A Proper Cup of Tea
Conversation with Soubriquet who makes tea pots out of clay over in England got me to thinking about my own induction into drinking tea "proper British style" which I now indulge in, with my own variation, every morning.
I got my first introduction to the English tea ritual when I started helping a sweet older English lady in my neighborhood with her chores. She always rewarded me with a cup of wonderful fragrant hot tea with milk in it. She insisted there was a proper process to making a good cup of tea & she followed the ritual...to a "T".
I decided I liked tea so I started brewing & drinking tea with milk everyday, myself.
Except I think my tea brewing process might curl the hair of a proper English lady.
I put 3 tea bags ( I like the round kind, none of those dangling chads & strings ) in the bottom of my thermos which holds a bout a quart of water or .95 liters for you Europeans. I pour boiling water over that & let it set about 5 minutes with the lid on. After I take the bags out I add a generous dollop of canned evaporated milk.
I buy a inexpensive English Breakfast blend for every day, although a friend recently sent me an Assam Breakfast blend which is very nice.
When my 3 year old Grandson comes over to visit, we always have a cup of tea (with lots of milk of course).
Someday, I'll teach him how to make a proper cup of tea, in a thermos.
posted by Rita @ 7:43 AM
21 Comments
21 Comments:
Nice video .... I never heard the song before, so it was fresh. I dont really know anything about english tea or any tea I reckon, beside's ... knowing how to make ice tea with lemon. It's rare I even drink coffee for that matter either. But I learned something.
Thank You Ms.Rita!
Nice video. Never heard of making tea in a thermos before (heretic!:-)) -- but I'm sure that keeps it nice and hot.
You know I live here in the South?
We do iced tea.
I do lots of iced tea, sometimes nearly a galllon a day in the summer.
I brew it slow, never allowing the water to break a boil. It's better that way. Boiling the water brings out the bitterness.
Yes, I add lots of sugar too, about a cupful for every gallon.
I like your fondness for tea, even if it is of the English variety ;-)
You are, I see, starting to show a vestige of civilisation. Top marks for the thermos, I like thermos tea, except when the thermos (as has sometimes happened) contains a flavour memory of an earlier incumbent.... soup, anybody?
However, I fear you have committed a grave indiscretion, and the village elders, even as I write, are trying to understand what terrible circumstance could cause a person to use tinned evaporated milk.
Oh! Verdict just in... If you are travelling in arctic regions, or are, perhaps, an astronaut, beyond the earth's atmosphere, it shall be deemed acceptable to use milk out of a can.
Otherwise, we'll just shake our heads, sadly.
I don't drink tea. I also don't drink coffee. I do drink Coca-Cola, and altogether too much of it.
Rituals can be nice, at least some of the time.
Well, RC, you aren't a bit cultured are you?
I suspect hardly housebroke. ;p
Infidel It does keep it hot & a quart is about enough to get my engine started.
Mac Oh yes! I remember being introduced to Iced Tea when I went to Texas. I've never made it, but it's a great thirst quencher in the summer. I curious what your proportions are?
How many tea bags to a gallon of water?
Sou I do have a civilized reason for drinking canned milk in tea(& coffee) Cream is too fattening & raw milk always goes bad before I can use it up. Besides, I like the creamy taste of canned milk, I even put it on peaches.
Phil well, we all have to get our caffeine somewhere, unless you are Mormon & drink only the decaff kind of soda.
Morning rituals are the best kind.
"Cultured"? .... Not much on some thing's .... just never thought much about that I reckon, never acquired a real taste for tea or coffee or anything probably, to actually try to brew them, I mean .... I stop by "7-11" pick up a bottle of iced tea, or a V-8, juice or bottle of Coke or such .... dont really make much of anything at home I reckon, just kind of grab shit when I'm out and about, even when I was in the UK, and my buddy who was born and raised there, who played bass in a band, I dont even recall seeing him drink any tea, for that matter .....weird. Housebroken? heh, heh, heh, heh, heh .... I dont know. :)
Later Ms.Rita ........
I love tea, too. We always have tea after dinner. My husband likes Tetley's British Breakfast Blend without sugar or milk, while I prefer Bencheley's flavored teas (Peach Melba, Blackberry, Cherry, Apricot) with soy milk. I recently bought a ton of biscotti and they are perfect with tea. Online, I found a biscotti recipe made with Splenda and whole wheat flour, so I will try making my own once the store-bought ones are gone. Mmmm. I think I'll have a spot of tea right now.
Well Rita, I'm a bit chubby. Im not grossly obese, but I do have this spare tire here. It's spring, I'm still owrking it off.
OH, you meant my tea?
I prefer Luzianne. It's an Orange Peco blend, delicious.
I use 9 bags per gallon. More seems strong, less seems like water to me.
And, of course, the cup of sugar must be mixed at the brewing stage. It doesn't disolve in cold tea well.
Good Morning Ms.Rita!
I wanted to bring up something in case you hadnt heard of it, concerning "a.m. brew's". It was a lil chilly this morning, I ran next door to 7-11, bought a 20 ounce bottle of Dr.Pepper, brought it home , put it in a pan and over the heat on the stovetop, brought it to a boil (take off when the boil just start's) then poor it into a large cup, and squeeze a lemon in it, and drink. But it's kind of a thing been going on in Texas for year's mostly in the winter month's, since Dr.Pepper is a Texas (local) soft drink. The weird thing is .... my Mom first turned me on to this shit, like when I was a lil kid (she died young, year's ago) .... where in Hell she found out about it(?), I havent the faintest, because my Mom never been to Texas, and spent her whole life in mostly New York (born and raised in New York)and in Southern California. But just wanted to bring it up in case you may want to give it a toss sometime.
Later Girl ..........
RC
I reckon, never acquired a real taste for tea or coffee or anything probably, to actually try to brew them,
Well, there's your problem. You just never got into the brewing habit.
Hot Dr. Pepper & lemon, that was news to me! My research says it's also good for a sore throat. I'll have to try it out on the grandkids, some day.
C Woods
Tetley's British Breakfast, That's the brand I normally use.
My mother drank tea when I was growing up. I hated it then & much preferred coffee. I think the problem was she didn't do it right, just plunked a Red Rose tea bag in a cup & poured hot water on it, then put one of those saccharin tablets in it. Gross!
I've haven't tried flavored teas, yet. I've only had the tea drinking habit the last couple of years. "Biscotti" never understood the appeal of that. They are like dog biscuts for people. Maybe I've never had any good ones? ;)
Mac
Luzianne tea. I had to look it up as it's not sold here. Definitely, a Southern brand.
I might try brewing some real iced tea this summer. It is
This post and its comments made me think a bit more about tea, which, of course, I drink every day without giving it a moment's thought. I dink, let me see... at least eight mugs of tea every day.
I'll come clean now, and admit I don't do the proper tea ritual every time, or even most times. I chuck a teabag into a mug, fill it with boiling water, stir it, leave it a minute, add milk.
this week I was working in the company of a couple of builders, a bricklayer and his labourer. The labourer asked if I wanted tea, "Yes please", I said. Bad mistake. His method was:- pour an inch of milk into bottom of mug. throw teabag in, add boiled water. Drink. Bleeearrrrrgh!
What's wrong with that?, you ask.
Well, the key to a good tea is the active word "boiling", not passive, "boiled". That water should be bubbling and roiling when it hits the tea. Not at eighty degrees celsius, as coffee makers like. BOILING!
And because the teabag's already immersed in an inch of cold milk, even if the poured water was boiling, it wouldn't be by the time it hit the tea.
Fail. Urgh!
next portion:- British Breakfast Tea. Here in Britain, I've never heard of it.
Tetleys is a well known tea producer, but I've never heard of british breakfast tea, though they do a good English Breakfast tea blend.
There's also a Scottish Breakfast Tea, an Irish one, and a Welsh one. In fact, some entrepreneurs have started a tea plantation in the Preseli hills, in south wales.
Here in the north of England, we have our own Yorkshire Tea, blended by Taylors of Harrogate.
Why the variations? Because the water in different regions tastes and behaves differently. Is the underlying rock alkaline limestone? neutral sandstone, acidic granite? is the vegetation peaty? or upland grass? are the drinkers getting heavily treated and chlorinated river water, or lightly treated, naturally filtered deep aquifer borehole water? all will alter the taste of the tea.
okay, I'll stop there. My objection to eavaporated milk, by the way, is the caramelised lactose that gives it a strangely sweet taste.
Time for a cup of tea? Oh yes.
Ever since the Boston Tea Party and the Whiskey Rebellion, it has been patriotic to drink coffee and bourbon instead of tea and whiskey.
sou Opps! You are right, it is called "English Breakfast blend."
I'm sure there is a difference between English & British but I don't know what it is. I tried an Irish breakfast blend, it was pretty good, I thought. I do like the Assam tea I was given by a friend but I can't afford to drink it every day.
I bought some oolong tea the other day, just to try it out, not very good with milk,& it turned a sickly caterpiller green color.
ref: evaporated milk.
Maybe you are confusing evaporated milk with sweetened condensed milk? Regular evaporated milk is not sweet. Although, it does not taste like raw milk.
I have a problem with drinking raw milk because I've spent some time around commercial dairies and have seen cows with mastitis being milked along with other healthy cows. Unfortunately, it all goes into the same tank when nobody's watching. I won't tell you what mastitis milk looks like, cause you don't want to know.
rev coffee and bourbon Not together I hope. It seems it would defeat the purpose of both of those drugs.
All I know on the subject is that I had a Canadian friend who insisted that Americans didn't know how to make tea. Since I prefer coffee anyway, it wasn't much of an issue for me, although in retrospect I wonder what she meant.
Snowbrush is right not to be too troubled by it, but when tea drinkers say "americans don't know how to make tea" it's a generalised observation, not a deadly insult.
I'm told that if you ask for tea in America, you're likely to get a jug of hot water, and a teabag, supplied separately.
As I keep saying, if the water's not actively boiling when it hits the tea, then what you drink can at best only be described as "a tea flavoured drink", not as "tea".
It's not even surprising, seeing that tea was used, in the time of your country's rebellion against britain, as a symbol of unfair taxation. After the Boston tea party, drinking tea was for a long time seen as unpatriotic, (still is, to some extent), so much so that the habit was lost, and coffee, another foreign import, became the beverage of choice.
Any idiosyncracies that americans think we brits have regarding tea, you have, a thousandfold regarding coffee. One has only to look at the meteoric rise of Starbucks and its competitors, to see a beverage elevated to a religion.
Listening to Mr.Soubriquet's last comment's made some point's. I mean .... I have seen so many folk's that treat coffee in America as like a drug, which it may be I reckon over the caffeine (I prefer cocaine though), but I have worked with and seen so many over the year's that cant seem to get their shit together in the morning without a cup of coffee, or two or 3. And "Starbuck's" dude, is a booming business in this country, just here in Dallas their every damn where, mall's, street corner's,bar's,theatre's, super market's, etc. Now combined with Ms.Rita's passion's and idea's of brewing along with other's here! I can only see a "future". How? Well, we all know lot's of folk's like tea, even in America, even Asian's, here and the list goes on, it's one of them crosscultural thing's. I would put my paycheck on a bet that if Ms.Rita borrowed a few buck's on a business chance, and started a tea specialty cafe of sort either in her town or the next neighboring town, with a unique selection of blend's/ flavour's .... it just may hit off to start up even another, and maybe even another and so on. This idea of brewing tea Ms.Rita .... I see as a nice lil business with potential if done properly with the backing of a few associate's. Just an idea.
Later Girl .........
I love drinking tea.
RC
Well, a tea shoppe is an interesting idea & it might go well with the newspaper business, but who has time? If some one else would start one up in my town I'd there for sure. We could use a restaurant that offered something besides burgers, fries, pizza, & truck stop Chinese food.
qf Glad to know you are at least partially civilized. ;)
snow
Well, we want those Canadians to feel like they can do something better then us.
Haha! Just kidding, Phil. ;)
I always can't get over the idea that, if the British hadn't overtaxed tea all those years ago, well, tea would still be dominating over the coffee trade even to this very day. Why couldn't it have been the "Boston Curry Party" or something of a little less wonderful nature!? Why'd it have to be tea, nooooooo!
Worst of all, because of the vague historical memory of Boston, "tea party" and "tea bag" have now turned into symbols of political moronism.....
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