The only tea I’ve ever had is iced tea. Southern style, with more sugar than tea.
I would like to try some others. English Breakfast seems popular, but I haven’t the foggiest idea how to prepare it. I want to try oolong tea, but that may be because of the name 
So tell me how to go about this - what brands do I buy, how do I make it, etc?
Before we start tolking about brands, let us spend a moment on preparation and serving.
Oh sure you can plop a tea bag into a stryofoam cup and dump some hot water into it… yum… tea…
But, want it to be even ymmier?
Let’s start with the water.
Get a water filter, either Brita type pitcher or a inline tap filter, or buy filtered water. Do a taste test once you do, with your regular tap water and you will probably note a real difference.
Now heat the water. Use a clean kettle. Enamel lined is best, or a glass correll type. You went to all the trouble of getting filtered water, why would you want a bunch of metal ions floating around in it?
Bring it to a full rolling boil, but do not turn off the heat. Take your clean, ceramic or glass teapot and pour a cup or two of the boiling water into it… swish it around, to warm the pot.
Dump the teapot out and add your loose tea leafs, or if you must a bag.
Pour the remainder of the boiling water into the pot. Put the lid on, and go do something else for 5 minutes. Some people like to put a little sweater on their tea pot, to retain heat, but I find a clean tea towel wrapped around the pot works just fine.
Pour into a porceline cup (not a mug) and find a nice quiet place to enjoy. Have your children sedated, and disconnect the phone.
FML
hm. I’d recommend Adagio Tea for looseleaf tea, but I’m not sure if I’m allowed to link to their website since they’re online retailers.
My credentials: I’m a caffeine swilling fiend. Also drank tons of jasmine tea as a small child at the weekly dim sum meals on Sundays. No potable water? Swell, let’s make jasmine tea as I’m too young to be a lush! 
As far as 5min goes, that varies by type of tea if you want to get picky. 5min is fine for black tea varieties, but if you want to get into white or green teas, they tend to have different steeping times. (usually 3min according to the labels on my Adagio tea tins)
I’d definitely start with the usual teabags at the store which are inexpensive. Try Stash tea, decent quality. Don’t let them steep too long or they’ll get super bitter which you probably won’t like much. I tend to make my tea then plop some sugar and milk in to taste.
Adagio is tops for tea in general, but looseleaf may be a bit fiddly for you since you’re starting out. Up to you though.
Basically you use a tea ball or spoon or what have you, just a little metal sievelike thing that holds the loose leaf tea and you dunk it into your hot water. Adagio also sells this plastic ‘tea mug’ thinger that has a plastic sieve in the bottom that you can drain the tea through when it’s done steeping.
I like looseleaf though, adds ritual to the process. 
You really just have to try things and experiment. Most supermarkets these days have a nice assortment of teas, so you can try one or another to see what you like.
As a general rule, tea is white, green, or black (there is also red tea, but, like herb teas, that’s not made from the tea plant). White tea is the young leaves; green tea takes the older leaves and dries them; black tea roasts the leaves. White is very delicate, green a little strong, and black more robust. There are also smoky teas and fermented teas, but they probably aren’t a good place to start.
Let the tea steep the recommended time. The color and caffeine comes out first, then the flavor (you can make decaf tea by putting the bag in water for half a minute, then putting the tea bag into another cup of hot water for the flavor).
I have some favorites. Lipton’s regular tea is vile, but they make a very nice white tea with peach. PG Tips is a very good British all-purpose tea, but may be hard to find in the states. Celestial Seasonings has a white tea with pear that I love (though it may be hard to find). The various Earl Grays are very good, and Stash has some nice green and white teas. My favorite green is the Republic of Tea’s “People’s Green Tea,” though that is expensive.
But your best bet is to pick out one or two boxes and see what clicks with you.
Oolong tea is the kind of tea you usually get in a Chinese restaurant. It’s halfway between green and black.
Breakfast teas (there’s Irish and Scottish breakfast tea as well as English breakfast) generally are a black tea (often an African tea) with a strong taste and high caffiene. They’re the tea equivalent of your morning cup of coffee.
There are flavored teas like Earl Grey, Lapsang souchong, jasmine, and obvious ones like mint or fruit flavors. They can be good if you like the flavoring.
Loose leaf tea will generally have a better taste than bag tea. And you’ll get a better taste from loose leaf tea if you let if float around in the water rather than pack it into a teaball. I have one of the Adagio tea pots that lizardling mentioned and it works great.
If you’re looking for a good “entry level” tea, try some Darjeeling.
I’m English and a "normal"tea drinker.
So I’ll tell you the non snobby way to enjoy tea properly,by the way tea has more caffeine then coffee so it gives you a better lift.
Somebody mentioned P.G tips,good choice but any STRONG British blend will do the trick and yes it is ok to use tea bags.
Tea bag in cup,pour the water in more or less as the kettle is ACTUALLY BOILING,if you choose to only put HOT water in then after drinking it its up to you to borrow a revolver,go off to somewhere where you wont be disturbed and do the decent thing.
Allow the tea to infuse and help it by jiggling the bag around.
When it is strong enough to give your mother in law and the local Mafia boss a good kicking (You can judge this by the darkness of the brew)then you can start adding milk,but your aim is to get it to a dark tan colour so take it carefully.
You can have a magic tea and totally ruin it by watering it down too much with cow juice.
I’d try it without sugar the first time to see if you like it like that as I personally think that it is an enhanced experience that way but many Brits drink it with sugar just as an energy reviver.
In case there are any tea snobs here,yes I have had Earl Grey and Lopsang etc.etc and found them quite nice but nothing to write home about.
Have also tried genuine Chinese teas such as Gunpowder which reminded me very much of drinking Tea soup with half a cup of garden weeds in the bottom half of the mug.
Iced tea to us Brits gets much the same reaction as warm beer does to you Yanks.
Hope you enjoy it !
Personally due to circumstances I often have to drink coffee at work which to me is like drinking sour camels piss(but it does have caffeine in it) but I love tea to death though not as much as Jennifer Aniston.
Hope you enjoy your experiences.
liirogue, meet Twinings, the benchmarkn for acceptable teas. Twinings, this is liirogue. I suggest you provide your basic sampler to this worthy doper for consideration.
This really depends, but for the most part this is not true of a prepared cup of tea or coffee. It is true for dry unprepared tea and coffee.
Twinnings is good, & available in most supermarkets.
I favor their Darjeeling, & their Irish Breakfast tea.
George Orwell on tea.
While the tea that Lipton’s sells in the US is indeed mediocre, you can get loose Lipton’s tea (in the yellow box) at a lot of India import shops in the US. Also, by not being 90% packaging and air, you get a lot more tea for your money.
And on a contrarian view, I pretty much disagree with everything here.
The tea in tea bags is okay. I use tea bags myself. But it’s basically the stuff leftover after they packaged the tea leaves. And if you use loose leaves you won’t need to jiggle them around. They’ll flow around naturally (which exposes the most surface area of the tea to the water). And you won’t get any paper taste.
Letting the water actually boil is a bad idea. It vaporizes the air in the water and makes it taste flat. The ideal temperature is just at the point of boiling.
Milk and sugar are fine if you want to drink milk and sugar. If you want to drink tea, you should be drinking tea. (Okay if you like milk and sugar, go on ahead. It’s your cup of tea. I’ll admit I personally like a squeeze of lemon juice in mine.)
Earl Grey is an acquired taste. Lapsang souchong is a taste you don’t want to acquire (imagine a cup of tea that somebody’s used to put out their cigar). Gunpowder is good tea.
Don’t oversoak the tea. That will just make it bitter.
The point is to make a good cup of tea in order to enjoy it not to deliberately make a bad cup in order to prove you can take it.
I enjoy a green tea with an exact 3 minute steep. It’s amazing how an extra minute will release excess tannins and change the character for the worst.
I can see eye to eye with most of your points but I was putting over the experience of everyday tea drinking as opposed to having a culinary experiment .
I love tea and I drink tea as a pick me up,the world looks like a much better place after a hectic few hours at work after a cuppa.
I have drank tea sans milk but I dont think that it was an improvement,I think that the milks purpose is partly to counter the acidity of the tea as much as amending the taste, but that said all tastes are subjective and for that matter individual.
Actually thinking about it I have drunk tea quite often in the ME,milkless and VERY sweet served in small glasses but I totally would not recommend it.
A friend of mine who worked in Japan for a long while would never reboil water when tea making as, I would imagine the water was marginally more tasteless then water boiled for the first time.
I smoked for many years so my taste buds are not discerning enough to notice the difference I’m afraid.
I must however disagree with you on the boiling water issue,it has been drummed into me and many other Limeys all of our lives that the water MUST be boiling for a decent cup of tea.
You can laugh at my dress sense,sleep with my GF but you’re in REAL trouble if you try to serve me a cuppa made with hot water.
I can only speculate what sort of a cad could perpetrate such an atrocity,why such a bounder would probably shoot foxes and remain seated during the National Anthem.
While we’re on the subject can anyone recommend a really,really strong English type tea?
Its a holy Grail that I have been seeking for many years but my lust remains as yet unsatisfied.
We could have worked around that “taxation without representation” issue. This is the real reason we had to start our own country.
Since I love tea, I prepare large batches at a time. I use a french press and loose leaf. after the prescribed time, I will press it then pour it off in a thermos carafe to prevent over-steeping. Enjoy over the next few hours.
Check out Upton Tea. They do excellent loose leaf tea (which is almost always better quality and easier to brew right), and most importantly, they offer samples. You could try one of their sampler packages, such as four different types of Darjeeling. But I recommend getting some different types and doing a tasting to determine what you like best. Darjeeling, Ceylon, Keemun, Oolong, and Assam are the major black tea varieties that you’ll see in America. I personally like Darjeeling for its light floral flavors, and Keemun for its dark richness.
I also got a nice infusing basket from Upton. It’s as big as the inside of a teacup, so the leaves get to float around and infuse nicely, but to strain all you have to do is lift the basket out of the cup. Very convenient.
Well I went in search of loose tea leaves (which most here seem to agree is the best) and could not find any at all at two different supermarkets. I went to the local Asian market and had some success. Unfortunately, they only carried Asian teas and all the instructions are in Chinese!
I got oolong tea, which I must have steeped too long because it came out a little bitter. What do you all recommend for a steeping time, and how much should of the tea should I use?
I got some sort of jasmine tea, which I haven’t tried yet.
I picked up Temple of Heaven Gunpowder Tea just because of the name, and absolutely love it! I made it a little too weak last time I think, so I will try a little more.
The market also had these really cute little teapots with a removable “basket” that sits in the center that you put the tea leaves in. It seems to work well, and was incredibly cheap ($6.00).
Darjeeling seems to also be highly recommended here, so I will try to find some of it next.
The Adagio Teas website recommends on its ‘preparation’ page: “7min for dark oolong and 3min for light oolong”. They also recommend 1 tsp leaves per cup water. And they recommend boiling water, so **Lust4Life’ll ** be pleased. 
note: I don’t think this is a hard and fast rule, but that seems like a decent starting point to find the ratio and time that you prefer.
I meant to second the Adagio recommendation. I also want to suggest that if you want to start drinking loose tea, you should consider getting one of their starter kits. They come with an infuser teapot and four tea samples. You can get black or green tea (or some flavored shit). It also comes with a little book.
https://www.adagio.com/misc/no_risk.html?SID=e402f3300c211edf24d67abc2ae45a55