A Decent Cup of Tea (Book Review)

 

A tea-related post from me? Way overdue. Here I review a book where some Irish guy teaches us how not to suck at brewing tea.

(Click here to jump to the recommended song, A Decent Cup of Tea by Frank Turner!)

Howdy, rebels!

In my last post, I mentioned that tea is the "food-related item I know most about".

A friend suggested that I talk about tea, but I didn't know what to say about it until now.

 

This is because I don't like repeating readily available information. I could drop some tea knowledge on the Rebel Palate, but I would feel dishonest knowing there are already so many better sources. This doesn't mean I can't talk about tea at all, though- I can talk about a book about tea.

 

I've noticed a lack of "proper" reviews for A Decent Cup of Tea by Malachi McCormick. It's popular among tea lovers, but not in the wider scope, so I thought I would post about it here.

The book contains history, advice and personal memoirs from the author. He wrote this book when he realized most people kinda suck at brewing tea, and manufacturers kinda suck at making it.

I love this book because of how real it is. McCormick picks apart every piece of poppycock on sight, and he prioritizes the essentials- not all that fancy, unnecessary crap. The point of this book really is how to make a decent cup of tea, not how to put on a facade. Here's one of my favorite quotes, which illustrates this point:

"I have endured some terrible tea from the best of equipage in my day, and I have had many memorable cups where the equipage was Battered Utilitarian Improvisational." (McCormick 48)

  I keep forgetting how witty McCormick's writing is. When calling out the utter silliness of tea bags, he writes about a tea ad he saw in British newspaper The Times:

"[The teabag] was now, the tea company trumpeted, 'round'! Oh yes, that's what's been missing all along: we all crave that quintessential quality of roundness, and we spot its absence in a trice." (McCormick 36)

 This guy is just done. I love it.

 He also makes a big point about his "resistance to marketing, commercial convenience-" Ew, convenience- and "extra profit". He wrote a small section about the price of tea, how "tea bag companies" only want your money, and how loose tea costs less than you'd think.

Interestingly, McCormick tries to illustrate that not only is loose tea worth it, it's actually cheaper than bag-tea when you go by net weight. I don't think I've heard that stance before reading this book. I have heard that loose tea only costs a few cents a cup, but not that it's cheaper than Lipton. (Just to be clear, that was hyperbole. I highly doubt any high quality tea is cheaper than Lipton.)

In the book, he says that loose tea is generally $20 per pound, but bag-tea costs $22-$27 per pound. To test this, I wanted to compare Twinings English Breakfast... with itself. I could cherrypick any two teas from different brands to get a desired result, but I don't wanna do that to you guys.

Twinings' loose English Breakfast costs $7 (they're not fooling me with that $6.99 crap) and has a net weight of 3.53 oz, or 100g. This makes it $1.98 per ounce. The teabag version, which has the same net weight, costs $7.49, or $2.12 per ounce.

 Even though this in no way constitutes a scientific study, it looks like that piece of advice still holds up.

Emotionally, it feels right to call these companies out for their bamboozlement, but you gotta remember you're paying for c-convenience. Sorry, I just threw up in my mouth a little. You know how I'm allergic to conventionality? Well I'm also convenience-intolerant. That's why I'm a Linux user.

As for the other advice given in this book, McCormick writes about a little of everything: some mythology as to the origin of tea as well as his sarcastic remarks on it, the types of tea, leaf grades, and even how tea bushes grow.

I'm mildly disappointed that (since we have the Internet) I've already found more comprehensive sources of tea information before picking up this book. However, the sarcastic wit and honesty of this little volume makes it worth it.

I do have a more legitimate complaint, though: this is one of the many resources on tea that erroneously calls the oxidation process "fermentation". It's a simple and common mistake, and it was the '80s so all the information wasn't available, but it's inaccurate.

Some teas are fermented, like Pu-erh in leaf form and Kombucha in brewed form, but oxidation is simply what you call it when you cut an apple and it turns brown. Well, more specifically that's enzymatic browning, but that is the process of tea leaf oxidation.

Again, though, McCormick's writing style is worth it. I sometimes pick it up when I'm bored, and I'm still pleasantly surprised by the humor. That's why I wrote this review in the first place! There are also some half-decent recipes for scones, quick breads and the like. I might write about them eventually. This post is getting kinda cramped.

Another thing worth mentioning, since I didn't know where else to write this, is that A Decent Cup of Tea is a handmade book printed on recycled (or at least homemade-type) paper. It's really cool-looking. It's got little brown fibers trapped in the paper, and the cover has this weird swirly design... anyway, I don't have much to say about it. It's just cool!

I bought my copy from BetterWorldBooks, but you can borrow a digital copy from The Internet Archive. Just remember you can't download it that way.

While looking for online listings for A Decent Cup of Tea, I found a song of the same name. It's sad, but I like how it highlights the sentimentality of a good, hot cuppa. I'll also leave you with the final quote from Malachi McCormick which is printed on the back of the book:

"We can survive functional illiteracy or shattered windows of vulnerability, but not the demise of the Decent Cup of Tea."

No brother, we can't.

Get yourself a decent cup of tea, and stay sexy!