Stir crazy
Is there a formula for the perfect cuppa? Marc Abrahams gauges academic opinion
Tuesday March 8, 2005
The Guardian
Some people collect birds' eggs, some collect stamps, some the scalps of their enemies. I collect scientists' best rituals for preparing tea or coffee. Under the rubric Project Cuppa, this endeavour is only two months old. Yet already it is revealing wonders.
There are, of course, official British standards for the preparation of coffee (standard number BS 6379-4:1991) and tea (standard number BS 6008: 1980). These are maintained by the British Standards Institution, which charges £24 for a copy of the coffee standard and the same price for a copy of the tea standard. The latter, which is six pages long, was honoured with the 1999 Ig Nobel Literature Prize.
I have heard from only one scientist who claims to adhere to Standard BS 6008:1980. Most have chosen to theorise and experiment.
For some, the ritual is really about the pace and rhythm of their day, and begins at home. Julie Ellis, in Cambridge, begins the day with what might be termed a strategic ritual. "Get out of bed. Make tea for me and my husband. (Large mug, tea bag and one sugar/ sweetener, milk added last.) Don't wake him up. Drink both mugs of tea. Rinse and repeat, until either I'm sloshing or he gets up." Other scientists rely, perhaps too much, on the concept of iteration.
Susan Smith, a chemistry teacher at Petaluma high school in California, follows a simple procedure. "Brew the tea. Find it two hours later, cold. Add sugar, microwave. Remember it two hours later, cold. Microwave again. Repeat until time to go home. Return to work, wash cup, try again. Repeat as necessary."
Phil Prosser, a wildlife ecotoxicologist at the Central Science Laboratory in Sand Hutton, York, follows a multi-step regimen that begins: "(1) Arrive at work. Decide I'd like a cup of tea. (2) Get distracted by something else for around an hour. (3) Remember the tea plan. Find that kettle is empty. (4) Get distracted again." Prosser's list concludes in stirring fashion: "(13) Go home, still having had no tea. (14) Drink tea furiously all evening, to ward off thirst and dehydration. (15) Get up at least twice in the night to visit the bathroom as a result of step 14."
Quite a few scientists report using a similar technique to prepare coffee.
Stephen J Hart shares an insight: "Professor Nick Phillips, the renowned holographer at De Montfort University, once told me his secret. Unlike other scientists, he washes out his cup after drinking his coffee instead of before."
Jim Scobbie, a senior research fellow in speech science at Queen Margaret University College in Edinburgh, would concur: "My personal approach is to take a cup of coffee into the shower. It lasts for ages, and stays nice and hot. The only disadvantage is that it gets weaker as time goes by, especially if you drop it. And at the end, the cup is nice and clean."
Philip Preshaw, a lecturer in periodontology at the University of Newcastle-upon-Tyne, follows a branch of that same train track of logic: "I used to drink hot tea with milk like any normal English person. But while at university, room mates would steal my milk or it would go bad. So I ditched the milk. Then, in an effort to save money, I began to re-use tea bags, sometimes seven or eight times. The tea got weaker and weaker until I thought, 'Hey, why bother with the tea?' After that, it has been hot water all the way, or, 'a cup of hot' as I like to call it."
Others, too, enjoy watching their pennies.
Laura Eyring, an analytical chemist at the Philadelphia Water Department in Pennsylvania, recalls: "When I was a chemistry student in college, my morning coffee ritual was as follows. In the same plastic cup that holds the toothbrush, add two heaping tablespoons instant coffee (kept in the bathroom medicine cabinet for easy reach). Let the hot tap water run for a few minutes so it's nice and hot. Fill cup with steaming hot water, add non-dairy creamer and artificial sweetener to taste. Stir with the handle of the toothbrush to avoid lumps. Down quickly. Last gulp should have a nice minty taste."
Alan W Harris, who is senior research scientist at the Space Science Institute in La Canada, California, eschews doing things on the cheap. His preferred method is simple:
"Buy a plane ticket to anywhere in Italy. Get off the plane, get a coffee anywhere you land, even in the airport. Best in the world. I have other methods when time is short between trips to Italy, but the very best seems to require the trip."
Roger Farrow, a retired scientist who lives outside Nottingham, reduced his ritual to what some would call poetry:
First, procure a brown teapot.
Add a dash of water (hot).
Swirl it round, and ditch the lot.
Spoon in tea leaves - just a jot.
Boiling water, all you've got.
Place some teacups on the spot.
Pour in milk (don't let it clot).
Stir each minute (on the dot).
Some take sugar - some do not.
If you do - an aliquot.
Not too much - your teeth may rot!
Pour - don't spill it! Silly clot!
If you do - the spillage blot.
Some add whisky - just one tot!
Satisfaction! Aye! God wot!
Satisfaction, yes. But notice that none of these scientists say they can reliably discriminate - based on taste alone - a properly made cuppa from one that is not.
It is likely that they have sipped from Sir Ronald Fisher's classic essay Mathematics of a Lady Tasting Tea. Fisher is the man who transformed statistics from a ritualised form of tea-leaf reading into an extremely rigorous mathematical discipline. He boiled down the requirements for conducting a reliable tea-taste test. His document, however, weighs in at well over nine pages.