Sil rants about how to make a decent cup of tea, most of which I agree with. To complete the picture Scary Duck rants about how to get hold of a decent cup of tea outside the UK. Both of these refer to ordinary tea bag tea, the sort that goes well with a fried breakfast, first thing in the morning, coming home from work, visiting someone with a rich tea biscuit, that sort of thing.
For those who also like leaf tea (and don’t think one is any better than the same in the same way that I enjoy an instant coffee more on the aforementioned occasions and a filter coffee when I am relaxing at the weekend; it is generally pointless to have a 30 year old Macallan in the pub but I would always prefer one at home; I don’t want Belgian chocolate on the train home from work, but I would always prefer something from Hotel Chocolat if I am relaxing at home, preferably with said Macallan (which I don’t (sadly) own)) I can heartily recommend Copeland and Shaw, an online tea business recently started by some friends. I particularly recommend the cherry-flavoured Japanese Sencha (roasted green tea), the Mau Feng (white tea), and Russian Caravan (blended black tea).
A small note here on teabags: if you want to try green or white tea, don’t use teabags: green tea for one tends to go bitter very quickly- even with leaf tea it is best to only brew it for about 30 seconds- with the fine tea you get in tea bags it goes bitter when you bring the teabag home from the shop; white tea is so delicate in flavour that it’s nearly (though not entirely) pointless.
“Most of which”? *Most*? Where lie your disagreements?
The green tea you got me for my birthday is lovely. I have not yet tried the white tea because I haven’t had a period of time when I can sit down and enjoy it on my own…
OK, it was in the footnotes: I can’t fault the general thrust. I always extract the teabag before adding milk and sugar. I had an initial twitch about putting in the milk and sugar last, but that comes from being brought up with loose tea and teapots, where you can get away with putting in the milk first as the boiling water has already hit the tea leaves. With teabags, this is nonsense as the bag is in the cup itself, which is why I now put the milk in last, although something inside me is still not comfortable with it.
Excellent post. I am facing a few of these issues as well.
.
I love what you guys are usually up too. Such clever work and
exposure! Keep up the excellent works guys I’ve
included you guys to blogroll.