Beasts Of Brewdom
The Men of Tea. Huzzah!
{ahem} Women’s Problems
714 days
As Beasts of Brewdom, we take manliness very seriously, and one of the standard tenets of masculinity over the aeons is to refuse to have anything to with any discussion whatsoever of <ahem> Women’s Problems.
Except of course, for the incredible usefulness in jokes.
For example., I heard on the radio the other day this gem “If women ran the world, there would be no war. There would , however, be some very tense negotiations every 28 days”. And my favourite joke, which takes about ten minutes to tell and involves Harrods, and a large sale, and of course an Australian, would not be remotely possibly without <ahem> Women’s Problems.
But it’s time to man up, men! It’s time to have a full, frank and fearless discussion of <ahem> Women’s problems.
Part of the difficulty, as a man, is that we have to reconcile the images we see on TV ads for <ahem> Women’s Problems products, which shows women playing tennis, skipping happily along the beach and inventing cold nuclear fission reactors whilst dropping the kids off to school and winning ‘Parent of the Year’, with the raging beast in front of us that moves her chocolate to her left hand so she can run us through with a kitchen knife clasped in her sweaty right.
It is at these times that tea comes to the forefront. Let’s face it guys, there are times when the only that stops you from a guest appearance on an autopsy bench is that cup of tea you have thoughtfully made, and taken out on a delicate china cup, along with a vat of ice-cream or an entire chocolate mud cake (Hint, take a very blunt knife to cut the cake, just in case).
Now it is well known that the medical profession worldwide recommend* two teas for <ahem> Women’s Problems , and they are Lady Devotea and Fleurs de Provence, as they contain calming lavender and taste sweet, two essential ingredients in any tea for this occasion.
There was a guy who was once married to a family member, and he had this theory that as women knew about and could expect <ahem> Women’s Problems, they should just allow for it, not get cranky and get over it. He is no longer married.
So, in reality, men: the only thing you can do make some tea and cake, suddenly discover something that urgently needs doing some distance away, and only move back into your cherished lady’s orbit when it’s time for more tea.
Of course, if you have no lady in your life and no morals, there’s a real opportunity here. Here’s how it works.
Get a bucket of water. Hold some chocolate in your hand and shout angrily at the water. The water is now magically a genuine homoeopathic cure for <ahem> Women’s Problems. Bottle it and sell it for $10 an ounce.
As long as you move towns every four weeks, everyone else’s cloud can be your silver lining.
*A filthy lie and a shameless plug to boot – you just can’t trust us men.
Creeping Like an Effing Squirrel?
166 days
Here’s a quote about WINE – or old stale grape juice as I usually call it.
“A wine must be as clear as the tears of a penitent… When drunk, it should descend impetuously like thunder, sweet-tasted as an almond, creeping like a squirrel, leaping like a roebuck, strong like the building of a Cistercian monastery, glittering like a spark of fire, subtle as the logic of the schools of Paris, delicate as fine silk and cold as crystal.”
-Alexander Neckham, 1200-ish
What a load of old cobblers. These wine types, they love to just spout gibberish, don’t they? I can imagine it now:
Le Connoisseur du Vin Pretentious: Waiter!
Waiter: Yes, Sir?
LCdVP: This wine is not right!
Waiter: “Not right”, Sir?
LCdVP: The Roebuck is not leaping sufficiently.
Waiter: I don’t follow, Sir.
LCdVP: Not springing like a Roebuck should. Also, the spark of fire should be glitteryer; and I don’t think the impetuosity is quite as impetuous as it should be.
Waiter: Ah, Sir, I am with you now. Here’s my taser, Sir
LCdVP: Blgghh. Slrrrp.N-N-N-Nggfreeesh woooohhh
Waiter: Nothing like 12,000 volts to spark up that impetuosity, eh, Sir? You just lay there on the carpet, which I hope is to your liking., I’ll help myself to a tip from your wallet and then get a cleaner to mop up your dribble, Sir.
You get the point.
I fully agree that tea reviews need to be more than “me and the missus drank it. and it was ace. All malty ‘n stuff”.
But I question whether they need to involve archaic and cryptic Chinese Terms.
Because, as with wine, there’s a fine line between descriptive and masturbatory ; and almost no line at all line between inscrutably intellectual and Johnny-No-Friends.
Whatever you want to say about tea. I support it. If it doesn’t make me laugh, that’s no big deal- it doesn’t have to.
If what you say makes me laugh at the tea or the merchant, then great.
If it makes me laugh at YOU, you might want to consider a career in wine.
This is what they put into tea bags
12100 days
This is a salutory lesson about the evils of teabags.
It starts here:
And gets worse:
And these guys aren’t finished:
Yet more indignity:
And this guy could almost be a Beast of Brewdom, if he moved to loose leaf.
(Thanks to @Jackie for pointing these out)
global tea friendships
3109 days
by lahikmajoe
in tea connections
toasting an Aussie's homeward journey with Daintree
For the last several years, I’ve worked with a friend who showed an uncommon interest in tea. Well, uncommon in relation to my other colleagues.
He’s recently decided to relocate to Australia, and I knew the perfect tea to toast his safe flight and smooth transition. That’s right: a cuppa Daintree. What could be more perfect?
He’s read my blog, shared a flask of tea at the end of a long dog walk, and even taken part in some Gong Fu brewing. He’s always been very polite, even when the tea was not what he expected. And more often than not, he was appreciative to try new tea.
Something about a Choice Formosa Oolong seemed to always put a twinkle in his eye.
So, here’s us raising out mugs to future success and global friendships. Who knows, maybe he’ll even come to Tea Trade and join in the discussion. He’d be a welcome voice here.
Remembering Milly
2112 days
I’ve posted this info on the Beasts of Brewdom website, because we Beasts all loved MIlly, MIldred Singleton or @mildewpea, depending on how you knew her.
I came up with an idea, and it seems to have kicked off a bit, so now I hope it can live up to everyone’s expectations.
This article will lay out what’s happening and how. It’s dynamic, so if I run into any issues, please try back here. And afterwards, we’ll tun it into something of a blog, so feel free to comment.
For those who don’t know me, my name is Robert Godden, I am also known as The Devotea.
As far at the Milly story goes, I’m nobody important. I knew her online; I considered her a friend. I hoped to join with others to share our memoris.
The on-line event will take 3 forms:
- Start using the #rememberingmilly hashtag on twitter to share your thoughts.
- Add them as a comment here
- I’ll start a google+ hangout and post the details on my twitter account @the_devotea
It kicks off at 8am in my home timezone, Adelaide Australia. I’d recommend using timeanddate.com ‘s meeting planner if you need help figuring that out. It’s a bit over one hour after this post goes live.
I hope you can all find a nice cuppa, your best china, a slice of cake and join in. I’ll also be bringing tissues, just in case, but I hope it’s just a great time to share stories and mark the passing of a true original.
ADDED NOTE: If you use Hootsuite or TWeetdeack etc, add #rememberingmilly as a saved search
Patrol Car 17? There’s a 712 in progress at 3300 Las Vegas Boulevard…
8117 days
A totally fictitious rookie cop turns to his older, wiser. non-politically-correct, badly-dressed, marriage-falling-apart, nearly-gets-suspended-every-episode-but-was-right-all-along partner.
“A 712? What’s that, Malone?”
The older, wiser and so on partner throws his doughnut - which he can’t spell, being American – out of the car window, engages the sirens, and slams the patrol car into gear, taking off with an impressively illegal burnout to add to the littering offence he’s just committed.
Let’s say an elderly man pulls the dog he’s innocently walking back from the road just in time for Fido to avoid an under-tyre experience, and to top it all off, there’s a huge pile of cardboard boxes that have been stacked alongside the kerb for no apparent reason.
They fly as the patrol car smashes through them, screeching to a halt outside of a tea room just 200 metres from where it was originally parked.
Malone bursts from the car and pops the boot/trunk/bit at the back where you store stuff , pulling a shotgun out and donning a flak jacket.
“Malone?” stammers the rookie.
“Come on, kid, this is the sharp end.” Malone tucks a cigarette behind his ear, cocks the shotgun, and heads for the door.
“Some guy’s just put milk in a Margaret’s Hope First Flush.”
Everything I know about Las Vegas, I know from TV, and by that, I pretty well mean CSI, the original good one, from when it was still both of those.
So I know it’s got a casino or two, it is the world’s greatest example of the difference between having money and having taste, and it’s a place where endless comic heroes get drunk and end up married by, or even to, Elvis.
Incidentally, this phenomenon is not confined to Las Vegas. My two favourite US TV shows are Dexter and Burn Notice, and so I have mixed feelings about Miami – I love the thought of the Art Deco architecture, but there seems to be an awful lot of spies and serial killers there. (I know there is also a CSI:Miami , but not every redhead is worth watching.)
So, I am always staggered by the fact that the World Tea Expo is in Las Vegas.
WHAT?
Can you imagine the briefing at Police HQ?
“OK guys, the tea crowd are in town. So until this is over, no overtime. Johnny, I want you to take that holiday. Pete, you can catch up on some paperwork. Rocky, let the car pool know that it’s time to service all the patrol cars – no, wait-better keep one back in case some old dear can’t hold her Lapsang Souchong. And the rest of you, let’s spend the day at O’malleys. First round’s on me.”
The juxtaposition of tea and vice is, of course, an old phenomena, but tea has cleaned up its act on the last 100 years or so.
So why Las Vegas? It’s hard to imagine keen tea company executives with a scantily clad member of the preferred gender, throwing the papers for a container of Bai Mu Dan on Evens. Or linking arm-in-arm, staggering down the Boulevard after being ejected from the tea rooms for inappropriate behaviour. The entire staff of Mrs Betty Fuller’s Tea Emporium of Truckstop, Oregon weaving their spandex-clad frames through the pokies/slot machine alleyways, then calling for a Nuwara Eliya at the machine because they’re sure it’s about to come up with a big enough jackpot to corner the market in Gyokuru.
I think I’ll just say it again.
Why Las Vegas?
This means that Las Vegas is the second city in my series of US cities I might feel compelled to visit. The added bonus is that if I take @lahikmajoe, I might be able to convince people he’s a younger version of Grisham from CSI and score some free drinks.
Why Las Vegas?
Hardened and Shameless
4160 days
by thedevotea
in Uncategorized
The feisty Melbourne lass @joiedetea describe both her and myself as “hardened and shameless” tea drinkers.
The minute I saw that phrase, I felt compelled to write for Beasts of Brewdom. So here we are.
The subject of today’s blog is about exactly how much size matters.
If it’s too small, you miss out on a great deal of satisfaction.
If it’s too large, there’s a heavy price to pay.
Yes, like Goldilocks ordering some Keemun Mao Feng from the Three Bears Tea Company, you want to get it just right.
In the civilised world, where we long ago gave up on things like “pounds” and “ounces” along with cave wall painting and mammoth-wool cardigans, there is a standard ‘postable’ tea size of 100grams, and another of 250grams. Sometimes 50g or 500g come up, but they are a little unusual.
Is 100grams big enough?
I’ve had samples of 20grams where I’ve nursed each gram, re-steeped as often as possible, and they’ve lasted a week. I’ve had 100gram bags gone in a day. I’ve still got tea from 100g bags I bought in 2010. I’ve got a kilo of Wild Cherry Rooibos I’ve had for years, but that’s another story.
Soon, I hope to sell a lot more tea on-line.
What is the right size?
I just don’t know.
And please don’t tell me it doesn’t matter.
Pakistani woman cooks her husband in a pot
11173 days
by lahikmajoe
in Uncategorized
Found an article in the paper and this seemed like the ideal place to share it. As a cautionary tale, I assure you.
In order to hide the murder, a Pakistani woman dismembered and then cooked her husband’s body parts in order to hide the evidence. He’d allegedly been making advances on her 17-year-old daughter (from another marriage) and when she’d had enough, she killed him.
How?
Well, she drugged his tea of course. What else?
So, what’re we to learn from this? Firstly, do not try to have relations with your step-daughter(s). Unless you’re Woody Allen and she was adopted, anyway. Then it’s ok. Sort of. Actually, it’s not really ok, but Mia Farrow didn’t have the right tea for drugging and then dismembering him.
If you ladies want to discuss the right tea for drugging your horndog of a man, you’ll have to start your own lady tea blog. We’re not going to cook our own proverbial goose. Not here anyway.
Back to the moral of this story. If you gents are, for whatever reason, participating in clandestine activities with members of your family that may or may not be related to you by blood, just don’t drink any tea you’re offered. To stay on the safe side.
You’ve been warned.
The Gift That Keeps on Giving
7175 days
Tea is just the best gift there is.
Now, I know some smartarse out there – male , of course – will say at this point “No, I’d rather be given a Lamborghini Aventador LP 700-4 with its uncompromisingly crisp contours and 12-cylinder engine in bright yellow, thanks very much”.
But ask yourself this, buddy: When you wake up in the morning with a taste in your mouth like you’ve eaten curried rat, ear canals like a wind tunnel, the feeling that you’ve lost at least one limb and a non-functioning brain that seems one size too large for your head, is your first thought “A quick spin in a car designed to show the world how insecure I am about my tiny penis will do the trick.” ?
No, it’s bloody well not. It’s a croaking “tea……tea…..tea”
No coffee drinker can ever get this. Coffee slaps you in the face. By the time you get to the end of the first cup, you’re awake all right. And ready for questioning by Laurence Olivier’s character from the Marathon Man. It’s softened you up so that the day can crush you like a beer can on Chuck Norris’s forehead.
Tea works with you, gliding you towards a state of wakefulness that is calm and serene.
And let’s talk about the coffee in most households.
It takes a few minutes for an espresso machine to warm up. Grind some good coffee – for mornings something like a nice mild Maragogype or a little Mysore – get your milk steamed and voila – it’s lovely. A little skill and care and it’s a great experience.
That’s what should occur. Because no other form of coffee is good enough. Anyone who has spent more that 3 minutes conversing with me knows my feelings on the foetid, rancid, stomach-churning concept of teabags. But I’d rather have one every day for the rest of my life that take one sip of the pestilence known as “instant coffee”, which I gave up on a Friday morning in 1981.
Anyway, back to that first tea of the day. It set you up for the whole day. It is nature’s most marvellous gift.
Now, when I say tea is the best gift there is, I don’t mean a nice strong Harmutty and a playful little Keemun Mao Feng in a basket with some biscuits and wrapped in a bow (though feel free to send me any variation on that at any time).
I mean the love of tea.
And the time to give someone that gift is as a child. Children can pick up a habit in three minutes that will stay with them for life. That’s why the Jesuits say “give me a child until he is seven and I will give you the man”, though of course they don’t say it as often now since the world noticed the Vatican’s tacit condoning of child abuse.
So back to the children. Children should be given the Gift of Tea, The Gift of a Love of Tea.
I’ve been privileged enough to see some of the creative process behind a book “The World’s Special Tea” by Jo Johnson.
Jo, also known as @theGiftOfTea (as well as a few other monikers) has created a book that is essentially a look at the history of tea, in prose for children. It is designed to be presented at a tea party for children.
Imagine that. Kids love pageantry, ritual and ceremony, and Jo wants to give it to them,. She has the book, she has a blend of herbals to get around the “ you can’t give caffeine to kids” nonsense and she also runs, or is intending to run, such parties as a service in her local area.
Imagine that your kid goes to a party and comes back with a curiosity for tea. What a life changing experience!
And particularly, Beasts and Lady Beasts, we need to encourage small boys to attend. Hundreds of people will tell them that it’s OK to play football, beat up the nerd or jump their bike over gutters, but YOU need to give them permission to feel good about tea.
Not just because eventually they’ll wind up at sixteen as the only boy at a tea event with twenty girls who don’t get out much – as a former sixteen-year-old buy, I can attest that this is a coveted situation -but because the gift of tea will be with them once they’ve kicked their last football, flushed their last nerd and upgraded their bike to a Lamborghini Aventador LP 700-4 with its uncompromisingly crisp contours and 12-cylinder engine in bright yellow or something similar, like a Toyota.
Then they can become MEN!
MEN who are PROUD to be TEA-DRINKERS. MEN who will SHOUT from the rooftops “I’M DRINKING THIS LAPSANG, AND THEREFORE HAVE THE COJONES OF AN OX”
So, for that reason: @AGiftOfTea, the Beasts of Brewdom SALUTE YOU ! Keep up the good work and help us to build the next generation of Beasts.
P.S> Oh, and thanks for the White Peony. Very delicate and delightful. Second steep was definitely the best.
Tea Like Leather
16178 days
It’ll probably help to picture the voice of Sam Elliott narrating this as one reads further. I found that to be the quickest way to get through it. Of course, I picture Sam Elliott narrating everything I write. Because…well…he’s Sam F**king Elliott. Anyway, let’s begin.
The rain was falling pretty hard; the chill in the air could cut right through your pores. Traffic was a mean mistress – construction on the road, an even meaner spouse. The destination was near, but I was always a turn or two away. There’s a message there…somewhere.
I was meeting Dave and crew for our now-weekly round of brew. Such meet-ups were becoming a favorable addition to the grinding schedule I kept. This time we were notching off ol’ Foxfire Teas – a place I hadn’t been back to since…come to think of it, I don’t remember when. I recall it being a pleasant enough place, just difficult to get to. For some reason, it seemed worse now. Parking was a near disaster.
On the walk there, I saw an unusual site – a striking blonde woman in knee-high boots smoking a curved briar pipe. Whatever sour mood I had drifted away at that pleasant dichotomy. I almost wanted to ask her if she was puffing Cavendish but thought better against it.
When I finally found the right door, Dave was already there yacking it up with the owner. I came barreling in out of the cold, bitchin’ about the parking. Hardly the makings of a good re-introduction to a vendor. I said my “howdy”-s and bee-lined to the menu. First thing to catch my eye were the “Sun Dried Buds” in the pu-erh section. I asked the owner for a whiff, and he kindly obliged. Lemon and wilderness greeted my thankful nostrils.
Several sniffs and a cup of four-year-aged Chinese black later, Dave and I were introduced to something entirely different. The owner described it as a Yunnan black tea with a slightly different character called “Imperial Feng Qinch”. The taster notes on the menu compared it to leather. Dave was captivated while I shied from it in favor of a white. That said, I still stole a sip. Ten minutes later, I was driving home with a 1oz. bag of the stuff.
I didn’t brave the brew until a week later. The leaves were so thin and gold one would think they were prospecting for slivery veins in the Sierra Nevadas. The aroma was all pepper, prairie, and bootstraps. I don’t even wanna know how they managed so rustic a presentation. All that remained was to subject it to…my style o’ brewin’.
More often than not, if the leaves look delicate, I treat ‘em as such – like a lady. Having already experienced the bite on this missus, I knew it needed steadier grip. I opted for 1 heaping teaspoon in 8oz. of boiled water. And instead of my usual paltry three-minute infusion, I went with a full five. If she was as tough as thought she was, she could take it.
The soup brewed to the color of rusted copper, but with a glimmer of sunshine to it. Steam rising from the mouth invoked feelings of sun-parched earth, sagebrush, rawhide, and farm country. The taste was dry and smoky on intro and graciously followed that up much-touted leather. A curtsy of malt ended the whole show.
This was one deceptive beauty. Needle-like gold leaves did not make for a thin, gentle brew. This was made to wake you up with the morning dew – preferably after sleeping outdoors. I still have no idea what “Feng Qing” means, and I don’t feel I need to look it up. As far as I’m concerned, it’s like feng shui…
Only for men.
lahikmajoe
thedevotea
The /T/ea Blag
lazyliteratus
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