Brewing Tea For Dummies

This title might be a little misleading for those who are familiar with the ‘Doing Something’ For Dummies
series of books. Unlike those books, I’m not going to teach you how to prepare tea in a manner so simple even a dummy can understand—guides on brewing tea have been done on every tea-related website, including 80% of the pages on this site; instead, I’m going to teach you to prepare tea like a dummy so that you end up with the worst tasting cup of tea possible.
Why would you ever want to do this, you may ask? Well, I’m sure we’ve all had guests we wanted to get rid of…. Follow these step and they’ll be gone after a few sips; and if you do everything perfectly, they are unlikely to ever return.
Never use loose leaf tea; no true dummy would ever even consider it. Make sure you always use tea bags and if possible, use the cheapest ones you can find at your local grocery store—better yet, buy them at Wal-Mart.
Dummies always use tea bags to brew their tea
Tea bags were originally invented as samples, but caught on during World War II when tea was rationed in England. They generally contain dust and fannings—basically all the crap left over after the higher quality loose leaf tea has been sorted. Since it’s all chopped up, the stuff in the bag dries out much more quickly, plus there isn’t enough room for the leaves to fully expand anyway. This ensure a lower quality brew. On top of that, you can often taste the paper the bag is made from. In short, tea bags are the perfect start to getting a horrible cup of tea.
Never use filtered or even bottled water. Stick to tap water, especially if you live in an area where that tap water has a funky flavor. Even better, use hot tap water, as the water that comes from the hot pipe always seems to taste much worse than the water from the cold pipe.
Advanced Tip: Here’s a little trick I learned in Japan, where these toilet bowl sinks are pretty common.
When the toilet is flushed, the water runs through the faucet to fill the tank, allowing you to wash your hands
If you have especially stubborn guests, you’ll want to brew your tea using water from this faucet; and make sure those guest see where you get your water. Unfortunately, these toilet tank sinks are not very common in the west, so this technique will be out of reach for most. That said, they are offered on Amazon.com now, if you’re really serious about making disgusting tea.
Different teas need to be brewed at different water temperatures to get the best tasting cup. That principle does not change if you’re preparing tea using the dummy method; the temperatures themselves change, though. For green tea or white tea, you want to boil the water and continue to let it boil for several minutes to make sure it’s well over a 100°C—this will really bring out the bitterness in the leaves. For black tea, do the opposite: use luke-warm water.
To make an especially vile cup of tea, you want to make sure to use an extra-long steeping time with green or white tea, to go along with the high water temperature. Shoot for ten minutes or so. For black tea with slightly warm water, steep for twenty seconds.
I know this all seems like an awful lot to remember for your average dummy, but keep at it and you’ll get it right eventually. When you do, you can kiss your days of having to provide tea for guests goodbye. If you master the technique described here, you may even be able to kiss any and all guests—and perhaps even any and all friends—goodbye forever.

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