I’m British and TEA is an important part of my culture, so I expect, NO I DEMAND, you get this right!
We’ve allowed the Americans to ruin our high streets with Starbucks coffee chains and their half-fat lattes, but on tea we are not budging, there is only one way to make tea correctly, it’s the British way.
Rule Britannia and Long Live The Queen of England!
Funny Teapot Illustration -by Marie Law-
Teapot vs Teabag in Cup/Mug
I’m not sure what is wrong with people who put the teabag in the cup to brew the tea, it’s just wrong, so wrong not only will I never visit the home again of a person performing this travesty against tea, but you are no longer welcome in my home!!!
This is NOT open for debate, tea is made in a teapot, NOT a cup/mug.
The Perfect Cup of British Tea
The correct tea making procedure is as follows, NO EXCEPTIONS!
1. NEVER put the teabag in the cup/mug.
1.1. For best results use a china or earthenware teapot.
2. Only boil the water once, if you’ve allowed it to cool for more than 8 seconds, throw it away and start again: screw global warming, this is TEA, it has to be absolutely PERFECT!
2.1. Microwaves are an amazing time saving invention, however they are NOT a suitable replacement for a quality kettle! Water for tea is boiled in a kettle, we aren’t American’s drinking Coffee!!!
3. Swirl a little bit of hot water in the teapot and throw it away. A cold teapot is an unfriendly teapot. If you are a pro tea maker also warm the cup/mug, but I can let this one go. Let the record show, I’m a reasonable person, I’m not pedantic about rules.
4. Place an appropriate number of teabags (one per person) in the warmed teapot and immediately add the boiling water, hotter the better: note the 8 seconds rule above.
5. Allow the tea to brew an appropriate amount of time while protected by a suitable tea cozy. Now here’s where the expert tea makers experience comes into play, different tea brands require different brewing times.
5.1. You also have to take into account the time of year (winter months require more time), altitude (high up a mountain, water boils at a lower temperature!), barometric pressure, hardness of the water and many other tiny factors.
5.2. On tea cosies, her we can have some fun, but not too much fun! The perfect tea cosy is made from Welsh wool sheared in August, you just can’t find better cosy wool than Welsh wool. Tea cosy design is where we can “let our hair down”, but not too much, a classy tea cosy with a Union Jack design is always appreciated, but under NO circumstances should a lewd design be used!
6. Slowly pour the tea from the teapot into the cup/mug at a rate of between 40ml and 50ml per second. Leave between 18mm and 25mm from the top of the cup/mug for adding milk if required. The expert will ask in advance if the drinker adds milk and approx. how much so they know in advance how much space to leave: think ahead and avoid problems.
7. Provide chilled milk (should not have left the fridge more than 5mins earlier) and sugar lumps for the tea drinker to choose how they take their tea. Don’t forget the silver spoons, one per cup/mug tastefully provided on a small saucer, no sharing, we aren’t Canadians!!!
Optional: Biscuits: the expert tea maker will provide a suitable variety of biscuits on a small plate. Always start with a rich base of Hob Nobs for the dunking risk takers (you know who you are) and ample depth of Rich Teas for the novice and traditionalist drinkers. If you are feeling particularly adventurous consider Jammy Dodgers, but NEVER Ginger Nut biscuits! Not only do Ginger Nut biscuits ruin the taste of the perfect cup of tea, they have a tendency to quickly disintegrate when dunked!!!
DO NOT confuse the drinker by providing Jaffa Cakes, Jaffa Cakes are NOT proper biscuits and should only be given to children for entertainment purposes.
After several years of practice and feedback you’ll be able to call yourself a British Tea Maker.
David Law : Expert British Tea Maker with over 30 years experience.
If you look up ‘tea’ in the first cookery book that comes to hand you will probably find that it is unmentioned; or at most you will find a few lines of sketchy instructions which give no ruling on several of the most important points.
This is curious, not only because tea is one of the main stays of civilization in this country, as well as in Eire, Australia and New Zealand, but because the best manner of making it is the subject of violent disputes.
When I look through my own recipe for the perfect cup of tea, I find no fewer than eleven outstanding points. On perhaps two of them there would be pretty general agreement, but at least four others are acutely controversial. Here are my own eleven rules, every one of which I regard as golden:
First of all, one should use Indian or Ceylonese tea. China tea has virtues which are not to be despised nowadays — it is economical, and one can drink it without milk — but there is not much stimulation in it. One does not feel wiser, braver or more optimistic after drinking it. Anyone who has used that comforting phrase ‘a nice cup of tea’ invariably means Indian tea.
Secondly, tea should be made in small quantities — that is, in a teapot. Tea out of an urn is always tasteless, while army tea, made in a cauldron, tastes of grease and whitewash. The teapot should be made of china or earthenware. Silver or Britanniaware teapots produce inferior tea and enamel pots are worse; though curiously enough a pewter teapot (a rarity nowadays) is not so bad.
Thirdly, the pot should be warmed beforehand. This is better done by placing it on the hob than by the usual method of swilling it out with hot water.
Fourthly, the tea should be strong. For a pot holding a quart, if you are going to fill it nearly to the brim, six heaped teaspoons would be about right. In a time of rationing, this is not an idea that can be realized on every day of the week, but I maintain that one strong cup of tea is better than twenty weak ones. All true tea lovers not only like their tea strong, but like it a little stronger with each year that passes — a fact which is recognized in the extra ration issued to old-age pensioners.
Fifthly, the tea should be put straight into the pot. No strainers, muslin bags or other devices to imprison the tea. In some countries teapots are fitted with little dangling baskets under the spout to catch the stray leaves, which are supposed to be harmful. Actually one can swallow tea-leaves in considerable quantities without ill effect, and if the tea is not loose in the pot it never infuses properly.
Sixthly, one should take the teapot to the kettle and not the other way about. The water should be actually boiling at the moment of impact, which means that one should keep it on the flame while one pours. Some people add that one should only use water that has been freshly brought to the boil, but I have never noticed that it makes any difference.
Seventhly, after making the tea, one should stir it, or better, give the pot a good shake, afterwards allowing the leaves to settle.
Eighthly, one should drink out of a good breakfast cup — that is, the cylindrical type of cup, not the flat, shallow type. The breakfast cup holds more, and with the other kind one’s tea is always half cold before one has well started on it.
Ninthly, one should pour the cream off the milk before using it for tea. Milk that is too creamy always gives tea a sickly taste.
Tenthly, one should pour tea into the cup first. This is one of the most controversial points of all; indeed in every family in Britain there are probably two schools of thought on the subject. The milk-first school can bring forward some fairly strong arguments, but I maintain that my own argument is unanswerable. This is that, by putting the tea in first and stirring as one pours, one can exactly regulate the amount of milk whereas one is liable to put in too much milk if one does it the other way round.
Lastly, tea — unless one is drinking it in the Russian style — should be drunk without sugar. I know very well that I am in a minority here. But still, how can you call yourself a true tea lover if you destroy the flavour of your tea by putting sugar in it? It would be equally reasonable to put in pepper or salt. Tea is meant to be bitter, just as beer is meant to be bitter. If you sweeten it, you are no longer tasting the tea, you are merely tasting the sugar; you could make a very similar drink by dissolving sugar in plain hot water.
Some people would answer that they don’t like tea in itself, that they only drink it in order to be warmed and stimulated, and they need sugar to take the taste away. To those misguided people I would say: Try drinking tea without sugar for, say, a fortnight and it is very unlikely that you will ever want to ruin your tea by sweetening it again.
These are not the only controversial points to arise in connexion with tea drinking, but they are sufficient to show how subtilized the whole business has become. There is also the mysterious social etiquette surrounding the teapot (why is it considered vulgar to drink out of your saucer, for instance?) and much might be written about the subsidiary uses of tealeaves, such as telling fortunes, predicting the arrival of visitors, feeding rabbits, healing burns and sweeping the carpet. It is worth paying attention to such details as warming the pot and using water that is really boiling, so as to make quite sure of wringing out of one’s ration the twenty good, strong cups of that two ounces, properly handled, ought to represent.
Evening Standard, 12 January 1946.
The Collected Essays,
Journalism and Letters of George Orwell,
Volume 3,
1943-45,
Penguin ISBN, 0-14-00-3153-7
A Nice Cup of Tea By George Orwell