Guy Martin Tea revisited

To start, I'm a loose-leaf tea inna teapot sort.

At work we have a coffee machine and a 'very hot but not boiling'
water kettle thing. Tea comes in teabags and has always tasted sort of
papery, so I tend to drink coffee.

This week I tried the Guy Martin method. It goes against all the Laws
of the Noble Art of Tea making, but, somehow, it does improve the
flavour - the papery taste almost disappears. My world is in turmoil.

I'm not convinced by his emulsion theory, mind.

 

What's that then?

 

He's only a truck fitter, after all.

 

IN THE teacup, two chemical reactions take place which alter the protein
of the milk: denaturing and tanning. The first, the change that takes
place in milk when it is heated, depends only on temperature.
'Milk-first' gradually brings the contents of the cup up from
fridge-cool. 'Milk-last' rapidly heats the first drop of milk almost to
the temperature of the teapot, denaturing it to a greater degree and so
developing more 'boiled milk' flavour. The second reaction is analogous
to the tanning of leather. Just as the protein of untanned hide is
combined with tannin to form chemically tough collagen/tannin complexes,
so in the teacup, the milk's protein turns into tannin/casein complexes.
But there is a difference: in leather every reactive point on the
protein molecule is taken up by a tannin molecule, but this need not be
so in tea. Unless the brew is strong enough to tan all the casein
completely, 'milk-first' will react differently from 'milk-last' in the
way it distributes the tannin through the casein. In 'milk-first', all
the casein tans uniformly; in 'milk-last' the first molecules of casein
entering the cup tan more thoroughly than the last ones. If the
proportions of tannin to casein are near to chemical equality,
'which-first' may determine whether some of the casein escapes tanning
entirely. There is no reason why this difference should not alter the taste.

--
Gavin.

For the road: GSXR600K1
For the track: <gone>
Current project: Peugeot Speedfight 2
For everything else: Citroën Berlingo

MSN:
Twitter: http://twitter.com/gavin_wilby
Blog: http://www.stoof.co.uk

 

emulsion shmulsion. Leave the teabag in for at least 3 or 4 minutes,
then add a slight splash of milk, so the tea is more or less
terracotta coloured. that's proper tea.

 

Disgusting, that's what that is. You can tell you're Northern!

 

It's tea. It's shit, however you make it.

 

etc.

IOW, don't put milk in perfectly good tea. Disgusting stuff.

 

Only one tea bag?

 

AOL. Tea's not tea unless the spoon can stand up in it.

 

green tea ican be pretty good, but I suppose you'd categorise that
under your "gook food" catch-all.

Now, coffee, that's a shitty beverage. I can't understand how I
managed to drink it for so many years.

 

"factory tea".

teabag in a cup, left to stand for at least 5 minutes, then 2
spoonfuls of sugar stirred in. No milk.

 

Intel's HQ has a coffee bar (called Java - what else), and they do a
Chai which I love, nice and spicy and sweet.

I like a good coffee after a meal, but don't drink the stuff on a
regular basis, I think half the problem is that there is so much shite
coffee out there that you actually forget how nice a good one actually
is.

 

Drinks tea, hates coffee, owns a cat.

What are you, a bender?

 

I don't "own" a cat - I "barely tolerate" it.

Don't think so. Had sex with a woman as recently as this morning, and
never had sex with a man - so probably not a bender.

 

Yeah yeah, just like you didn't own a Jeep.

The ladyboy doth protest too much.

 

Ah, now that might be why my white mug always has a dark tanning line.

 

Depends on the tea. I wouldn't put milk in green tea but do in the
average cup of Ty-phoo. I also put milk in Earl Grey, on the rare
occasions that I drink it.

 

As I said, disgusting stuff.

For the Ty-phoo, I recommend a pinch of a mixture of ground ginger,
cardamom and star anise. They sell it on the market stalls in Zanzibar,
although when I run out I'm going to have to figure out the proportions and
make it myself, unless the UR extends to Stone Town.

For Earl Grey, just don't put milk in it. Bergamot's a citrus fruit, for
heaven's sake. You wouldn't put lemon and milk anywhere near each other,
would you?

 

<considers popularity of lemon as a pancake topping, considers
ingredients of batter>