How Do You Drink Yours?

How Do You Drink Yours? Tea rituals Activity Card Over 70% of people in the UK drink tea everyday! 97% of them use tea bags, a relatively modern invention. Some use a teapot, others make it in their cup. Some people add milk, others don’t. Some drink herbal teas, others regular tea. In Japan, they have a special tea ceremony called the Chanoyu. The Tea Master makes the tea using powdered green tea and boiled water mixed together with a bamboo whisk. A special tea kettle called a samovar is used in Russia to make strong black tea. This tea is so strong that it has to be diluted with hot water before you can drink it. In China, they have a tea ceremony, all about how it smells and tastes. To make sure that the tea is just right, the rules for making the tea must be followed carefully. The server pours the tea into each cup ensuring that it is just over half way, it is then polite to drink the tea by emptying the cup in three swallows. Your challenge As you can see making a cup of tea is far from simple. So what is the best way to drink tea? Hot or cold? Green or fruity? Black or milky? With sugar or without? Can you find out which is the most popular way to drink tea?

Discuss Who will you ask? How many people will you include? How will you record what you find? Remember to ask as many different people as you can, but only interview people you know and trust. Getting started Look at the sample questionnaire below. Are there any questions you would like to change, delete or add? Name: Age: Male / Female 1. Do you drink tea? Yes / No 2. How many cups of tea do you drink each day? 3. What type/brand of tea do you have in your cupboard at the moment? 4. Do you use teabags? Yes / No 5. Do you know anyone who drinks different types of tea? (who / what) 6. Do you make tea in a teapot? 7. How long do you leave the tea to brew? 8. Do you warm the pot or mug first? 9. How much sugar do you put in your tea? 10. What type of milk do you have in your tea? 11. Do you put the milk into the cup first or last? 12. Is there one thing which is more important than all the others when you make a nice cup of tea? Test your ideas You may want a tally chart like this to collect the results from the questionnaire. Then you can see any pattern in people’s responses. How many cups of tea do you drink a day? How do you make your tea? How long do you let your tea brew? Do you have sugar? How many spoons? Do you have milk? Which kind? 1 2 3 4 Tea bag Tea pot Herbal tea 30 seconds 1 minute 2 minutes 5 minutes 1 2 3 4 Skimmed Semi Skimmed Full fat No milk What’s the best way to present the information that you collected? Could you use a bar graph or even a pie chart? What other ways could you use?