blergh. need better tea.

[jazzfish]

Waking up at five in the morning and not being able to get back to sleep: bad.

Having a real cup of tea at 6:15 after giving up on sleeping: very good.

Using the extra forty-five minutes to get some writing done: pretty decent.

Coming to work and being unpleasantly confronted with how awful the tea here actually is: extraordinarily bad.

I mean, seriously. I'm brewing a large mug of tea with a single teabag and using water that's not quite boiling. (I do microwave it after running it into the cup, but that doesn't help enough.) I knew that it wasn't very good tea to start with. But compared with the strong cup of keemun hao-ya a I made this morning . . .

LUCY: This is awful! It tastes like you put a brown crayon in some hot water!
LINUS: You're right. I'm sorry. I'll go add another crayon.

Comments

[tulip-tree.livejournal.com]

Ugh. Hooray for the good tea and writing time, but what a bummer that the tea at work is so bad.

We have a seriously impressive amount of tea at home, which I am trying to work on consuming (so that we can buy more, I guess). Apparently A. and I have a weak spot for tea impulse purchases. It filled a large drawer in Seattle, and now our kitchen is smaller, which makes the size of the tea collection far more obvious.

Maybe you can take some of the good tea from home to work? That doesn't solve the hot water problem, though. Blah.

[jazzfish]

When I moved in I had a single bag of keemun. Now the tea collection occupies most of the back of the kitchen counter. There really isn't any going back once you start using loose tea. And it's not any more expensive than bags, either.

The problem with using good (loose) tea at work is that I have nowhere reasonable to clean out the filter or teaball or whatever. Water's a secondary issue, but I do have a hot-pot I could use if it came to that. It'd just be awkward, requiring multiple trips to the kitchenette.

[rbandrews]

I bought a bunch of empty tea bags. Put a spoonful of loose tea in, put it in the mug, wait, then throw it away. They're not reusable like a ball, but they're $3/gazillion.

[jazzfish]

Hm, and I have a bunch of tea bags that Kayla gave me back when she was still speaking to me. Tempting.

Water's actually more of an issue than I'd thought, though. Can't have a hot-pot in my cube (fire hazard), don't want to leave it in the kitchen (poof no more hot-pot), and there's no good way to boil water here without one.

[rislyn.livejournal.com]

I brought some really fun tea back from boston that you and uilos have to try at some point. I don't remember at all what it was, but it smelled heavenly.

[jazzfish]

Huh, okay. You have definitely piqued my interest.

[jameshroberts.livejournal.com]

I've been happy with the electric kettle I got last year. Boils water faster than any other method at home, and it shuts of automagically when it comes to a boil. $20 at target.

As for dealing with loose tea, I suppose you could make your own "teabags". Cut some squares of cheesecloth ($2.69 for about 100 billion sq yds), load 'em up with tea and tie it up with some string. I use that technique when mulling cider (speaking of which, it's that time of year).

My British supervisor has taken to drinking coffee because "American tea is undrinkable". Not that you can get a good cup of joe on campus, but as he doesn't know good coffee from bad it doesn't bother him.

[jazzfish]

I got an electric kettle ages ago, and it is truly a thing of awesome. Unfortunately I can't use it in my cube because it might be a fire hazard. Despite having an auto-shutoff.

Also, I can tell I've turned into a snob because I genuinely think that water that hasn't been boiled in plastic, or poured boiling into a plastic cup, tastes better. This rules out most cheap electric kettles.

The not knowing any better thing worked really well for me for a good many years. Then I made the mistake of having really really good tea once. No going back.

[rbandrews]

My company runs on coffee. There's a coffee bar in the middle of the office, with an espresso machine and all sorts of related junk. There are also a few varieties of tea bags (including the Bigelow raspberry stuff) and they are more than willing to take requests for new tea purchases. Also there's a spigot on the big coffee machine that dispenses extremely hot water.

Still thinking about how to bring loose tea there though.

[jazzfish]

That sounds about like here. Only without the espresso machine. And while the water from the spigot is hot, it's not boiling, which is frustrating.

[rbandrews]

I don't know if ours is quite boiling, but it's plenty hot enough to make tea.

[qtrnca.livejournal.com]

Unrelated to tea ... were Moira or Jonathan interested in the tickets?

[jazzfish]

I don't know if I have a valid email for you or not (is @vt.edu still good?) but Jonathan has expressed interest in picking up the spare tickets. Email me and I'll put you two in touch. Or you can just go straight to him, that works too.

[qtrnca.livejournal.com]

@vt is still good. I don't know if I have a valid e-mail for you, either. And I definitely don't have one for Jonathan.

I will try the one on your profile.