Charlie Tries Drinks

Congratulations, you've unlocked the secret nerd bonus! I actually ended up texting a friend who specializes in the early Roman empire for advice on designing this special.

A tea "gangster"

This is the gongfu method of brewing tea (功夫茶藝):

刮沫 (gua1mo4) Rotating the tilted lid around the outer edge of the cup to remove foam

搓茶 (cuo1cha2) Rotating the lid around the inside to press on the tea leaves and release their fragrance

搖香 (yao2xiang1) Putting the lid on, then tilting and turning the whole cup to let the excess spill out

入海 (ru4hai3) Pouring out the tea (first onto the "tea pet", then after refilling, into teacups)

蝶舞 (die2wu3) Turning over the saucer and place the cup on top

There is easy low hanging fruit here, especially about the US and salty tea. And I'm so SO tempted.

But also I'm super in to tea and I'm bored.

The perfect cup of tea is how you want to drink it, and if you do not LIKE tea then drinking it a different way, or a different kind of tea, vastly changes it.

A pinch of salt makes things less bitter, this trick also works with coffee. But other things that affect taste are tempriture, length of time it brews, where the tea was grown, the climate, the soil, and how big the leaves are. Some of the cheapest tea has little more than dust in the tea bag while more expensive teas you will notice have more structure to the leaves.

Tea brewed in colder tempeitures needs longer and creates a different taste. It may require more tea to get the specific flavour you want, and generally it is less bitter for it. Similar thing to spices where if you cook them, use them hot, toast them first, etc, you get a different set of flavours to using them cold.

Like wine, tea can have lots of flavour profiles and colours. Assam for example is very dark, malty, and strong, it can get quite bitter. Ceylon is much lighter. Darjeeling is good with lemon, but Assam is better with milk, in my humble opinion. Lapsang Sushong is very smokey. Earl Grey

Most people will drink a mix. English breakfast is usually a mix of Assam, Ceylon, and Kenyan. Earl Grey is flavoured with bergamot.

White, green, and black tea all come from the same plant, just different parts of it, treated differently. Black tea can take a higher tempriture, but boiling water on green and white tea will scorch the leaves and make it very bitter. Agitating the tea can also have this effect as it releases more tannin.

As a general rule there is a tea for everyone, and a way to drink it that you will enjoy, whether that's hot, cold, mixing it with spices, flavourings, fruit, milk, sugar, lemon, and yes, even a pinch of salt.