Sorry, Dave. I can’t make you a cup of tea right now.

I’ve no idea why my dog feels compelled to roll around on dead things or the leavings of incontinent seagulls, but she’s always eager to share these wonderful achievements with me – and always surprised when I shout and back away, retching and flailing my arms.

My reaction was much the same when my young acolyte and travelling companion, Huw, excitedly drew my attention to a BBC news article about a high-tech ‘tea-maker’ called the BKON Craft Brewer. This apparatus, the report claimed, uses a vacuum chamber to accelerate the infusion process by forcing water to boil at lower than normal temperatures. I thought at first that my callow friend had belatedly stumbled across an April Fool’s Day spoof, but no: the article was entirely serious – and so was he.

With a rueful shake of the head I asked him to remind me why it is that mountain climbers can’t make a decent brew.

“Because the reduced atmospheric pressure lowers the boiling point of water”, he chanted back obligingly. The penny still hadn’t dropped.

“So, why”, I enquired curtly, “would anyone even ATTEMPT to brew tea in a contraption that reduces atmospheric pressure to levels found only at the EDGE OF SPACE?”

Huw had no answer to give, and neither did the BBC’s grotesquely ill-informed news report, the remainder of which was padded out with a rehashed 2012 piece about a prototype ‘capsule-based’ tea-dispenser developed by Cambridge Consultants…

I wasn’t ready for this.

Although I’m almost fully recovered from last year’s health traumas, there are little triggers that can prompt a temporary relapse. This, evidently, was one such and, not for the first time, I was thankful to have Huw at my side. I was dimly aware of him assisting me to the sofa, easing my shoes off and gently lifting my legs onto a cushion as the familiar waves of dizziness and nausea swept over me.

Cambridge Consultants HQ

The reason for my distress was, of course, the pivotal role played by Cambridge Consultants in developing the loathsome round teabag. Since its unholy debut in 1985, this flavour-desecrating abomination has been responsible for the virtual genocide of the traditional rectangular bag, and my fevered mind was suddenly consumed with irrational feelings of guilt for all the years I had spent living in denial, turning a blind eye to the shattered glass and bloodstained personal effects littering the pavements, right up until the day the first brick had come smashing through my own window.

Trapped in this bleak vision of the past, I found myself reliving, over and over again, that awful moment when I cracked open a fresh box of Choicest Blend and found myself staring into the abyss. Oblivion beckoned, but just as the darkness was about to close in, a seemingly random memory pulled me back from the brink. Last autumn there was a mild flurry of excitement about a lost time capsule, rediscovered after three decades in the ground.  Some sort of Steve Jobs connection had made it newsworthy and I recall thinking that 30 years wasn’t a particularly impressive time-span – I’ve got tins of shoe polish older than that.

In my delirium, however, I imagined myself alongside Mr Jobs back in 1983, packing box after box of rectangular-bagged Choicest Blend into my own, bottomless time capsule. Comforted by this happy vision I drifted back to consciousness and found the ever-faithful Huw at my side, anxiously wafting the vapours from a fresh-brewed cup of extra-strong single-estate Kwazulu over me. I patted him lightly on the arm, regretting my earlier sharpness, and offered these words of counsel in return for his kindness:

“Do not let your tea-sense be led astray by the sparkling lure of high technology. Once you have fulfilled the basic requirement of clean, fresh water, heated to an appropriate temperature, the only true way to make a better brew is to use a better leaf. Anyone who tells you otherwise is a fool or a charlatan – or an employee of Cambridge Consultants.”

Reality Check

BKON co-founder, Dean Vastardis, putting the Craft Brewer through its paces at a trade show, concludes his demonstration with this refreshingly modest claim: “You can’t do this any other way. Except with a teapot, boiling water and six minutes of time.”