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FanOfMostEverything


Forget not that I am a derp.

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Jan
14th
2019

Profane Nectar · 6:52pm Jan 14th, 2019

Hey all. I got an idea for a story just a bit ago, but I need some input from those who know the subject better and more intimately.

To wit: What, in your opinion, is the worst thing someone can do when preparing a cup of tea?

Comments ( 82 )
PresentPerfect
Author Interviewer

Like, probably pour it down someone's dick.

Like, not in their lap, literally using some kind of horrible torture device to make it goes all the way up the urethra.

You're welcome.

Drink it :rainbowwild:

Yak butter springs to mind, especially if we're restricting this to things people actually and regularly do to tea they intend to drink.

4997056 4997057
Clarification: When preparing the tea.

The worst thing...

Mixing tea with coffee?:derpytongue2:

What tea are we talking about? Black? Green? Oolong? Infusions?

There are many options. As a British person with a collection of over thirty different teas, I am qualified to help here.

4997062
Definitely black in this case. Thank you in advance for your assistance.

Um, heat it up so much that it starts to burn or melt the pot, scaring you as you sneeze into the water; accidentally pouring the extremely hot liquid everywhere or on some body or something or melt that substance with the heat. Ouch!

Why do you need this as a story idea again?

Wanderer D
Moderator

Cough all over and spit phlegm while stirring it.

I've heard that there is a schism between people who put the milk in first and people who put the tea in first.

4997056
My legs are going to stay crossed for hours now...

Now, the worst thing while preparing the tea? Sneeze hard, or scratch their private areas, then use that same hand to grab the teabag and dunk it in the water, and maybe stir with a snotty finger.

You know, before reading some of these I believed there wasn't a truly wrong way to prepare tea. I stand corrected.

Oh boy, I'm actually a bit of an expert at this, having worked at Teavana for a time. The worst thing you can do to a cup of tea, assuming you weren't actually trying to ruin it intentionally, would be to over-steep it. There's no way to get the bitterness out, and you just wasted a perfectly good batch. If the leaves weren't flavored (ie: straight black vs Earl Grey), it's actually possible to reuse them a few times, providing opportunities to correct your mistake.

The facetious bastard in me wants to say: "add sugar" or "put the milk in first", but a plausible scenario is for someone to mistake the salt for the sugar and put in two or three spoons of the stuff.

For bonus points, have the tea be a first flush Darjeeling or something else top end and difficult to replace.

Adding cream rather than milk, or just spoiled milk, would also result in a horrible drinking experience. As would mistakingly using mint tea rather than black, and adding milk to that.

If you wanted a fiasco, you could stack them: use the $175 per lb Darjeeling (that's only available for a few weeks a year) in place of cheap builder's black, use salt in place of sugar and cream in place of milk.

I could probably come up with more if needed.

Edit: 4997073 is also correct about over-steeping. Add that to the fiasco list.

Brewing “tea” using anything that is not actually tea.

I don’t care what the marketing team at Celestial Seasonings tells you, what they sell is not tea, it is hot flower water.

Add both milk AND lemon.
Just don't. Please.

Not using enough tea. Mildly tea flavored water is not an excuse.

Disclaimer: I claim absolutely no knowledge in the art of preparing tea ... or drinking it. :derpytongue2:

That said, I still want to participate! :pinkiecrazy:

Is the one making the tea making an absentminded oversight ("Ooops, I left the tea bag in for too long!"), is completely incompetent, or is, in fact, the Cutie Mark Crusaders pre-cutie marks? :derpytongue2:

Also, we're in the magical land of Equestria, so whatever goes wrong could be magical in nature. Say, using electrically charged water from a non-professionally dissolved thundercloud. It'd bite the tongue on every sip.

Oh, you can still taste the tea. The tea tastes heavenly, actually.

But you're going to be dealing with constant painful prickles on your tongue, and it isn't like the tea is just "too hot" or anything, so waiting won't actually solve the problem. It tastes great, but it hurts to drink with every sip. :fluttercry:

And just to add further insult: It doesn't have that effect on everyone equally, so somepony else (perhaps due to pegasus ancestry) might actually enjoy the prickly feeling on the tongue.:rainbowderp:

So yeah, fun tea time where one person is slowly torturing themselves to appear grateful for the great tea, and is actually able to taste what it was supposed to be like - and the other is totally oblivious. :twilightoops:




....This is what I've felt every time I've tried drinking Coca Cola, by the way. My tongue does not like carbon dioxide for some reason. :fluttershysad:

4997076
Perfect. Everyone is welcome to keep contributing, but this is gold.

I have been summoned!

Alright, a couple of mistakes when preparing tea: using hot water from the tap, over-steeping the tea (it will turn bitter), use boiling water for green tea... that's all right off the top of my head that are common mistakes I've seen people make.

People already listed the worst sins, but here are other bad things you can do:

- use very hard water
- use an un-lined copper kettle
- wash the kettle using soap and then don't flush it properly
- keep your tea in the wrong container and let it get old
- buy the cheap stuff from Flim and Flam
- serve it with a silver spoon in the cup and let it there for a minute or so. Although this doesn't ruin the tea, it gets fun when your guests take the spoon.

Stewing green tea for a long time, with too hot water. You end up with stuff too bitter to drink no matter what you add to it.

Using a bag instead of a steeper & leaf. Using hot water in a mug instead of a teapot.
4997062
Surprising nobody.
4997056
Thanks I hate it

4997076 Adulterate it, of course. From no less an expert than Ghost of Heraclitus on The Adultery of Princess Twilight Sparkle. :pinkiehappy:

I had to downvote this! It's in the non-mature feature box! Kids could see this! Could think of ruining good tea! Mixing milk and lemon like monsters[1]. I dare not imagine what the thought of instant tea might do to an impressionable mind. Except possibly lead to blindness, dropsy, insanity, gout, and IMPURE THOUGHTS, of course!!!

GEORG IS AFTER OUR PRECIOUS BOD TEA-ISH FLUIDS!

[1] A friend of mine insists on sugar in his green tea. As a result when friends are over, I often serve "three cups of green tea, lovingly brewed to perfection, and one container of heathen swill, ruined beyond description."

I must warn you, the path to adultery is slippery, and can lead to madness. Beware, lest you be caught up in things which will overwhelm you and carry you away to places you do not wish to visit.

"When I began to take tea with Princess Luna, I thought the experience would be the same," continued Twilight Sparkle, stirring her tea. "I was so mistaken. She opened my eyes to many pleasures. Sugar. Honey." A faint ripple of tension traveled down Twilight's pale violet coat and caused a brief trembling around her cutie mark. "E-even l-lemon. O-on some nights, we even experimented with mixing. It was a wild and passionate time that I lost myself in. Sometimes, I would awaken on the floor of the observatory with the taste of chicory on my lips and wonder if perhaps we had gone too far in our debauchery. Still, I could not stop the raging passions of my unleashed desires. My nights were filled with so many—"

4997082
Good point. Water that hasn’t had time to discharge all that latent weather magic...the steam will evolve into a (tiny) wild storm cloud given half a chance.

Let Discord anywhere near the process.

Forget to invite Zecora. I can see her and Celestia having tea parties...

Deciding to spice up the mixture by adding random herbs and spices, because it's all leaves anyway.
Better yet adding hallucinogenic plants.

[1] A friend of mine insists on sugar in his green tea. As a result when friends are over, I often serve "three cups of green tea, lovingly brewed to perfection, and one container of heathen swill, ruined beyond description."

If that isn't an Abomination Unto Nuggan, it should be.

In general, if you find yourself wanting to put sugar in your tea, it's either been brewed wrong (very possible with a green; they can be quite finicky), or else it was shit stuff to start with.

Also, Instant tea? It's very existence is an affront. Another Abomination. And only a gibbering idiot would use both lemon and milk.

As in most things, I like the cut of Ghost's jib here.

Carelessly uttering the phrase "I seem to be having tremendous difficulty with my lifestyle."

This is one of the most entertaining comment threads I think I’ve ever seen. :pinkiecrazy: (Oh, and it’s “to wit”, by the way.)

PresentPerfect
Author Interviewer

4997059
Your rules, not mine. >:V

From all I've gathered, the real answer is "make it", because no matter what you do, there will be some officious bastard somewhere who says you're doing it wrong! >:B

Himalayan style when you're not freezing to death.
To whit:
>salt and/or sugar
>butter, originally yak specifically
It's basically supposed to end up as caffeinated, high calorie gatorade.

I do remember a tale of a bunch of crazy russians and a pressure cooker, though...

Worst thing? Make coffee instead.

Kill the person you're making it for?

4997119 Threadwinner!

Well, for a ketogenic diet, we made a mixture of green tea and cayena pepper, which was said helped with the diet, but we added too much pepper and we made a kinetic mixture instead (Meaning that we threw that away as fast as we could)

4997119
This.

4997136
Kinetic mixture...I have to remember that.

4997113
The dog, in this case, being Spike. Which means they can claim they were technically eaten by a dragon. Much more dignified. This is a lighter and fluffier universe after all :p

4997077
I don’t care. I *like* my hot flower water darn it.

4997076 is the canonical answer if you want to be serious about it, but there’s a far subtler option: Make a cup of no tea.

Put the tea in bag or strainer form in a cup of room temperature or even cold water... and the microwave the whole thing.

Not microwave the cup with just the water to heat it up first.

Microwave the bag too.

I shudder with dark memories.

4997147
As long as you recognize that it's hot flower water.

Decide that tea is something that should be consumed.

Drink it, then go back in time and drink it again. The paradox places you in the tantalus-esque space of both having tea and not having tea at once.

Allowing a microwave anywhere near the process. You heat water in a kettle. Nothing else will do. A kettle. Electric is fine (and the norm in England) but an old-fashioned stove one is fine too. But not a microwave. Ever. That's probably worse than not using a teapot and pouring the hot water straight into the mug. (Though "builder's tea" is a special case: that is often made in the mug.) Admittedly Equestria doesn't seem to have microwaves, though presumably EqG homes do.

Also, though peripheral: I feel tea culture is rather different in England from in the US, which may explain some seemingly conflicting answers. Over here, where it's a mass-market drink, bag tea really doesn't have any stigma to it. If I visited someone's house and they offeredme a cuppa, I'd expect it to be made with teabags unless I had a good reason to expect otherwise. Similarly, if you say "a cup of tea" without qualification over here, it will be assumed that you mean straightforward black tea (probably "English Breakfast" or similar, not Earl Grey or Darjeeling or whatever) with milk added. Not many people drink it milkless, though these days adding sugar is less common than it used to be.

PresentPerfect
Author Interviewer

4997169
As though the other kind weren't just hot leaf juice. :V

4997167
Microwaving a tea strainer sounds dangerous o.o

Zuko threw a punch, and a fireball shot across the room towards the oil lamp. When the flames from the fireball dissipated, only the light from the lamp remained. Zuko glared at the teacup tied to the chair in front of him. "I still don't understand what my uncle sees in you," he muttered. He took a step closer. "And why would I?" he shouted. He grabbed the back of the chair and leaned it back, splashing a dark liquid out of the cup as he lowered his face to it. "You're nothing but hot leaf juice!"

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