How do you use a samovar???
Brett Lymn
Folks,
I am taking a punt that this is the right place to ask this.
I have just bought an electric samovar from a junk shop and we would
like to use it to make tea. The problem is that we have no real idea
about the art of making tea in a samovar. Can anyone help me out with
this? Email would be preferred!
BTW I have checked the thing out and it is ok to use on our mains
here in Australia. From what I can make out it was designed for 220V
operation which is ok for here.
--
Brett Lymn
mailer-daemon
Recently, 2bunnys saw that Brett Lymn (bl...@awadi.com.au) shaped the
electrons thusly:
You *don't* make tea in a samovar, it is used to make *hot water* only!
One then uses the hot water to make tea in the cup (or glass if one is
traditional). You are lucky to have 220 mains, here in the USA we have
110 mains and so we can't use my wife's Russian samovar (even with a
transformer - Ohm's law, 1/2 the voltage = twice the current = blown
fuses).
--
Qui c'est qu'a piti? | 2bu...@cpcug.org
Panikovsky
Brett Lymn wrote:
>
> Folks,
> I am taking a punt that this is the right place to ask this.
> I have just bought an electric samovar from a junk shop and we would
> like to use it to make tea. The problem is that we have no real idea
> about the art of making tea in a samovar. Can anyone help me out with
> this? Email would be preferred!
>
> BTW I have checked the thing out and it is ok to use on our mains
> here in Australia. From what I can make out it was designed for 220V
> operation which is ok for here.
>
> --
> Brett Lymn
OK, Brett Lymn, if this is your real name, here we go.
The first thing you need to do with the electrtic samovar is to pull out all
of the electrical components, including the heating element, wiring, and,
most importantly the damn plug to convert it from a useless pile of junk you
wasted your hard earned Australian samoleans on to a device for tea prep.
The instruments of choice here are obviously a hammer and a pair of old
russian plyers that you can readily obtain from the same junk shop.
Use the claw end of the hammer to pull out the heating element through, and
this is important, *the top* of the samovar. You'll need the plyers to yank
out the wiring: simply wrap the cord around the jaws of the tool several
times and give it a few good pulls. Chances are your Mr. Tea will readily
give up its "extra" components: these electric puppies were made during the
soviet era, known for equally well for the quality of its merchandise as it
was for the wide range of almost fully functional options available therefor,
but we digress.
At this point you have several options: you could chuck the remnants of the
electric samovar (kinda sounds like the electric monk in Adams' series,
doesn't it?), optionally having beaten them either with the claw or the
business end of the hammer. At this particular juncture, as George Bush used
to say, you should go back and purchase a real samovar. Or you could give
the work in progress to your welder friend to have a metal tube welded
concentrically with the body of the device smack in the middle of it. The
diameter of the tube should be ca. 1/3 the diameter of the samovar at its
widest, e.g. the top:
-- --
/ ---- \
[============]
\ | | /
\ | | /===
\ | | / \
======
[ ]
Into this tube you will feed the fuel with its electrons in the unpacked
state: intact and unshelled. The debate over the best possible fuel will
undoubtedly ensue, so please follow the most cultural thread that you have
started in scrm for the details. In this humble, well, not so humble
poster's opinion, the best fuel comes from semi-dry pine cones. Sure
there'll be True Siberians telling you that nothing short of cedar will do,
but how realistic is that? Right!
OK, back to the tempest in the samovar: the device that you have purchased is
solely for boiling water, which goes all around the outside of the welded
tube. The tea is made elsewhere completely. Well, not completely: a small
blue ceramic pot with a pink androgenous flower (as all flowers are) akin to
the one pictured in
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~yegor/tusovka/
, is placed on the very top of the samovar in the indentation on the picture
(actually on top of the perforated metal lid) directly over the combustable
matter in the previously welded tube. (This is not an incidneary device.
Yet). OK we are almost there. The ceramic pot is filled with ca. 1-2 table
spoons of loose tea leaves, Earl Grey preferably. When the water in the
samovar comes to a boil, do not panic. *Calmly* fill the ceramic pot with the
boiling water and then rapidly seal the pot with, obviously, a lid, and a
rolled up napkin to plug up the nozzle of the ceramic pot.
Place said pot over the samovar in the place previously designated in the
earlier paragraph. Alright, alright, over the top. Remember the perforated
lid? Good. Leave the tea alone for 5 minutes. IT'S BREWING, DAMN IT!!! OK,
now we (read: you) are ready to enjoy the tea.
Now, Americans and Bastardized Americanized True Former Russians (BATF) would
*strain* the tea as to remove the leaves and other solid matter! Can you
(expletive) believe it?! Real men (like Paul Hogan and Zhirinovski) drink
their tea pulp and all. They like their tea like they like their women :).
(Cold and bitter). A joke.
Panikovskij, like a True Russian that he is drinks his tea without straining
it - he is not so old! That's a lie spread by my enemieas. So, now you are
ready to proceed. You have the power. Good luck - PMS
PS: Should you be not brave enough to battle matters electrical, and would
actually stoop to making the electric monk version of tea, please know that i
will bear no liability for the final product. (I know you will not do this,
but as a precaution i am obligated to attach this disclaimer on all of my
tea-consulting notes - lawyers, you know.)
So, let's say you just boil the water in the electric samovar using your
standard australian metric volts. DO NOT INSERT PINE CONES ANYWHERE! This is
likely to start an electric fire. To put out the fire do not use water!!!
Water is a conductor. Use a chemical foam type of an extinguisher, for God's
sakes! Oh great! Now you got God involved in this discussion. I would not be
at all surprized if the esteemed, although poetically deficient moderation
board will reject this post! I would! (not really - i just spent 20 minutes
writing this).
I'm assuming the fire is out now. Good. I would start anew. Fresh water,
wash the samovar in case some of the fluorochemicals from the foam got into
it - it's unlikely, but you could have skin burns due to the *minute* amounts
of HF (hydrofluoric acid) formed from the decomposition of the foam in the
fire. The important thing is to avoid water. The HF fumes will kill you
rather painlessly (compared to the aqueous HF).
So we are making a fresh e-samovar. Did you wash the floors? Damn it, i told
you not to use water! The fresh e-samovar is prepared similarly to the first
one with the exception - and this is important -- cones!!! The water boils.
Proceed with the tea brewing in the ritualistic blue ceramic pot with the
depicted perannials. Let me know what happens. - Misha Panikovskij
Jon Mars
Misha,
I am shocked! I must remember to write about you in my diary.
Someone asked a question on the newsgroup and someone else actually
answered the question. Nice job!!!!
Jon Mars
Y. Perkhounkov
How would you know if someone answered a question in a direct letter
without posting to newsgroups?
Yelena.
Panikovsky
Y. Perkhounkov wrote:
>
> How would you know if someone answered a question in a direct letter
> without posting to newsgroups?
>
> Yelena.
Lena,
I must tell you, and i'm sure that i'm not the first one to do so, though i
haven't seen it posted in the newsgroups, that i like the way you think:
indeed i did send it by direct e-mail as well, because i knew that the
questions of such urgency could not wait for the moderators to get their act
straight (i lost my white-list priviledges by being largely irrelevant, but
that is the nature of being Panikovskij - you have to be at least two paces
out of step with the rest of the progressive humanity), and also, more
recently, i wanted to ensure myself the honor of having the longest sentence
on record in this new ng.
> On Fri, 10 May 1996, Jon Mars wrote:
>
> > Misha,
> >
> > I am shocked! I must remember to write about you in my diary.
> > Someone asked a question on the newsgroup and someone else actually
> > answered the question. Nice job!!!!
I had a lot of practice in all those posts that got rejected. Elliptically,
i do at times orbit avoiding the point, but apparently not far enough.
Speaking of which, you must here a lot of "life on Mars" jokes, i'd like to
hear some, since you are keeping a diary :-).
> > Jon Mars
--
"You've got a big mouth, and now I'm going to show
you an even bigger one" - David Mamet
disclaimer: i do need to work on that damn
http://skypoint.com/members/paniko19
Jon Mars
Yelena,
"If a tree falls in a forrest and there is nobody there to hear it,
is there a sound?"
Jon Mars
Jon Mars
One day I was in a bookstore looking at a book I thought I might
want to buy. The store had large windows and I could see the bus I
wanted to take, quite a ways down the street. That gave me about two
minutes to decided whether to buy the book and get it done, or put it
back on the shelf. I thought the task was probably impossible, but I
tried to flip through the pages in the hope that something would catch my
eye. Keep in mind that this was a decade ago, and we are talking about
the Soviet period. On one of the front pages was printed:
Is there life on Mars?
No, there is not life on Mars either.
That's the best "Mars joke" I ever read.
Jon Mars
Y. Perkhounkov
YES!
Unless "a forrest" means something different than "a forest".
Yelena.
Jon Mars
Yelena,
Gosh, I thought so highly of you until I discovered you spend your
time pointing out everybody's typos.
Jon Mars
Y. Perkhounkov
Actually, it was a joke. Please, don't mind.
Yelena.
On Sat, 11 May 1996, Jon Mars wrote: