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On Wed, 4 Dec 2024, Blueshirt wrote:
D wrote:
On Tue, 3 Dec 2024, Sn!pe wrote:
Blueshirt <blueshirt@indigo.news> wrote:
The best Earl Grey uses Assam!
Mrs Sn!pe's Earl Grey brew is nothing like my industrial
strength "builders'" Assam though. Hers barely has the
strength to crawl out of the teapot but a teaspoon can stand
up vertically in mine.
This is the way! I discovered that one key is to not to use
tea spoons for your tea, but regular spoons instead. Then the
strength starts to become very masculine!
Use proper spoons for tea you heathen! They are called "tea
spoons" for a reason!!!
Zavarka Tea
How could I have forgotten zavarka, the Russian tea concentrate that makes espresso look like penny candy! Zavarka, killer of the weak hearted! Zavarka, the brown liquor that truly drives the Motherland! Zavarka, that sharpens the world, enlightens the soul, warms the heart! Zavarka, the last tea you'll ever need!
Russians learned a secret, that by using a large quantity of tea leaf and boiling water, one could saturate the solution with alkaloids and flavanoids, and the tannins would not fall into solution, creating a strongly concentrated tea with no bitterness. Diluted with water and given a dollop of marmalade for sweetness, tea is as ingrained in Russian culture just as deeply as it is in Japan and China.
Before going into specifics, I feel the need to warn you, this is hard drugs. This stuff can kill you. Do not drink this stuff if you have a weak heart or are
sensitive to caffeine, or are taking other stimulants. Do not drink a cup of this your first time, you will regret it, start with an ounce and see what happens. Zarvaka is not a joke.
[IMG] It all starts with the samovar. On top is a small pot where the zavarka, and the main tank holds the kipyatok, the boiled water which is used to
make the concentrate and then to dilute it. They used to heat samovars by burning pine cones, now a days they are usually electric. To compensate for the loss of flavor imparted by the pine cone smoke, smoked teas are often used in Russian blends.
A brief note on buying electric samovars. At least in the US, samovar's are next
to impossible to purchases new, and as such they need to be imported. Depending
on the country of origin, there's a chance it will be built to handle a different electrical current then what is availible in your wall. A friend of mine had to re-install the heating element of his Russian samovar, and remarked that it was not a pretty scene inside the pot, and was quite a bit of work to do. Also, because there was no auto-shut off, if the water level were to fall below the top of the heating element, a fire could result. Just so you know what
you might be getting into. Of course he was specifically looking for a Russian samovar, one that he could fit his Russian tea glass (see below) under the spigot, which he could not do with his Turkish samovar. He was kinda crazy like that.
It is very important to use kipyatok for the tea making process, the water must be in a rolling boil and not given a chance to cool down. It is recommended that
you steam the inside of the zavarka pot before mixing the tea and water. Allowing "raw water", no matter how hot it is, to contaminate the tea making will result in bitter tea. Best to use filtered water, if not spring water.
You use 5 teaspoons of tea per cup of water. Put the tea in the pot, pour in the
water, and let sit for 20 minutes or till all the leaves settle to the bottom, which ever takes longer. This concentrate is then diluted 10:1 with more boiling
water.
The color of the tea should be similar to that of a chestnut. If your glass, cup, or mug has vertical walls (constant horizontal cross-section, that is), you
can control the color very easily. Observe that the color of the tea does not change if you look from above, assuming the water is completely transparent (the
proof of this statement is left as an exercise to the reader). Therefore, all you have to do is pour zavarka until it reaches the desired color, and water it down thereafter. Cups with increasing horizontal cross-sections do not offer such an easy method, you will either have to solve an integral equation or make an educated guess.(source) [IMG]Now of course a glass tea cup is going to get hot, luckily the Russians have just the solution, the podstakannik, literally "thing under the glass". This allows for proper dilution of one's tea while maintaining one's dignity under the pressure of a hot glass in your hands.
If one were to be so miserable as to be imprisoned in a gulag, you're one bright
hope for the day was your daily tea ration. It was not uncommon for inmates to store their rations up, and cook them down into chephyr, a thick goo used as a drug substitute. It is of the author's opinion that this is unnecessary for the free individual, and does not condone the use of chephyr as the zarvarka is strong enough to be worrisom to the health.
Eight ounces of zarvarka is the most I've ever had. Euphoria, body rapture, shape-shifting, energy, crystalline vision verging on the edge of hallucinogenic, later, irrational thoughts, foolishness, exhaustion, and a rather intense crash, literally, to the ground.
[IMG] By using such a large quantity of tea leaf and boiling water, you supersaturate the solution with flavanoids and alkaloids before the slower dissolving tannins fall out of solution, the end up trapped in the tea solids. This not only allows an intensly concentrated tea with out bitterness, but certain alkaloids that normally are normally only in trace quantities, to reach active doses. It should also be noted that the leaves of Camellia sinensis has twice as much caffeine by dry weight as roasted coffee beans. We just usually use a whole lot less tea for a cup.
According to Pendell, "Some of the phenols in the essential oil are dangerous, though in a minimal sort of way. The reputed effects of the essential oils in calming the nerves probably far outweigh the dangers, unless the quantities are excessive." We are talking about excessive quantities of tea here. He goes on "Tea also contains small amounts of theophylline, a strong diuretic, and a more powerful CNS stimulant then caffeine. Theophylline is used for treating asthma and emphysema." He does not offer any suggestions as to which phenols may be problematic.
A patient of mine once overdosed on normally brewed tea. He drank around two and
a half gallons of the stuff, over the course of the day and ended up laid out on
my floor, cool, clammy, pale, pounding heart, weakness, that lasted the better part of an hour. He has previously experimented with a water overdose and said this, was not that, different set of symptoms.
A warning video on the effects of excessive tea consumption... of sorts...
If you're going to bother exploring the surprising limits of tea, you best be using some good stuff. Kusmi is one of the best exported brands of Russian tea and I highly recommend their, Troika, Kashmir Tchai, and Samovar blends. This brand is widely distributed and should be able to be found in any gourmet food market or tea shop. Warning, if you make zarvarka on a regular basis, you will find even a large tin will not last long, this stuff can get expensive, avoid bagged tea, it's always far more expensive then loose, and of course buy in bulk
when availible.
I'm glad I was finally able to get this all down, I've been wanting to share this for a while and just hadn't gotten around to it. I highly recommend trying out the formulas presented here, it's a good reminder on how easy it is to over look potent plants, especially those we take for granted. Use six times the amount of tea you would normally use and you get a beverage of a very different nature then it's more common variety. It takes 60 fresh leaves of Salvia divinorum to become active, how many plants have you eaten 60 leaves off of in a
single sitting? What else is out there that we haven't given thought to? That we haven't ever tried eating enough of?
The Turks also use a samovar and a concentrate for their tea drinking, though I don't know the recipe. Their tea is served diluted 1:1 with water in a demitasse
glass, with two lumps of sugar, and is as potent as a cup of coffee. In Turkey, should someone decline sugar in their tea, the proper question to ask is "Are you diabetic?" As the only rational reason why someone wouldn't want almost equal measures of tea and sugar, is that it was dangerous to them, and you would
probably want to offer your guest soemthing other then the sweets you had planned. It's not uncommon for a Turkish man to drink 40 some servings of tea in
a day, even in ounce and a half glasses, that's a lot of tea, a lot of sugar, and a lot of stimulants. Guess it probably helps even out all the hashish.
While a bit off topic from this post, but important to the thread, I just uploaded the Royal Chemistry Societies publication How to Brew the Perfect Cup of Tea for your enjoyment and consideration.
Maybe we SHOULD let the DEA in on this one, let the kids on YouTube get messed up, let the tabloid news run wild, maybe the uproar that would come when they tried to ban tea would be enough to carry out the rest of our goals, would waken
people up to what's going on with drug laws. People FIGHT for tea, I live in a country that is what it is, because 200 years ago England raised an obscene tax on tea. Like chocolate and coffee, people see tea as their RIGHT, not a privilege. Even the US government has put out propaganda saying "Coffee gives you you're fair share", not "something extra", but what you and everyone else minimally deserves. People kill for their rights.
It's been too long since I've indulged in some Russian tea, I no longer frequent
the house where I had first drunk this most intriguing brew, but I know an old China man who runs a dusty little shop not far from here. I think it might be time to go visit him and get my fix of one of the last sanctioned drugs, while I
still have time.
Nothing quite like a hot cup of brown joy.
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