Avian — the only one I personally know who designed and made his own motherboard and a brilliant guy in general — wrote on his blog a short article on how to use physics to get your tea temperature to 75°C without using a termometer. Most green (yellow, white et al. of its subclasses) teas are supposed to be infused in water of that temperature.

Á propos, I'll let you in on a more basic trick on how to get your water to 90°C — which is the optimal temperature for most teas other then green.

It's very easy actully — the moment you start seeing small bubbles rising up, you turn off the heat. Because of the impression those small bubbles give, this is some cultures referred to as the pearly boil.

The idea is that at the time the first bubbles start to form and rise, the water nearest the heat source has already reached its boiling point (100°C in normal conditions) , but the heat has not spread allover the water yet. Therefore the water further from the heat source is colder and the average is about 90°C.

Of course, this method doesn't work in microwave ovens and the average temeprature of the water depends slightly on the measurements of the pot you're using — it works best when the water level is roughly the same height as the pot's width.

hook out >> somewhat tired, in need of more backup space

If you've ever walked into a hipster tea house, watched a documentary on India or are just generally not living under a rock, you've most probably already heard about the wonderful, mysterious, oriental specialty called masala chai.

Well, here's two secrets I have to share with you:

• Chai (or chae, cha, čaj, etc.) is just another word for tea (or tee, thé). Actually from my observations the tea-drinking nations can be divided into "tea"- and "chai"-nations. The former (e.g. UK, Germany, France) have gotten their tea by sea; while the latter are either countries of origin (e.g. China, India, Japan) or nations that have gotten their tea by land (e.g. Russia, Persia, Slovenia). This diversification seems to have originated from the different pronunciation of the same word in different lands/cantons of origin.
• Masala is just a word for spice mix. You can put it into curry or any other dish. Yes, this means that technically curry powder is a masala, while curry is roughly a word for a type of side dish.

So putting two and two together, masala chai is just the local name for spiced tea!

Well, as with all national dishes, it has a vast number of local variations, but all include tea, spices, milk and something to make it sweet.

So here's my easy to make, slightly westernised masala chai recipe:

1. Bring water to a pearly boil (i.e. very small bubbles of air are just starting to show up).
2. Pour the water over a teaspoon of strong black tea (Assam is the most obvious choice) and half of a teaspoon of garam masala (which you can get ready made in every decent supermarket nowadays) for every cup and leave for 3-5 minutes (I prefer 4,5).
3. Strain into your cup(s) and serve with milk and sugar (or honey).

Tip no. 1: this also works quite well if you want to spice up your recycled tea.
Tip no. 2: do not mistake garam masala for tandori masala unless you're into hot stuff!

It's probably not as good as the original, but it's certainly better then what you'll get served in most hipster tea houses or buy as ready made mixes. And it's easy to make.

hook out >> drinking masala chai and studying

As I've already mentioned, I'm giving a presentation on the Linux Business Conference in Portorož, Slovenia. At the time of writing I am without a (free) access point, so I'll cover the whole two(+1) day conference in one post which will be posted post festum. It's a cross between my notes on random observations, so it's rather chaotic.

For the impatient, here's a quick summary:

All in all the conference was not bad, although for my taste it was too technical and too business-oriented. But being the only lawyer on board, that was to be expected. It was quite well organised but it did strike me odd is that there were so few attendants (77 or so I overheard). My presentation on "Open Standards and Open Formats (in the Public Administration)" went OK, not brilliant, but OK. Also, meeting Jon "Maddog" Hall was quite inspirational.

For a detailed day-by-day review, read on.

It sounds like a really odd couple, but mixing tea with alcohol is not a new idea. In fact in the early days when tea reached Europe, they drank it mainly for medicinal usage, like for example black tea with rum as a cold remedy.

What I've tried so far is mixing (Taylors of Harrogate) Yorkshire Gold with Grand Marnier which goes together really well.

After a quick search I've found there's a few "tea cocktail" recipes online — there's even an old one called "Frog" that includes Gin! Makes you wonder...

Á propos tea: unhomogenised milk tastes better and is even supposedly healthier, because what's dangerous to your veins clogging up is not the amount of the fat in the milk, but the fact that in homogenised milk fat's broken up into such small particles that they clot together in veins instead of being digested. I probably didn't explain this really correctly, but you get the idea...

hook out >> making a cup of tea and thinking...

Yesterday late at night it happened after cca. three years — spilled tea over the laptop!

Of course I tried to stop the spillage ASAP, dried everything I could reach and although it didn't seem much, I powered my trusty laptop down, plugged everything out and took the battery out as well.

Today, after a full night of being wide open and on supports to dry easier, there's no smoke, smell or anything suspicios ...only the spacebar is a bit sticky and harder to press.

...if only I didn't put sugar in that tea, I'd probably not need to open my laptop again!

Oh, well, I'll dust off the interior while I'm at it :P

...aaaaaaaafteeeeeeer the exams! XD

hook out >> taking the dog for a morning walk, then studying

By now, I suppose everybody's heard already that we're in recession.

Here's a small tip for all you tea-lovers out there: recycle your tea. Sure, it doesn't taste completely on par with freshly brewed, but reusing each batch of tea once still produces a satisfying enough cuppa. ...for recycling it twice, we're not that deep in excremental goo yet. Yeach! :P

Well, if only modern economy wasn't based on high paid online gamblers playing with virtual money on game servers called Dow Jones, DAX, etc. with real-life consequences. Considering the current development it's not hard to imagine them being on their BlackBerry teamspeak looking at dozens of computer monitors spewing out dice rolls and stats stock information:

brkr1337: "W00t!!!1 I can has found how I mine for real estate!"
nu_brkr: "4 REALZ??!"
brkr1337: "We ownzorz teh other t34m now!"
nu_brkr: "Is y00 shure it cant backfirez?"
brkr1337: "LOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOLLLLZZZZZZZ!!!!!11one y00 n00b, it shureshot! :D"
nu_brkr: "LOL! y00 R teh L33T :D"

...and, of course the bubble bursts at some time and they come crying for their mums! :P

hook out >> drinking recycled Yorskshire Gold from Taylors of Harrogate and studying Philosophy of Law

I'm sick — which in general is a bad thing as I had to skip an exam and am not feeling that fresh either :P — but this gives me a great excuse to experiment with tea and honey. And I'm not just talking about the herbal ones, which everyone knows go well with the sticky stuff — I'm talking about the caffeine-rich leafy goodness! :D

In general I found tea with honey mellower then tea with sugar. The flavour of honey, depending on its type (e.g. flower, forrest, chestnut, lime, orangeflower, etc.), also plays a big role in the overall taste of the tea. Here's a few combinations that I've tried so far:

• Darjeeling + flower honey = pretty nice, but next time I'm trying something even more subtle then flower honey (maybe orangeflower or acacia)
• Ceylon + forrest honey + milk = this one is very good, especially if the honey has a more complex aroma to add to the otherwise rather simple mellow Ceylon
• Ceylon + chestnut honey + milk = I quite like it; it seems that Ceylon is very versatile when it comes to mixing with honey (or spices for that matter)
• White Monkey + orangeflower honey = it takes the slight edge that this white tea otherwise has and makes it a bit more mellow, brings it close to Darjeeling with, what else, a hint of orangeflower; I like it a lot!

Overall, I think I can call this experiment a success and will happily continue to drink my tea as well as with different types of sugar (although cane only!) as well as with diverse honeys. And, yes, also without, when applicable ;)

hook out >> drinking White Monkey with orangeflower honey and studying Inheritance law ...oh, yea, and being ill :P

It's a well known fact that caffeine is the geeks' favourite drug in all its tasty and buzzy various forms :]

Some might remember my Fruc + instant coffee experiment from a year or two ago. Well, today a similar even took place — actually one that is perhaps more logical and has probably popped up in geek minds all over the planet before.

Let's look at the theory first:

• caffeine in coffee usually gives you a bigger and shorter buzz, because it's free of clutter (yes, not a very chemically exact term) and thus gets absorbed more easily
• caffeine in tea is bound to other substances (in this form in the olden days it was called "theine") which makes it harder for the body to absorb and therefore gives you a smaller, but longer lasting buzz
• ergo: if you mix coffee and tea you should get best of both worlds ;)

That's the theory ...now for the test itself. I've combined Yorkshire tea (from Taylors of Harrogate) with turkish-made coffee (from Zamorček) and got these results:

• appearance: like normal tea only a bit darker
• smell: tea-ish with slight hint of fresh turkish coffee
• taste: a bit gritty (due to ground coffee silt), but not unpleasant
• buzz: maybe it was due to a small amount of lack of sleep, but the buzz was surprisingly higher then expected — it's not a killer, but I feel it alright! ...actually, after an hour, my head is slightly buzzing and there's a hint of a headache as well ...niiiiiceeee :]

hook out >> now stop! it's hammer study time!

You just can't beat a perfect cup of ruby-coloured Darjeeling ...I just had to say it! :]

hook out >> studying Inheritance law and sipping another cup of Darjeeling "Himalaya" FTGFOP ...mmmmmm

Whew, the written part of the exam went OK. Now let's just hope that my feeling isn't wrong this time and that the oral exam will be successful.

Today's tea-related info blob will feature Rooibos ("Red bush").

First thing's first: it's not a tea (as in: Camellia sinensis) — it's a herbal tea, low on tannin and without any caffeine. Also, please don't call it "red tea" as you could confuse it with Oolong.

I won't bother you with all the things that you can read on Wikipedia about it, but just want to point the interesting fact, how many teas are drunk differently around the world than they are by the natives. Rooibos is a perfect example — people all over the world drink it without anything (no sugar, god forbid milk!), praising it's high antioxidants levels and I dunno what else ... while in it's native Africa people drink it with milk and sugar. I've tried it and I have to say it's pretty nice :)

I haven't gotten myself to trying Indian tea with yak butter and salt yet, but (hopefully) this I'll be able to conduct that experiment as well ;)

hook out >> drinking Rooibos with milk and sugar :]