Destemming

Destemming is the act of removing the stems of tea leaves to improve their capacity to retain sterility. Since tea leaves tend to be fragile and attempting to destem them using regular tools would likely destroy them, C.H.E.S. members instead prefer to employ techniques such as Occam’s Razor.

The stems themselves are usually of no value and readily discarded, though some sterility users have come up with their own little rituals for dealing with the stems; some cast them into the sea, others bury them. Nuck Chorris, whose Orkney tea is too dangerous to be carelessly discarded, even in stem form, usually has his butler throw them into 0i+0j.