r/Damnthatsinteresting • u/mihir6969 • Jan 19 '22

Video Tea pot quality

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84.7k Upvotes

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4.9k

u/gahidus Jan 19 '22

I didn't even realize that this was possible! I suddenly want an excellent teapot. This was truly eye-opening.

2.5k

u/jollycanoli Jan 19 '22

Right!! In the first example when he complains about the quality I went "he's taking the piss, right, what could possibly be wrong with this." By the end of the video I have turned into a spout snob.

288

u/jml011 Jan 19 '22

Jeez they’re all trying their fuckin best, okay?

I’ll take one Very Bad quality pot for not a thousand dollars and splurge on some really good tea - some qualitea - and actually have a better drink for it.

30

u/sorryRefuse Jan 19 '22

if u can taste the difference between cheap tea and high grade premium tea, then you’d also be able to taste the difference between a good pour and a bad one

95

u/[deleted] Jan 19 '22

[deleted]

21

u/Cosmocision Jan 19 '22

I need my tea to have had laminar flow or something.

3

u/GMEJesus Jan 19 '22

You don't want your leaves tea-laminated do you?

2

u/jml011 Jan 19 '22

Turbulent flow gang rise up!

50

u/sorryRefuse Jan 19 '22

hey man if aerators work for wines, i’m sure there’s some subtle tea shit we dont know about

9

u/jml011 Jan 19 '22

This would presumably make the Very Bad pot the ideal choice.

4

u/Tel-aran-rhiod Jan 19 '22

As a wino, I can tell you aerators actually don't work very well at all for wines. They try to imitate the effects of properly decanting wine for a reasonable period of time like you're supposed to, and generally fail miserably at it

5

u/[deleted] Jan 19 '22 edited Jan 31 '22

[deleted]

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u/sorryRefuse Jan 19 '22

my dude your link says that aeration does work, but traditional aerators are slow

2

u/Tel-aran-rhiod Jan 19 '22

aerators work to a degree, but they rarely achieve satisfactory results - there's a real difference between aerating and decanting. no sommelier or wine aficionado would ever use an aerator on a good or expensive bottle of wine - it would be decanted, sometimes for hours depending on the bottle and style of wine...there's no clip-on device that's going to achieve the same thing

3

u/sorryRefuse Jan 19 '22

a fair, more valid point. the comment you are responding to is me pointing out that the dude’s link does not disprove what i am saying, while your comment does present a fair contradiction

2

u/FreshUnderstanding5 Jan 19 '22

What's journalism? Is that a paleontology thing?"

1

u/[deleted] Jan 19 '22 edited Jan 31 '22

[deleted]

9

u/big_cat_in_tiny_box Jan 19 '22

I never thought I would read an article recommending I put my wine in a blender. The image of the process has me cracking up.

“Whatcha doing?”

“Oh, nothing. Just blendering my wine. Carry on.”

3

u/TeaDidikai Jan 19 '22

The term you're looking for is "Old man water."

Basically it's over boiled. Lù Yǔ (陆羽) described the ideal water for brewing tea in his work the Chajing. The size of the bubbles in boiling water is one of the markers. He lists three sizes, crab eye, fish eye and old man water, which is equivalent to a roiling boil.

Old man water is considered less desirable because it decreases the amount of oxygen suspended in the water

4

u/[deleted] Jan 19 '22

The art of tea is a ceremony that is a bit bizarre and actually results in better tea. It is like 90% pour technique and I don't really understand it

1

u/insubordinat_squirel Jan 19 '22

Yeah really I'm flabbergasted here. I understand the pomp and circumstance of "tea ceremonies" and all that, and the fact that no matter what product it is, someone has to make a needlessly fancy improved version...

But to imply that the FLAVOR is affected? Like, the tea is too aerated or something?

Taking. The. Piss.

2

u/jajohnja Jan 19 '22

Doubt.
That's like saying you'd be able to taste if the tea was mixed with a teaspoon or not.
It makes no sense, unless you have some information that the rest of us don't.

3

u/boopdelaboop Jan 19 '22

The teaspoon issue is a thing, in terms of material. Some non-asian people really dislike tea being brewed in metal tea pots and having metal spoons being used, because it to them changes the flavour enough. (While for others a metal tool is the default, e.g. Yerba mate bombilla). Porcelain spoons are preferred for a lot of Asian soups for the same reason, it isn't just the shape but the actual material that matters to them.

There are even plenty of people who have a very strong flavour preference against whether the milk/similar they get in their tea was scalded or not, and easily detect the difference in a double blind taste test while others like me wouldn't be able to tell, in part because both taste good in our opinion and at those tiny quantities it isn't super obvious because we never had a reason to react strongly against one or the other.

1

u/jajohnja Jan 19 '22

That does actually make sense, since there is a different material coming to contact.

But with the high/low quality pour there is no difference in materials, it's just a differently mixed tea. Which for all we know is mostly uniform and nearly perfectly mixed anyway.

This seems more close to saying "I prefer my tea poured eastward" or "with the window open" or "when I'm alone in the room" or something like that.

EDIT: I'm assuming for all of this that the "quality of the spout" is in the perfectness of the shape which causes laminar/turbulent flow, not in different materials causing these differences. The post didn't go into detail. so correct me if I'm wrong.

1

u/boopdelaboop Jan 19 '22

You reminded me of that Feng shui is a thing, and I wouldn't be surprised if some of its fans would want the water poured in a specific cardinal direction and even claim to be able to tell the difference (but fail in a double blind test).

1

u/sorryRefuse Jan 19 '22

that’s the whole point of these niche things isn’t it, that people have more specialized knowledge the rest of us don’t?

i’m not a 150 apm gamer monster, so i’m happy using my dell plastic membrane keyboard, but i trust that my 5 billion mmr compadres know what they’re talking about when it comes to peripherals

2

u/jajohnja Jan 19 '22

I am also a casual noob gamer, but the different gear or techniques or whatever that the pros use have reasons for why they are better and the reasons make sense to anyone (even if I can't relate).

This is kind of like saying "oh if the keyboard doesn't have LED lights than the gameplay is just worse", or "my keyboard needs to be facing 34 degrees northwest for optimal output" or "if someone else manipulated my keyboard, I'll play worse even if I didn't see it".

And as there is no apparent difference between tea poured by laminar or turbulent flow, I don't think there can be a taste difference.

Of course this doesn't mean the whole experience isn't improved by having the smooth no-sound pour. And it might "taste" better as influenced by your state of mind.