Apparently, a hacker named Dániel Nagy wrote an amusing article (linked from a comment on kuro5hin) titled Russian Tea HOWTO. The author starts out by saying that
Drinking Canned Capitalism (Coke) contradicts the very principles of the open source movement, for it is a closed source product, manufactured by a huge, evil corporation
He then proceeds to describe the proper way to make tea, from the perspective of a Linux hacker.
Needless to say, the article is very tongue-in-cheek, but nonetheless, everything the author says about making tea (the Russian way) is true -- with the possible exception of tea's hallucinogenic properties. Although, I suppose, you can get high from drinking anything, provided you drink enough of it, so who knows.
In any case, the article is very clear: it explains pretty much everything in very basic terms, and it even briefly instructs you on how to best utilize your AC outlet. If only actual Linux howtos were written this way...
I did, however, notice one unclear point in the article, regarding lemons. I know of no one who would actually put lemon juice in their tea (as the article seems to suggest). That's just crazy talk. Any real kind of Russian would put an actual slice of lemon into the tea, instead. Since the tea is boiling hot, the lemon juice/extract is produced automagically in the cup, which means that none of the aroma is lost. This, of course, implies that real lemons are available -- which, in Russia, they usually aren't. Still, no lemon at all is still better than some sort of canned lemon juice.
Posted by metabug at 2003/08/05 07:34 | TrackBack (0) | Categories: ArticlesDude... there is something broken with your 'Continue Reading' links.... when I click on them in the window, they take me to:http://mindhive.webhop.org/ which looks like nothing but a broken page of a brown background, some carriage returns, and the comment submission form.
However, if I right-click and say 'open in a new window', it takes me, correctly, to http://metabug.dyndns.org/mindhive/archives/making_tea.html#more
Posted by: Michael Slater at 2003/08/05 07:59The article is pretty funny.
but it misses some important details to make it really geeky.
like:
0. Didn't specify the degree of fermentation. ie, green tea, oolong, or black tea.
1. How to select tea grades.
Do Russians have a different tea grading scheme than the one invented by Lipton?
2. What's the point of making zavarka first?
How can tea steep and bloom if you don't give it enough water? as in the case when you are trying to make concentrated zavarka.
Why not just make it in drinkable concentration the first time?
3. No pictures. This is a fatal flaw, as i still have no idea what most of these devices are. but then this is Linux HOWTO, pictures are usually not expected.
(for extra point, they should include some pointless oreilly animal line drawing and call it Russian Tea in a Nutshell or Russian Tea Hacks (the part about adding alcohol to tea can go in there)
Huh... "mindhive.webhop.org" does work perfectly for me, but it's really nothing but a browser hack, so your browser may not support it. Just use the real URL, http://mindhive.dyndns.org/mindhive .
Posted by: Bugmaster at 2003/08/05 13:55No, Russians generally don't have tea grading schemes. They differentiate between "green tea" and "black tea", but that's about it. Unlike Japan, where tea is somewhat ritualized, or America, where it doesn't exist, in Russia tea is more or less the standard drink (besides Vodka, of course). The making of tea has been highly optimized, to the point where the word "tea" really means something specific, and exotic teas have fallen by the wayside.
I am not sure why zavarka tastes good, but really it does. I could not imagine drinking tea any other way -- but then, I'm biased. It might be a compromise between quality and ease-of-use, though. Or maybe it's because the concentrated tea extracts every possible bit of flavor, in one pass. Hm, or maybe it's the fact that boiling hot water is always added to the cup... Not sure.
In any case, Russians do care about tea quality: when you run out of zavarka, you can cycle hot water through it the second time. However, the result is called "pomoech'ka", loosely translated as "little bits of slop", due to the degraded quality.
Posted by: Bugmaster at 2003/08/05 14:02Yeah. that's really interesting because I thought Russians drink only vodka all the time. :)
Posted by: Roger Hsueh at 2003/08/05 15:33When I was stranded at a mountain pass in Kygyzstan waiting for a road crew to un-block an avalanched tunnel, I had violent food poisoning from eating a rotten goat at an Uzbek banquet in Osh with the Kyrgyz Minister of Tourism the night before.
As I squatted in the bushes, under the 100-degree sun, simultaneously puking and shitting all over myself, the first remedy I was offered was a bowl of vodka. When I thrice refused that, I was offered a bowl of yogurt filled with dust from the searing wind blowing down the valley.
Remarkably, I semi-spontanously healed about three hours later. I attribute it more to fear of further cures, rather than the cure itself.
Posted by: Michael Slater at 2003/08/06 08:08