I like coffee, I like tea

illy of the valley

There's been some controversy over with Rafael at the Observer Blog as to which brew is the king of beverages.

Well, not controversy as such. More a passing comment. Still, from small acorns, great big acorn fights grow. Acorns hurt.

I was always a tea man. Back when I was into joining things, I joined something called the "Pure Indian Tea Club", which meant I was ordering posh tea in little wooden boxes. Assam, Darjeeling, Nilgiri. Nilgiri is the secret fantastic flavour of the tea blending world. It makes a brew with almost no colour (if you add milk), but it has an elusive, fragrant flavour which isn't as flowery as Darjeeling, but makes you thirst for more of it.

But one thing I've never been able to stand is the tea bag. The tea bag is a turd on the face of the world of tea. Your tea bag, I'll have you know, is filled with dust. It's the sweepings off the tea room floor. Dust, I tell you!

Most mass-produced, commercial tea is made from cheap grades of tea, such as dust and tiny pieces, so that it will steep quickly, and produce a pleasant, if somewhat generic brew that will accept milk, sugar, or lemon. Fine quality teas consist of whole or larger parts of leaves, have greater depth and complexity of flavor, and a smoother quality.

(from, ironically, ineedcoffee.com)

Well, you can take your dust and stick it in the dustbin. I won't have it, I won't brew it.

At home, I brew using leaves, of course, in a proper tea pot. I use a Bodum tea press a little like that one, but with a proper spout. This means you don't have to worry about a tea stainer, and can take advantage of the press, which replicates the one advantage of the tea bag and stops the brewing process, so that a second cup will be as good as the first. In the summer, we saw examples of tea presses which were white porcelain tea pots, so they looked much nicer. I'll get one of those at some point.

I no longer buy pure Indian tea. Tea is best blended, so that you get the best of all possible worlds. The blend I prefer is, surprisingly, not a terribly expensive one. I buy Sainsbury's Gold Label tea leaves, which makes a morning brew with a satisfying flavour.

As to your fruit teas, your infusions, your smoky china teas, forget about it.

But here's the rub. I get up at 20 to 6 on a working day and I've "discovered" that getting out of the house by, say, ten past 6, means that I avoid the worst excesses of the Snottingham gridlock. Other words, I can get to work in an hour and a half (quarter to 8 at the latest), and have a clear conscience when I sneak off at 20 to 5, in order to avoid the worst excesses of the afternoon Snottingham gridlock.

30 mins in the morning doesn't really leave time for a proper brew. So I've taken to making a quick cup of coffee.

Compared to tea, coffee lends itself to a quicker brew. What else is an espresso? My Senseo machine warms up in about 30 seconds, and I can run off a quick cup with a good taste and excellent crema in another 30 seconds.

So, against medical advice I haven't had but I'm sure I would get, I've become a bit of a coffee drinker. Coffee in the morning. Avoid tea bags at work, and drink coffee from the office Gaggia bean-to-cup machine. Even, sometimes, decaff coffee in the evening. At home, I've got a Gaggia pump machine and a grinder, and I've even taken to roasting my own coffee beans. Friday night, I roast a couple batches of beans in my popcorn maker, and over the weekend I have the most heavenly coffee you can imagine.

This morning, working from home, I had my first cup of tea since Sunday. It was lovely, but I've crossed that line and become a coffee drinker, 80-90% of the time. My wee smells of coffee. My beard smells of coffee. Like a 40-a-day smoker, my fingers smell... of coffee (especially after the home roasting sessions).

The beauty of coffee is that it is more flexible than tea. A Gaggia bean-to-cup machine will make a delicious cup in under a minute. Or you can spend time roasting your own beans, grinding them to perfection, and running them through a home espresso machine. You can add syrups and flavourings, cover it in frothy milk, play with it. A Senseo or other dosette machine will make a pretty decent cup from bags! whereas a tea bag will almost never make a good cup. The tea bags they use at work make tea that smells like fish.

Anyone who knows me knows that when I make you a cuppa, you get a good cuppa. This has been true since I was a young man indeed. I like to think that people walking away from my house have it in their minds that they just had one of the best cups of tea or coffee they ever had. It's a small thing to ask in life. How would you like to be remembered? As someone who made a really good brew.