Con­form­ing to stan­dards is an impor­tant part of many jobs, and tea brew­ing is no exception.

In 1980 the British Stan­dards Group pro­duced a doc­u­ment, Method for Prepa­ra­tion of a Liquor of Tea, set­ting out, once and for all, the British Stan­dard method for the brew­ing of tea. I’m sure its rai­son d’être was in hope that it would stop the bit­ter and vicious in-fighting between the classes on whether or not the milk went in before or after the brew.

Its abstract states:

The method con­sists in extract­ing of sol­u­ble sub­stances in dried tea leaf, con­tain­ing in a porce­lain or earth­en­ware pot, by means of freshly boil­ing water, pour­ing of the liquor into a white porce­lain or earth­en­ware bowl, exam­i­na­tion of the organolep­tic prop­er­ties of the infused leaf, and of the liquor with or with­out milk or both.

This stan­dard method is to be used in sen­sory tests, but its amus­ing nonethe­less… as count­less oth­ers thought when it won the Ig Nobel Prize for Lit­er­a­ture in 1999.