An official British standard for tea tasting?

BS6008 is a British ISO standard for : “Preparation of a liquor of tea for use in sensory tests”. Yes its a standard created by the British national standards body to tell people how to taste tea properly. It has procedures for preparation with or without milk.

Crazy!

Here is a link to the official specification sheet. http://dl.dropbox.com/u/653582/BS6008.pdf

2 Replies
Janefan said

I’ve seen it! As a tech writer, I think it’s cool that there’s a standards document for tea (of course the British would come up with this!) When/how this would actually be used though…? My guess is that the British equivalent of the FDA does quality/safety testing on all tea imports? (I don’t even know how this is done in the US!) I suppose this standard could also be used for “taste tests” conducted for market research, etc.

The British Royal Society of Chemistry also wrote a related doc on how to prepare the perfect cup of tea. It’s a bit tongue-in-cheek (I think!) and therefore less clinical than the ISO standard:
http://www.rsc.org/pdf/pressoffice/2003/tea.pdf

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~lauren. said

Thanks for sharing — I found the specs very interesting! LOL!

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