Understanding tea-baggers: public and private deviations

Reprinted with permission from The Journal of Incomprehensible Behavior

 T. Milton Nobel[i], Rajat Guptaji[ii], and Muffy T. Pinkyfinger[iii]

Abstract

After 40 years of observations conducted in a broad variety of venues, this researcher designed and performed a series of laboratory experiments to determine the most effective method of preparing hot tea:  active and repeated dunking of teabags or passive steeping.

Discussion

Observed in coffee and tea shops across the world, including major tea centers in India, Nepal, England, China, and Thailand, our principal investigator has always been confused, and sometimes annoyed, by tea drinkers who, when presented with a cup of hot water, repeatedly dunk their teabags apparently in an effort to speed brewing.  While such abhorrent behavior might simply be a manifestation of some nervous habit or deep neurosis, perhaps there is “method in their madness,” to co-op an overused metaphor.

Genuinely sophisticated tea aficionados prepare their tea using loose tea pearls in a special purpose pot, preparing carefully and serving with ceremony.  More primitive peoples, like the British, gravitate toward metallic tea balls containing chopped loose leaf.

Americans, at home and abroad, invariably opt for tea bags, regardless the near absence of tea’s classic bouquet and overwhelmed by the jaw-clinching taste of stewed paper.  Generally speaking, many Americans choose tea in hopeless attempts to elevate themselves above the masses or crude companions who order coffee.  On a subconscious level, all tea drinkers are trying to slow the pace of life to delay inevitable death; coffee drinkers want to get on with life with more pep in their step.

One subset of tea drinkers will sink their teabag into the hot water in their cup and wait patiently for several minutes for the tea to steep and brew.  Another population of tea drinkers, when presented with a tea bag will dunk it repeatedly for several minutes, sometimes focused, more often with practiced, even snobbish detachment.

Among annoying dunkers, beliefs persists so strong and immutable that among the most outrageous malfactors, a market has developed for automatic teabag dunkers.

A critical question remains, which of the two techniques delivers thoroughly brewed hot tea fastest.

This work as funded over two years by The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) Office of Afghan Tribal Pacification.

Experimental

Issues related to quality aside, measures of brewy-ness would be color or turbidity, both properties susceptible to quantization by changes in light transmission.  Brewy-ness is the reciprocal of the light transmission normalized to an arbitrary, common end-point.

Our initial experimental set up comprised the following equipment:  (1) a photographic light meter (Ever, Type NE-1); (2) a metronome (Wittner, Piccolo model); (3) a laboratory timer measuring minutes; (4) tea bags (Lipton Orange Pekoe); (5) a smooth sided water glass; (6) and LED flashlight; and (7) rectal thermometer.   

Dunking:  Using the metronome, our unpaid intern dunked a teabag between alternating tics.  Set at 10 beats per minute, the bag was dunked 5 times per minute for six seconds each time.  Light transmission reading were taken at the end of each minute while the teabag was in its elevated position between dunks.

Steeping:  at t=0, the teabag was dropped into the glass and was allowed to sink to the bottom where it remained undisturbed.  The measurement point for light transmission was well above the sunken teabag.

In each case, transmission measurements were taken each minute until an equivalent level of brewy-ness was reached.  Data was plotted and reported as per our DARPA contract.

However, our champions in military procurement insisted we opt for a custom, upscale model, worried they might not exhaust their entire appropriation for this year.  They further insisted that experimental data was meaningless unless the number of measurements, n= 10,000.

 

The assembled final test apparatus, designated as Caffeinated Fluid Determinator (CFD) Model 10 is shown at right:

Results 

Our experiment confirm our hypothesis that steeping tea without dunking would result in drinkable tea at a significantly faster rate.  Indeed, calculation indicates the difference to exceed 37%.

Discussion

While a few theorists have attempted to link this highly specific pair of alternative behaviors to certain political and sexual practices (the former passive-aggressive, the latter acrobatic), such suggestions are beyond the scope of this study.  In any case, political tea-baggers generally prefer highly sweetened ice tea, while sexual tea-baggers favor 4 Loko, Cosmos, and Astroglide.  Whenever they do choose hot tea, neither statistical nor anecdotal evidence exists suggesting skewed population distributions of dippers and steepers.

Our experiments and dataset reinforces our supposition that steeping is the preferred method for the preparation of hot tea from teabags.  While little or no difference was noted during the first minute of brewing at all measured dunking rates, after several minutes, simple steeping, even in the absence of mixing, reached maximum coloration significantly faster.

However, we opened an entirely different line of inquiry, when we realized the important role of temperature in the process.  We had originally theorized that identifying the superior method of brewing would benefit tea-baggers by having tea ready quicker and more efficiently.  We noted how when steeped tea neared maximum coloration, it was still too hot to drink for most of our test subjects, and several minutes of stirring might be necessary before it was ready to sip.  So while dunkers had to wait longer for their tea to brew, dunking helped reduce the temperature and the tea could be sipped almost as soon as maximum coloration was attained.

At this juncture it is not possible for our laboratory to definitively support one option over the other.

In this light, we believe it important, if not critically important to continue this research, investigating quantitatively and qualitatively the effects of temperature.

Grant applications have been submitted to NIH, DARPA, Navy Research Laboratories, USDA, and the FDA.  We await word.

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[i] PhD, Professor Emeritus, State University of New York at East Hampton

[ii] Doctoral Candidate, SUNY-East Hampton (Sir Thomas J. Lipton Fellow)

[iii] Very cute undergraduate unpaid intern, SUNY-East Hampton, whose daddy made a large contribution to the capital campaign for the science center, now named the Pinkyfinger Building.