Make The Perfect Cup of Tea
Ranked #15,382 in Food & Cooking, #265,254 overall
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.
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?
Fetching blurbs now... please stand byMilk 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.
Posted October 14, 2011
purplelady says:
I would probably just eliminate the milk. I love to get the full flavor of the tea.
Posted June 07, 2010
How Do You Like Your Tea?

Have a cup and sign my guest book
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Danzuc
Oct 14, 2011 @ 10:54 am | delete
- Great lens, im a big tea fan. Thumbs up.
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JeanJohnson
Sep 1, 2011 @ 10:11 pm | delete
- Tea is delicious and this lens was very interesting, thank you!
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Chadrew
Sep 2, 2010 @ 4:00 am | delete
- I love tea and drink it every day. It's nice to know the proper way to make it.
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brandonmotz
Jun 8, 2010 @ 8:01 pm | delete
- What a great lens. I personally like tea with no sugar and just a little cream. Earl Grey all the way :)
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purplelady Jun 7, 2010 @ 11:44 pm | delete
- I don't drink tea as much as I should given how much I like it when I do. I love green tea and especially iced green tea. Not sure how "pure" it is, but I love the iced green tea at Panera Breads.
I also love that you support the charity that I do. Some of my charity donation goes to the Women's Peace Campaign.
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About the Author
More from NanLT
by NanLT
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 »
- 239 featured lenses
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