[Dartmoor Dave]

a proper drink being a good single malt scotch whisky

Indubitably.

The rest of my family are all tea drinkers and won't touch anything other than Yorkshire Tea, to the extent that my sister who lives in New York used to take home a whole suitcase stuffed with tea bags when she visited. But nowadays she can get it online from an importer in the US, so perhaps it's one you could try in your quest for the perfect cuppa.

[StiffLegged]

benefit of tea leaf vs. tea bag

Tea bags vs loose leaf tea: Top 5 reasons to ditch the tea bags and take the loose-leaf plunge - Tea Sparrow

hype or real

I tried the One True Path but got lost in the bushes - tea bushes, of course. Trouble is, as with coffee, I like sugar in my tea and don’t care to explore the subtleties of unsweetened brews only strong enough to taste the leaf (or with coffee, strong enough to waterproof a wooden ship.) So the subtleties of Oolong Formosa or Tibetan Green Monkey are lost on me. Purists will sneer, but I’ll drink the stuff the way I like, not the way I’m told.

[Wheatfield]

My British wife learned how to make tea from her even more British mother, a lady who truly believed that the WOGS started in Calais.
Here are the necessities for a great cup of tea:
1) A real Brown Betty teapot. These are heavy earthenware pots that are an excellent thermal mass.
2) Quality loose tea leaves. Right now we are drinking Yorkshire Gold black tea.
3) Use whole milk (3.25% MF) poured into the cup to taste prior to pouring the hot tea in if you prefer milk. If you add milk to tea at the strength we make it at, the milk will probably curdle. Cream (10% MF or heavier) tends to make a rather heavy brew, it's fine for coffee, not so much for tea.
4) Pour the tea through a small strainer to remove any leaves that may come out. We have found that Brown Betty teapots have the spout mounted high enough on the pot that very few leaves pour out

We make a robust beverage best served in an equally robust earthenware mug rather than a China teacup.

Because of their mass, Brown Betty posts should be prewarmed with hot but not boiling water. They can (and will) crack if the preheat water is too hot.
Use one teaspoon of loose leaves per cup of tea being made, plus a teaspoon for the pot. To make two cups of tea, we use a tablespoon of leaves.
Let the tea steep in the pot covered by a tea cozy for 7 minutes. This is individual taste, we prefer a longer steep time. If you don't use sweetener or milk, you will want a shorter steep.
Lightweight ceramic pots are not as good as a Brown Betty because they lack sufficient thermal mass to keep the tea hot enough to steep properly, the metal teapots that restaurants tend to use are really bad as they don't have the mass to keep heat in. Same with an open top mug.

[aslyfox]

my method is simple

15 oz clear glass mug

preheat for 5 minutes with boiling water

empty mug

pour boiling water over two tea bags, dipping bags into the water and letting them sit in the glass for 5 minutes

add artificial sweetener

enjoy

constant comment - https://www.influenster.com/reviews/bigelow-constant-comment-tea

English breakfast tea

Earl grey

Irish breakfast tea

[lesmore49]

My wife is more knowledgeable about tea...and many other things than I am says in her view.....for some tea drinkers it's more about having the break...than the beverage. Others it's more about the tea quality/taste, etc...than the break. These would be aficionados.

Me, I mostly go with water, occasionally V8 low sodium vegetable juice or the once weekly beer...which in my case is Budweiser Prohibition. My beer used to be Newcastle Brown Ale.

I have tea very occasionally and it's Tetley Orange Pekoe decaf....or whatever is available.

One beer I've had a hankering for about a quarter of a century is Theakstons' Old Peculier. This Yorkshire beer company's advertising and the odd name/spelling ...some might say peculiar name is the appeal. Unfortunately they don't handle it out here.

https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn%3AANd9GcSWAnC713_caYvT_o420k...kFa8T_7uo_2g6b

Sorry for going a bit off topic.

[slartibartfast01]

I haven't had a Rich Tea biscuit in years. I agree, though - they're the perfect accompaniment to a brew... and they absolutely must be dunked

Have to get the timing right though. Dunking slightly too long results in a horrible mess in the bottom of the cup

[BigMackCam]

Have to get the timing right though. Dunking slightly too long results in a horrible mess in the bottom of the cup

A guilty pleasure of mine, as a teenager and young man, was to allow the Rich Tea to fall into the cup and then consume it after I'd finished drinking my tea, using a teaspoon to scoop it out. Not a regular occurrence as, even then, I was mostly a coffee drinker... But I did enjoy the occasional spoonful of Rich Tea dregs

[Astro-Baby]

Well we are all different on tea, its regional in the UK to some extent.

NATO standard is tea with milk and two sugars and made with off the shelf.

Sergeant Majors tea is usually super strong and made with condensed milk to be super strong and sweet.

Northern counties often seem to prefer a darker more malty tea whereas down south the preference is for a milder brew but theres so much mixing its hard to say. I used to work with a Scot who used to say 'make it strong enough to fight your tonsils on the way past'

If your really serious you get exotic stuff that sells for £1,000 a pound. You may not know this but plantations keep the best stuff for themselves and the very well heeled. Most of what comes in tea bags is what a plantation calls 'fannings' which is the loose crumbly stuff after the good stuff has been bagged. The ultimate is.....

Super
Fine
Tippy
Golden
Flowering
Orange
Pico

Known to plantations as

Still
Far
Too
Good
For
Ordinary
People

(check the first letters to see the connection)

I have drunk tea all over the place and am an addict. Without a cup of tea in the morning I may as well be killed and my kids always knew that to discuss anything with me prior to my morning cup of tea (and one when I got back after a day at the office) was futile.

But down to cases.....I am not discussing the Japanese Tea Ceremony or Chinese green tea make up but the basic British Tea (cuppa, splosh, brew, brew up, rosy lea, char).

Everyone is different and for basic tea my preferred is Yorkshire Tea or PG Tips in a teabag, put teabag in cup and pour on freshly boiled water just a few seconds off boiling, throw in the sugar while giving that tea bag a stair and then sit back and wait for three whole minutes before adding some milk to make it go a golden brown color. Drink and enjoy the drink of an Empire because to have tea like that required (in its day) access to tea from China, Sugar from the West Indies and an economy that could use milk without regard to cost so you had to be an Empire to pull that little lot off (allegedly).

Now for serious tea, ie I have time and leisure to do a real job the process is this;
Freshly cleaned kettle to remove any scale and boil up some water. Once its boiling fill a brown teapot (heavy ceremic) with the boiling water and swirl it round to warm the pot. Tip water away and now add 1 decent sized tea spoon of leaf tea for each person (my teapot usually makes 4 decent sized tea cups) so thats four spoonfuls plus 1 for the pot.
Tip that almost boiling water in, store and cover the pot with a tea cosy to keep it nice and warm. Count down the 3-4 minutes to let it brew. Pour tea into cups, add milk and sugar to taste and away you go.

My personal favourite is Yunnan or Darjeeling, Darjeeling used to be considered the King of teas.

Some people believe that a red cup to drink it from improves the flavour but my own favourite is a thin porcelain mug as a standard tea cup is nowhere near enough for me.

The British Army is just about the only army in the world with a hot water boiler installed in its tanks to make tea with (though I have heard the Indian army does the same) and its considered essential for survival rations because once it all goes wrong, your wet, cold, hungry and fed up a cup of tea revives the average Brit like nothing else. Its not universal, my partner hates tea (probably a sign of them not being truly BRITISH )

And now I am off for a cuppa That was exhausting typing that

[BigMackCam]

Well we are all different on tea, its regional in the UK to some extent.

NATO standard is tea with milk and two sugars and made with off the shelf.

Sergeant Majors tea is usually super strong and made with condensed milk to be super strong and sweet.

Northern counties often seem to prefer a darker more malty tea whereas down south the preference is for a milder brew but theres so much mixing its hard to say. I used to work with a Scot who used to say 'make it strong enough to fight your tonsils on the way past'

If your really serious you get exotic stuff that sells for £1,000 a pound. You may not know this but plantations keep the best stuff for themselves and the very well heeled. Most of what comes in tea bags is what a plantation calls 'fannings' which is the loose crumbly stuff after the good stuff has been bagged. The ultimate is.....

Super
Fine
Tippy
Golden
Flowering
Orange
Pico

Known to plantations as

Still
Far
Too
Good
For
Ordinary
People

(check the first letters to see the connection)

I have drunk tea all over the place and am an addict. Without a cup of tea in the morning I may as well be killed and my kids always knew that to discuss anything with me prior to my morning cup of tea (and one when I got back after a day at the office) was futile.

But down to cases.....I am not discussing the Japanese Tea Ceremony or Chinese green tea make up but the basic British Tea (cuppa, splosh, brew, brew up, rosy lea, char).

Everyone is different and for basic tea my preferred is Yorkshire Tea or PG Tips in a teabag, put teabag in cup and pour on freshly boiled water just a few seconds off boiling, throw in the sugar while giving that tea bag a stair and then sit back and wait for three whole minutes before adding some milk to make it go a golden brown color. Drink and enjoy the drink of an Empire because to have tea like that required (in its day) access to tea from China, Sugar from the West Indies and an economy that could use milk without regard to cost so you had to be an Empire to pull that little lot off (allegedly).

Now for serious tea, ie I have time and leisure to do a real job the process is this;
Freshly cleaned kettle to remove any scale and boil up some water. Once its boiling fill a brown teapot (heavy ceremic) with the boiling water and swirl it round to warm the pot. Tip water away and now add 1 decent sized tea spoon of leaf tea for each person (my teapot usually makes 4 decent sized tea cups) so thats four spoonfuls plus 1 for the pot.
Tip that almost boiling water in, store and cover the pot with a tea cosy to keep it nice and warm. Count down the 3-4 minutes to let it brew. Pour tea into cups, add milk and sugar to taste and away you go.

My personal favourite is Yunnan or Darjeeling, Darjeeling used to be considered the King of teas.

Some people believe that a red cup to drink it from improves the flavour but my own favourite is a thin porcelain mug as a standard tea cup is nowhere near enough for me.

The British Army is just about the only army in the world with a hot water boiler installed in its tanks to make tea with (though I have heard the Indian army does the same) and its considered essential for survival rations because once it all goes wrong, your wet, cold, hungry and fed up a cup of tea revives the average Brit like nothing else. Its not universal, my partner hates tea (probably a sign of them not being truly BRITISH )

And now I am off for a cuppa That was exhausting typing that

Awesome, Mel - I am delighted to award you my "Post of the Month" medal Even though I'm more of a coffee guy, I do enjoy a nice, steaming mug of tea with milk. I'm as British as they come (if you turn a blind eye to my Greek, Scandinavian, French and other ancestral blood-lines ), so I understand completely when you say "a cup of tea revives the average Brit like nothing else". I've no military background, but I can attest to tea's effectiveness after a long walk in cold, wet weather

[aslyfox]

Well we are all different on tea, its regional in the UK to some extent.

NATO standard is tea with milk and two sugars and made with off the shelf. . .

I love that NATO standard

considering what countries belong to NATO

The member states of NATO are:

Albania, Belgium, Bulgaria, Canada, Croatia, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Montenegro, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Turkey, United Kingdom, United States.

tea drinkers one and all

[aslyfox]

decided to google Yorkshire tea and found this from Amazon

amazon.com : Taylors of Harrogate Yorkshire Gold, 160 Teabags : Black Teas : Grocery & Gourmet Food?tag=pentaxforums-20&

gotta love the " tea break " video in the middle of the cricket match which is in the ad

[johnyates]

As a teen, I drank a lot of tea when hanging out with my buds at the restaurant in the mall. The server would place a tea bag in a single serving size tea pot, pour hot (almost boiling) water over the bag, and deliver it, along with a cup and a small container of milk, to the table. We could let it steep to preference. It was fairly drinkable, and the cost was 15 cents. (It was a *long* time ago).

I subsequently got out of the tea habit and switched to coffee.

Twenty years later was in a restaurant, and for the first time in a long time, ordered tea. The server brought out a cup of warm water and a saucer with a tea bag on it.

ME: What is this?
SERVER: That's the tea you ordered, sir.
ME: I see. Do me a favour, would you? Can you take this back to the kitchen, remove the teabag from its paper wrapper, place it in the cup and pour the hot water over it?
SERVER: Sorry sir, no can do. Health and safety. We're not allowed to handle boiling water.
ME: sigh. Very well, please bring me a coffee.

So now, for me, tea is an only at home thing. Three bags orange pekoe* in the Brown Betty. Pour the almost boiling water in from a bit of a height to oxygenate the brew, and let steep for 5 minutes.


* lapsang souchong for a special treat.

[BigMackCam]

I was thinking about this a little more, and one of my favourite teas is actually "PG Tips" - but made in, and served from, a Thermos flask.

When I was a young kid, most Sundays my Dad would take my Mum and I for a long drive somewhere. It might be a coastal location, or somewhere up in the hills or over the moors. We never had a planned destination (that's what my Dad claimed, at least ), but we inevitably ended up somewhere interesting and beautiful. My Mum always made sandwiches to bring with us - usually either egg and cress, or cucumber; occasionally some left-over chicken, or tinned ham - and a couple of Thermos flasks full of tea and coffee respectively. At our destination, we'd get out of the car, go for a decent walk and explore, no matter the weather. On our return, we'd devour the sandwiches and finish off every last drop of the hot drinks. They taste different from a flask... I'm not sure why; I'd guess it has something to do with condensation dripping back into the liquid. Regardless, whenever I have tea or coffee from a flask now, my mind goes back to those childhood Sunday excursions

[Sandy Hancock]

Earl Grey. Loose leaf in a single shot strainer. Water boiled in a kettle (the way nature intended). Black, but not too strong. Slice of lemon.

It's been a while, but I'm also partial to the occasional Black Russian or Lapsang Souchong. Also black.

[carlb]

Didn't George Orwell write an essay on how to brew a good cup of tea?

I'm not a great fan of tea and rarely drink it but I've had a Yorkshireman refuse to make me one after he found out that I drink it very weak (ie basically pour the water in, let the water and tea bag get acquainted with each other and then take the tea bag out).