Okay, hot water, teabag . . . how hard can this be? Making tea isn't difficult, but any tea drinker can tell a nice cup from one that's not so nice. You'd be surprised how much things vary, even with such a simple formula. It's a bit cosmic really, sometimes a pot of tea can be a truly transcendental experience. Other times it just, as we'd say in California, "tastes like ass." Water makes a huge difference, as does the method of heating and, of course, the tea one uses.

The way I was taught to brew tea was to throw teabags into the pot and leave them there until it was "strong enough to pour itself." There's a certain brute appeal to this method, and it's certainly not labor intensive.

However, the "bitterness" that most people dislike about tea grows stronger as the tea brews longer. This bitter flavor comes from the tannen in the tea leaves, which is the last flavor to leave the leaves after they've been sitting for a while in hot water. Now, if you're concerned about the lack of hair on your chest or are about to go play rugby against a bunch of giants from Munster, by all means, leave those bags in there.

Later on, I began to brew my tea with the "five minute pot" method to reduce that bitter flavor, using two teabags in a four-person pot. Then I met Rex. Rex is from New Zealand and drinks more tea in a week than most people drink over the course of an average year. Rex may drink a lot of tea, but he's got its brewing down to a science and consistently produces a perfect, full-bodied pot of tea without even a hint of bitterness to it. It's his method that I describe in "The Perfect Brew."