On tea and the art of doing nothing
thomasjbevan.substack.com
thomasjbevan.substack.com
Fun fact: "White tea may have first appeared in English publication in 1876, where it was categorized as a black tea, ..."
So white can be black sometimes!
[1] The technical difference between oolong and white is simply that white is processed naturally, whereas oolong has more “steps” (oxidation, drying, steaming, etc.). The steps can be manipulated to give the tea a different character. Oolongs are often roasted, for example.
I regularly drink shoumei and white peony; I should really try silver needle.
A good friend was such a master, and I had the joy of learning how to prepare Silver Needle with mastery. I had brewed it hundreds of times, but when he did it, it was inexplicably different. Same leaves, same water, same vessel. White tea is a portal to a world of subtlety that I had never experienced previously, and have rarely encountered since.
I helped open Tao of Tea in Portland in the late 90s. We had over 250 fresh loose-leaf teas with which to experiment. Paradise!
Both were 'drunken masters'. When they brewed, they did it with no concentration - the mastery flowed through them. Joe, actually, was quite sloppy at the tea table, never talking, always smiling. It would be hard to describe how impossibly different tea was when brewed by these two.
I dedicated two years of my time in an adventure to possibly reach the lowest rungs of this kind of mastery. I think I may have hit it here and there, but never consistently. These were perhaps the most useful and educational years of my life.
You can also pull it like espresso and make great caffeine free lattes.
While it is not exclusively true, there is a pattern. You do have a general rule of thumb that black > green > white. These, of course, assume you follow the "proper" steeping times and water temperatures. Your caffeine content will vary with both these factors. The longer and hotter, the more caffeine.
If you want a low caffeine test I would take green or white tea and blanch it with hot water. Then make the tea. Or alternatively throw the first steep away and drink the second one.
Btw the same was true with weed. Weed used to make me sick like hell. I decided to just keep smoking and in a few times my body just adapted to it. I can’t smoke too much otherwise it’ll get mental, but I can smoke a bit and be happy.
It's only "in the ballpark" if you used to think it was a quarter. Otherwise, it's a whooping 60% more...
And, of course, you could always drink 20 cups too and have more caffeine than an intravenous shot even. But if we go with just drink the required amount of cups for your target caffeine level, there's no sense in discussing which has more caffeine.
Even then, 50 is the upper bound if you seep the tea for 5 minutes, and it's still much less than coffee.
T will stop me from being able to fall asleep, but it does not keep me alert in the same way that coffee does.
Besides, breakfast tea doesn't have anywhere near "almost as much" caffeine as coffee. At best 45-50mg on average. Coffee starts 20-30 mg above that and the sky is the limit with a large latte or cold brew.
My breakfast tea consists of 3 teaspoons of loose Assam, 2 teaspoons of brown sugar, left to steep for around 5 minutes until it starts to become bitter, then topped with a generous serving of cold milk. I believe the official description would be a 'proper builder's brew'.
The caffiene in that is going to be completely different to an Earl Grey you have after work to chill out. I can't stand the taste of bergamot when it's left to steep, so I usually only let it sit for 30 seconds.
Tea time is a better cultural marker than the drink itself.
And probably why you jumped to breakfast tea, because you're thinking of something occupying the same role as a morning cup of coffee.
Most people wouldn't have a coffee break at 4:30 in the evening, but a tea break at 4:30 is perfectly okay.
But the whole point of a "tea time of the soul" is to contemplate over tea before drinking it. Coffee offers no such moment to wait for it to cool, because a big cup would be too much coffee, but just enough tea.
I thought that's the actual point of the article too.
And then you start back at what you were doing, but a little more deliberate about it.
That being said, coffee is essential in the morning for low blood pressure people. Tea doesn't quite start the engine up the same way - clearing and waking up the brain is no use if the heart is still at 50 bpm and the eyelids are as heavy as the Iron Curtain.
Does such a thing exist? Usually "tea" is made from tea leaves and other similar drinks are called "infusions" or "herbal tea" instead. I have never heard of decaff tea, but maybe it is common in other places?
You're right that drinks not brewed from camelia sinensis leaves should technically be called an infusion or tisane. That includes fruit "tea" and infusions like rooibos, chamomile, nettle, or maté. However it's very common even in the UK to say "fruit tea" or "chamomile tea".
You're 'avin a laugh sunshine.
Walk down the tea aisle in any British supermarket and tell me the radio of decaff's to unmolested teas that you see!
while laboring, you are in the mode of "doing" something, whether that be programming, writing, or otherwise creating.
while drinking tea, nothing must be done.
it's not the negation of work. it's the affirmation of nothingness.
"Pragmatism regards action as the end and thought as the means to that end; and contemporary popular philosophy accepts the pragmatist position. In the philosophy underlying Eastern and Western spiritual religion this position is reversed. Here, contemplation is the end, action (in which is included discursive thought) is valuable only as a means to the beatific vision of reality."
So you can take a break from work to improve your overall productivity and that's okay. But you could as well consider work as a necessity of our material lives while the peaceful moment where you can make and drink tea is in itself the real deal.
These breaks are required for sustained productivity. They let me ponder, zoom out, reconsider. It shakes better ideas loose.
Until, that is, I started making tea as a buffer between work and the rest of my life. Making tea is something that's nearly mechanical process for me now, but gives me that much needed 20-30 mins where I'm physically doing something, but my mind is allowed to just wander around a bit, settle down, "suspend all the work-related tabs" in my brain, and refresh information for the rest of the day.
An added bonus is that I always start my evenings with brownie points, earlier with my roommates, and now with my wife, since they know that me getting home means in a few mins, a nice hot cup of tea will be served to them ;)
You put a very subjective opinion in very objective language. Some people prefer lingering in an essay, or meandering through musings, to reading executive summaries or condensed arguments or whatever. It's just a style. Sounds like it's not yours.
The entire population of Great Britain has just raised a collective eyebrow.
AFAIK this is not a native Substack thing, and also AFAIK Substack doesn't allow CSS modification or injection of code.
I know nothing about Substack's CSS/JS rules. But I do believe that the behavior is controlled in the CSS style I mentioned.
Wrong. It was Alfred Renyi.
Also, this:
> I suspect this is why from China and Japan to here in the UK, slow and elaborate practises have formed over centuries around the proper way to drink tea. Rituals that the takeaway cup and drink-at-the-desk culture have been unable to entirely erase.
Is comparing apples to oranges. You could easily flip the drinks, and make a point about how the ritual of brewing coffee, taking a cup out to your garden, and drinking it in the sun, is more relaxing than the UK office culture of making (and offering to make) cups of tea which are then consumed at your desk.
Have a bath and relax.
Could you do it?
I will catch up on my reading. > Nope. I will get better at meditating > Nope I will try that new recipe and so if it's better than > Nope I will just clean the living room > Nope.
Doing nothing is not the same as having free time that you fill with whatever suits you.
Try just taking 12 hours and do nothing.
No internet/tv/book/gym/running/texts/ No hanging with your mates and chatting
Just do nothing.
I think it is difficult. Quite difficult.
Everything you listed is difficult. Quite difficult. Doing nothing is the default.
Get out of bed > Nope.
Eat food > Nope.
Go outside > Nope.
Interact with other humans > Nope.
Have a plumber in to fix a leak, or an electrician to look at a wonky switch? Without the offer and supply of copious cuppas, you'll be lucky if you don't drown/get electrocuted after the job is "done".
"I suspect this is why from China and Japan to here in the UK, slow and elaborate practises have formed over centuries around the proper way to drink tea."
The author is a Brit, ie one of us.
We own a built in coffee machine that does bean to cup - I insist on an Italian standard type blend (but wifey is starting to chafe about that - we'll see, ie I'll change it eventually) - 75% Arabica and 25% Robusta.
We also drink an absolute shit load of black tea. Nothing fancy because all black tea is roughly the same. I use to work in a tea plant in Hampshire (UK) many years ago so I have a fair idea about the stuff. We generally go for Yorkshire for no particular reason.
Tea is superb on a hot day and we have had quite a few recently. I have no idea why it works so well but when it is 40C+ outside then why not reach for a 90C cup of tea?
Please, please, please, please try some good Chinese teas some time.
Once you've tried a nice cup of high grade Yunnan gold-tipped loose leaf black tea, a new world opens up.
Maybe tea packets are. Try fresh loose leaf black tea sometime, it doesn't have to be expensive if you buy online. Assam would be close to packets, Keemun, Darjeeling or Lapsang Souchong would be definitely different.
And notably little green tea.
> Tea is superb on a hot day and we have had quite a few recently.
This is because tea is generally superb. It is the solution to all problems. 'Put the kettle on' is often the first thing said after anything goes wrong.
I went there to read the article, but the first thing I saw was a big thing telling me to subscribe to something, before I even know what the something is, because I've never seen the site before.
So I closed it.
I do that a lot. I'll keep doing it. We don't have that many hours on earth to waste on such things.
This one even has a "Hurry! Spots are Limited!!!" infomercial type bullshit call to action. Good grief.