appear at auction. They usually sell for between eight hundred and one thousand pounds. In Hong Kong, one bag was recently put up for sale in an art gallery.
Perc Warman died peacefully in June of last year.

II Lofthouse Tea

A German blend made from dried orange blossom, which is stored in lofts over the Summer and then combined with a very small amount of tea-leaf in the late Autumn.
When it was first introduced to England, The Grocer's Company, of London, classified it as a 'herbal potion' and as a result, it was never widely distributed.
Even today, an archaic piece of trade legislation means that food-stores and supermarkets risk prosecution under dated Witchcraft and Treason laws, should they decide to stock it.
There are two distinct flavours of Lofthouse Tea: The popular 'airy' version, where the orange blossom is kept in ventilated attics and exposed to sunlight through open windows, and a less well-known 'musty' blend, which is intentionally stored in a stuffy airless environment. The latter has a rounder, more full-bodied flavour, although some drinkers complain that the taste is too reminiscent of rotten oranges.

stein"

Vagabond wrote:

"You know - when I logged in today, I was mildly disturbed to see this thread at 333 posts.

But then I thought: Half-way there! Only 333 more needed!

I'm mildly incoherent, I'm afraid. My 8 A.M. class was held in the actual library today - so no food or drink. Thus, no caffine. I'm still catching up. (Coffee, I'm afraid, not tea - because coffee's free and tea costs 2 bits.)

For some strange reason my boss gave me a teapot for Christmas. Which is actually very useful, as I didn't have one before, and right now I'm drinking Dilmah (I think) which works so much better brewed in a pot, not the mug. I'm just not sure how she knew.

------------------
11 November - LEST WE FORGET

""...He screamed like a Backstreet Boy hit in the nuts with a polo mallet. They do have nuts, don't they?""
-Dennis Miller"

Mr. Gage wrote:

"As promised, my Xmas update: the roommate did not, in fact, return from NYC with a teapot for me. She did however find a copy of Alan Moore & Eddie Campbell's The Birth Caul, plus some little carved monkeys and a T-shirt that reads 'Fuhgettaboutit.' So, at work, I'm still stuck with Bigelow Earl Grey from a teabag.

On the plus side, both my place and my girlfriend's are well-stocked with Republic of Tea Blackberry Sage. All is well."

Greg McElhatton wrote:

"Oh, and yes, Karon very much overcooked for the party. *burp*

------------------
Greg McElhatton: http://www.gregmce.com
iComics Daily Reviews: http://www.iComics.com/daily_reviews.shtml "

Greg McElhatton wrote:

"

quote:

---

Originally posted by Lord_Savaunt:
So what's a good start for the tea newbie? I'm looking for something a *bit* sweet and the teas I've tried have usually tasted bitter. Any recommendations for a guy with little tea knowledge?

---

You may want to try a fruit-based tea instead of a black tea. I'm not fond at all of black teas, but fruit teas (and green teas) are right up my alley...

------------------
Greg McElhatton: http://www.gregmce.com
iComics Daily Reviews: http://www.iComics.com/daily_reviews.shtml "

Papercut Fun wrote:

"I can't believe I'm interrupting this topic just as it's gotten back on track, but I didn't want to start a new topic for this question.

Mike,
I seem to remember you posting somewhere that before ""Lucifer - The Morningstar Option"" ever came about as a mini-series you had wanted and tried to do something with Rose Walker. I was wondering (if I'm correct that is) if you had given any more thought to your Rose Walker story as a possible 'Sandman Presents' arc now that it's a monthly gig? Did you get very far with developing it, or was it one of those stories that just wouldn't take?

Just curious. Oh, and I'll be drinking Earl Grey tonight...gotta keep the thread moving forward. "

I heard this week that PG Tips teabags are no longer going to be advertised on British television by Chimpanzees.

If you're Amercian you may not have seen this, but for as long as I can remember, there have been these really bad advertisments featuring a family of chimps dressed up like people, living in a small suburban house. They have driving lessons and watch the football, but somehow always manage to steer the conversation around to tea.

Now, apparently, PG wants to target a younger market and somehow make tea drinking cooler.

I'm not sure how this can achieved. I've never seen someone drinking tea and thought 'wow, they look cool'. There's no cachet attached to tea drinking. It's just something you have, because you like it, isn't it?

There was this white rasta who used to come into The Sunrooms (a bar in Southend), go behind the bar, put the kettle on and make himself a pint of black tea. Once I sat there all afternoon and watched him drink about 8 pints of the stuff.

The only other adverts for tea, that I can remember were for Tetley teabags. They were advertised by little cartoon men, a bit like the seven dwarves only they were from up north, and had flat caps and big noses. One of them was a bit simple; i think that his name was Sidney. It's a bit worrying that I remember all this. The last advert I saw for Tetley tea was for round teabags and featured a bastardised cover version of 'I get around,' by The Beach Boys. After that the tiny Northern men disappeared. They were quite small. Perhaps they got into a fight with some borrowers and died or something.


stein"

backwards, I think the Tetley adverts got dropped because the guy who did the voices for them died. (He must've been getting on a bit, i suppose: the damn things had been going for as long as I can remember.) There wasn't really a lot of dialogue in the last few was there?"

Mike Carey wrote:

"The Tetley tea folk. There was a time when you could get little ceramic figures of them attached to packs of 160 teabags. They all had names and individual foibles. Very reminiscent of the Homepride flour graders.

Papercut, the Rose Walker proposal came after Morningstar Option but (I think) before Petrefax. It got to the stage of an initial outline - but Rose turns out to be a character who Neil still has definite plans for, and he needs her to be in a certain place and situation if and when he comes back to her. I think also she's one of the characters he feels most strongly attached to, so he's reluctant to hand over the reins to someone else. So it's unlikely that the story will ever happen. In any case it kind of strays into the same territory as The Furies, in that it uses a lot of the underpinning of Greek mythology, so I'd probably be less inclined to resurrect it for that reason."

Papercut Fun wrote:

"Thanks Mike.

But I can see a definite possiblity for a Vertigo series based on the Tetley Tea people. No one survives on tea alone. The story of their rampant cannibalism is screaming to be finally told. :) "

Vagabond wrote:

"You know, I think I'd actually pay money for that story.

------------------
11 November - LEST WE FORGET

""We have no obligation to make history. We have no obligation to make art. We have no obligation to make a statement. To make money is our only obligation.""
-Michael Eisner, CEO of Disney"

Yes with their white overalls and strange large caps, they have to be demons."

Alistair wrote:

"Little do they know it, but Americans left the best cup of tea in the world behind them when they left from the Mayflower steps in Plymouth.

Going back as far as I can remember it used to be served out of the back of a Ford Escort van. Before that it was probably served from the back of a cart, or from the back of a donkey, or something.

I'm talking about Cap'n Jack. Cap'n Jack's sells the best cup of tea in the whole world. It's now a shack right on the Barbican seafront in Plymouth, about fifty yards from the Mayflower steps. They do brilliant bacon and chip butties too. But let's not go there. It's the tea we're talking about here.

Oh yes.

When it was sold from the back of the van it was five pence, that was probaly 10 years ago. Now it's twenty pence. It comes in a chipped white mug with a teaspoon chained to the handle. You pay a fifty pence deposit on the mug, which, when you return the mug you are invited to donate to charities for benevolent fishermen. Or something. When the tea used to be five pence, the deposit was twenty pence.

The tea itself is brewed up in giant vats behind the counter. They used to have just one of these vats in the back of the van, but I'm pretty sure that this same vat is one of the ones in the new shack. It's a strong murky dark brown. There's big plastic ice cream tubs full of sugar on the counter that you can shovel into your tea, using the spoon that's chained to the mug.

An experience everyone in the world should have it to walk along Plymouth Hoe in a howling gale, then wander down to the Barbican and get a mug of tea from Cap'n Jack's.

This is a Real Man's mug of tea. None of your nancy fine bone china cups and saucers here. A mug of tea from Cap'n Jack's will make you feel like sawing your leg off and adopting a parrot.

Best bloody mug of tea in the world."

quote:

---

Originally posted by Alistair:
A mug of tea from Cap'n Jack's will make you feel like sawing your leg off and adopting a parrot.

---

This is a recommendation? Christ almighty, if I wanted to be that ****ed up I'd be after acid, not tea."

Alistair wrote:

Ooh Arrrr...

You have a woman's purse, my lord"

Did they ever recover the tea thrown overboard by those loutish revolutinaries in America?

Mr. Gage wrote:

"Bahh. 'Loutish' indeed.

It's been steeping in Boston Harbor for over 225 years.

It's going to be quite good, when it's done."

1) I was trying to think of songs that praised the virtue of tea or that were written while under the influence of tea. Unsurprisingly there are not that many. I could only think of two.

Afternoon Tea by The Kinks is about a man that drinks tea at a cafe with someone called 'Donna'. One day when Donna walks away, he wonders why she didn't stay to drink her tea.

Blur also mention sugary tea in Chemical World.

It seems to be more of a british thing. Amercian bands are too angst ridden to be singing about tea.

2) I remember now the big selling point for Tetley tea was that each bag had two-thousand perforations. This was to let the flavour flood out. I don't know how many perforations other teabags had but presumably it was less than two thousand. The Tetley tea-folk - they were all male weren't they? Where were the women?

3)A few years ago I read a book called The Manuscript found in Saragosso by Jan Potocki. It was a very strangely structured book with lots of stories within stories within stories. (Jan Potocki killed himself by removing the handle from a silver sugar bowl, fashioning it into a bullet and then shooting himself with it).
Lots of academicly minded people have studied this book and have tried to work out what the bloody hell Potocki was trying to say because the book is written like he's attempting to get some kind of important point across. The trouble is that it's so weird that no-one has worked out what it is. One of the theories was that he was telling us all to convert to Islam.

Anyway, with all that in mind, is Lucifer really just a huge metaphor relating to tea? In the future will Lucifer be more focused on tea and less on the first of the fallen.
In fact is all this business with the devil just setting the stage so Mike Carey can write about tea?

4) My shopping bill, this morning came to £6.66. "

Mike Carey wrote:

"The shopping bill has spoken. You are the chosen one. Do you want any milk or sugar in this?

1) The Kinks actually define the place of tea in British culture in their song Autumn Almanac:

""Tea, and a toasted buttered currant bun,
All to compensate for lack of sun
Because the Summer's all gone.""

I don't think there's anything you can add to that.

2) That's a disturbing thought. Maybe the perforations had some part to play in the tea-folk's reproductive cycle.

3) Lucifer has *always* been about tea - only mostly I use cabbalistic symbols and stuff to keep this from the uninitiated.

Lin brought me tea in bed this morning, and I think I drank it by means of some atavistic reflex, because I was still asleep when I finished."

There's some debate as to what Potocki fashioned his silver bullet from, you know. In some quarters people are convinced that he used the lid of a tea samovar, not a sugarbowl. Speaking as a philistine, I wasn't that taken with ""Saragossa"", and I'm inclined to think that the hidden message Potocki was trying to convey was that he was raving mad. If you shoot yourself because you're convinced you're turning into a werewolf, you're not a happy bunny. Just watch ""Ginger Snaps""."

Rama Bonn wrote:

"Agghh!

Is this crazy teabag thread still steeping?

I'll confess that I haven't had a cup of tea for a while now . . . no excuse, I've a shelf of teas that are withered and dried but old at this point. I'm still looking for a local vendor of Lapsang Souchong, the cheapest ticket to Tibet that I can afford.

"

the Kinks wrote an even better song about tea. It's called 'Have a cuppa tea' and it's on the Muswell Hillbillies album. It must be the ultimate song in praise of tea, claiming that it cures hepatitis, chronic insomnia, tonsillitis and water on the knee, ""in fact any ailment or disease.""

The last verse goes

""Whatever the situation
Whatever the race or creed
Tea knows no segregation
No class, nor pedigree
It knows no motivation, no sect or organisation
It knows no one religion
Nor political belief."" – Ray Davies

The chorus goes ""Have a cuppa tea,"" several times. The music is American Country crossed with 1930s British Music Hall.

Also, I was talking nonsense when I said that Americans don't write songs about tea. Blind Melon have the line: ""All I can do, is just pour some tea for two,"" on 'No Rain'. Neo Classical group 'Rachel's' have a pretty piano instrumental called 'Tea Merchants' on their third album 'The Sea & The Bells'.
Also there is a quite good Canadian band called The Tea Party, presumably a reference to Alice in Wonderland.

Other British artists that have paid tribute to tea are Scott Walker, who mentions ""Antique cups of tea,"" on 'Rosemary'.

Tindersticks, whose first album conjures-up images of damp bedsits with peeling nicotine-stained wallpaper, have a creeping organ instrumental called 'Tea-Stain.'

Saint Etienne choose to begin their second album 'So Tough' with a line of dialogue sampled from a film: ""Cigarette, cup of tea, a bun."" Afterwards, though, they make numerous references to coffee, which sort of spoils things.
stein"

rawconsumer wrote:

05-I butt in to say that Gwen Stefani refers to sipping on chamomile in her latest?

There's the Cowboy Junkies as well: ""I guess it's tea and toast for breakfast again..."". Mind you, she doesn't sound all that keen on the idea."

topper24hours wrote:

"There is always ""Pennyroyal Tea"" by Nirvana.

------------------
-I like peanut butter, Can you swim?"

Heathen wrote:

"tea leaf = thief.

We were burgled last weekend, so I've not been around much, and won't be until the insurance etc decide what they might buy us to replace the laptop.

This means I've lost some addresses etc (AOL has my addresses backed up but the Outlook list has gone) Just in case, could anyone who thinks they may be lost to me please email adeheathen@aol.com ?

(Lord S ? I need your home address again.)
(Mike, I still have your details, will speak to you next week.)

PS Please resist the temptation to post choice swearwords here to describe the nefarious burglars, I am currently in training with a cricket bat to become Bat-Man. Also, send any condolences to my email address rather than putting them down here, don't want to derail the tea thread any more (!)

Ade"