Make The Perfect Cup of Tea

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Nothing Beats a Good Cuppa Tea

In this day of modern conveniences people have forgotten the fine art of making a cup of tea.

Why go through the process of making a pot of tea if you can just dunk a teabag into a cup?

Teabags are certainly easier. No mess from the loose tea. No straining the tea.














The benefits from using loose tea cannot be denied though.



  • Using the loose tea allows you to enjoy not only drinking the tea, but also the ritual of making the tea.

  • Buying loose leaf tea is cheaper. Compared cup by cup, the cost for loose tea is nearly half the cost of teabags.

  • Superior flavour. The processing methods used to get the tea leaf into the tea bag cause the oils within the leaves to dry up. Most tea bags, especially the cheaper brands merely give you coloured water with little flavour.

  • More of the natural antioxidants found in the oils of the tea are retained in the tea.

  • Superior quality of leaf. Teabags often contain the "dust" or "fannings", the two lowest grades of tea leaves, left at the bottom of the tea barrel after the better leaves have all been removed.



Given all this why would anyone want to make a cup of tea using a tea bag.

So go ahead, make yourself a perfect cup of tea today. I'll show you how.

Make the perfect cup of tea.

Step by Step Instructions

  • Boil fresh cold water in a kettle

  • Pour into the teapot to warm it - the best pot is made from china or earthenware; never use metal

  • Swish round and dump that out

  • Measure out 1 teaspoon loose tea per cup into the pot (plus 1 for the pot if you like a stronger cup)

  • Boil fresh cold water in the kettle a second time

  • As soon as it boils pour the still boiling water over the tea leaves into the teapot - for black tea

  • Stir gently

  • Let brew for 2 - 5 minutes. Over brewing will cause it to be bitter. The strength of the tea is determined by the amount of tea not the brewing time.

  • Halfway through brewing stir it again

Pour the tea through a strainer into the cup once brewed.
Add milk and/or sugar if desired.

Very Important

Make sure the teapot and kettle are both free of lime scale.

Use fresh cold water and never reboil it.

Store your tea in a cool, dark place.

Brewing Loose Tea is Easy

Brewing Loose Leaf Tea : Brewing Black Tea
by expertvillage | video info

5 ratings | 1,756 views
curated content from YouTube

Milk in Tea

It's the English Way

Debates rage on whether milk should be added to the cup before or after pouring in the tea.

This debate started in Victorian England.

Cups made from cheaper ceramics would shatter when hot tea was poured into them. To prevent this from happening, milk would be poured first into the cup to diffuse the heat.

Snobbish Victorians who could afford a better grade of ceramic would show off by pouring the tea in first. "Look, my tea cups didn't break."

These days, laboratory tests have found that tea made with the milk poured into the cup first are hotter on serving than tea made with the milk poured in after. The guys over at Kitchen Science Experiments worked it all out for us.

Studies have also shown that when the milk is poured in first it dissolves better into the tea.

Of course, this is all a moot point if you're brewing from tea bags, then it's definitely milk last, tea first.



Should milk be added to the cup before pouring in the tea, or after?

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Milk first, tea second.

Tea first, milk second

Danzuc says:

I believe milk should always be added after the tea bag has been removed otherwise it changes taste so definitely milk after.

purplelady says:

I would probably just eliminate the milk. I love to get the full flavor of the tea.

 

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About the Author

NanLT is an American living in England. It took a few years but she did finally learn how to drink tea the "proper" English way.
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NanLT has been writing at Squidoo since January 2009 and in that time has established herself as an authority on such diverse topics as home cooking... more »

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