Ran into this excerpt from George Orwell’s essays on tea while I was looking at something else entirely. I have to say that I agree – good tea should be at least as strong as coffee.
Some of his points sound very intriguing, and others are clearly just a good indicator of the culture and level of technology at the time. Why would anybody put used tea leaves in the carpet before vacuuming? Why would anybody want clumps of tea leaves in their drink? If it’s so important for the water to be actually boiling, wouldn’t it make sense to use something like a drip-style coffee pot with a full-boil setting?
I’m not quite sure how tea lost to coffee in the last 80 years, but it is odd to think that preparing Orwellian Tea would be at least as expensive as Starbucks.
neumatikos 