Tea as a “debaucher of youth”

Catherine of Braganza, the Portuguese queen-consort of Charles II, is typically given credit for the initial popularization of tea in England. Tea had been popular among the aristocracy in Catherine’s home country of Portugal for years, as it was considered an exotic luxury by the rich. Catherine’s affection for tea spread to her courtiers and eventually to the upper classes. Tea is a rarity in that it maintained its popularity even after spreading to the lower classes.

This proliferation of tea-drinking among all social strata in England also led to controversy over its effects on  health – both physical and spiritual. William Cobbett, an English farmer and journalist, expressed his views that tea was a “destroyer or health” and “debaucher of youth” in his 1821 book Cottage Economy. He asserts that tea “corrupts boys as soon as they are able to move from home, and does little less for the girls to whom the gossip of the tea table is no bad preparatory school for the brothel.” According to Cobbett, the man who drinks tea “makes his miserable progress towards that death which he finds ten or fifteen years sooner than he would have found it had he made his wife brew beer instead of making tea.”

It seems ludicrous today to claim that tea – beloved by nanas everywhere – was once decried as a beverage that led to a life of prostitution followed by a premature death.

 

Tea Propaganda during WWII

This wartime film, titled “Tea Making Tips,” illustrates the correct way to make a proper cup of English tea. Released by Britain’s Empire Tea Bureau in 1941, the film is nothing short of propaganda. These “golden rules” of tea-making include correct storage, using fresh water each time, boiling the water to perfection, and giving the tea leaves enough time to infuse into the water.

The film features women working at counters making huge vats of tea and serving it to young, handsome, gleeful British soldiers. Another scene depicts wheeled tea carts being rushed to the scene of a bombed-out city square as a soldier hangs a Union Flag among the rubble. This film declares tea the British national beverage, and that correctly preparing a good cup of tea is an act of national pride. The production of such a film by a government bureau proves the British government not only acknowledged tea’s status as a nationally-beloved beverage, but also took action to perpetuate its status as such.

 

The Deal with Kombucha

Buzz about Kombucha tea has been echoing from all corners of the Internet for the past few weeks. Madonna and Lindsay Lohan have been spotted imbibing the fermented beverage, and “Kombucha” was a trending search term on Google last week.

Photo courtesy of comboutea.com

Despite its recent trendiness, Kombucha tea is nothing new. It originated in China over 2,000 years ago, when it was referred to as an “immortal health elixir.” Kombucha is a mass of yeast and bacteria (yum) which is added to tea and allowed to ferment for about 10 days. During the fermentation period, hundreds of compounds — including B vitamins, alcohol and lactic acid — are released.

Kombucha enthusiasts claim that this yeasty-tea bolsters the immune system, boosts energy, aids digestion, prevents cancer, clears skin, increases the shininess of hair, and more. However, there is no conclusive scientific evidence in favor of these claims. In fact, illness and even death have resulted from the consumption of home-brewed Kombucha due to unsanitary and imprecise fermentation conditions.

Personally, I don’t love the idea of a mass of bacteria and yeast in my tea. But I enjoy a nice beer and yogurt of all descriptions, so I think that I shouldn’t let the description scare me away. Since the dangers of drinking Kombucha are limited to home-brewed versions, and the tea (like anything worth buying) is available at shops all over Brooklyn, I think I’ll pick some up this weekend and give it a shot.

 

Tea in a Global City

London has the reputation of being the global bastion of tea-drinking – a well-deserved designation. Tea in the increasingly diverse city, however, can no longer be reduced to Twinings and PG Tips. Immigrants living in London have brought their tea customs with them, or have reinvented English tea to suit their cultural tastes and needs.

This diversification of tea in modern England is beautifully illustrated in the BBC film “For All the Tea in England,” by Kerry McLeod.

 

Tea App for iPhone

I just discovered a nifty little iPhone app called “Tea.” It allows you to catalog your tea stores and monitor your brewing habits so that you can make your perfect cup every time. Each time you brew a cup, you enter the name of the tea, the type of tea, the amount (in bags or ounces of loose tea), the steeping time, and the temperature of the water. Then, a timer begins and chimes when you should stop steeping the tea. Then, post-consumption, you rate the taste of the tea. Over time, you can deduce from your records the conditions necessary to brew the perfect cup of a particular tea.

I do have a minor off-the-bat criticism of the app; I don’t know about you, but I certainly do not measure the temperature of the water in my kettle before pouring it over my tea. However, when using the app, I enter either 212 degrees (boiling, for black teas) or a non-boiling (for green teas) temperature, if not a an exact value.

When discussing Tea with my boyfriend, an aerospace engineer, he came up with an idea that could really elevate the app. If the collected data could be shared among users, the app could create a series of graphs — one for each type of tea — with points that represent individual ideal cups of tea. The x-axis of the graph would correspond to steeping temperature, and the y-axis would correspond to steeping time. Therefore, if a user observed a clustering of points around a particular temperature-time intersection, the user would have an idea that that temperature-time combination makes a great cup of that particular tea.

Tea is available in the iPhone app store for $1.99.

A more in-depth review of Tea can be found here.