I just chuck the tea bag in, add half a teaspoon of sugar, pour over the water from the kettle. Stir until the right colour and add milk (not full cream and not skim - in the middle).
I like English breakfast the best.
I also drink Japanese green tea, apple infused tea, peppermint tea, lemon tea - all without milk or sugar.
I do have a tea pot at home with a built in infuser (so no tea leaves) but I never use it because it is too big for just one cup of tea.
I do prefer leaves (the taste is soooo much better), but bags are handier.
I know, I know, you don’t wanna hear it but green tea is the perfect drink for me in the morning now. I quit drinking coffee back in June of 2000 and on the mornings I really need a little kick, green tea is my choice. It’s a mellow flavor and doesn’t overwhelm my senses with overloaded caffiene or flavor. Yep, I buy Celestial Seasonings a lot, they have an organic green tea so there are no pestiside residuals. I put enough junk in my body like I need more.
But for a special treat I choose Good Earth Spiced Tea. With a little honey it’s a delight either hot or iced.
From their site:
Occasionally some camomile tea or Sleepy Time is good at night.
Hot tea: I like King Cole, but it only seems to be available in the Maritimes
Iced tea: Must be the “Goodhost” Powder kind, NO real tea in there anywhere, please! Ironically, while I have a 4 - 6 cup a day habit with hot tea, I despise it cold. And unsweetened? No lemon? Gah! This seems to be a Canadian/American thing from what I’ve seen:
Canada: Iced tea from powder - syrupy sweet lemony beverage. Mmmm. Purchased in the enormous 2 kilo tub, preferrably.
U.S.: Iced tea is just tea that’s cold! WTF? I ordered an iced tea in the States and was horribly disturbed. Yeah, sure, in hindsight it’s pretty obvious, but when you’re used to iced tea having only an abstract kind of relation to real tea, it’s weird. When in the States, I order 1/2 ice tea and 1/2 lemonade, if possible. This is a close approxiamtion of the fake iced tea that I love so much.
Oh yeah, any “tea” that has strawberry or raspberry or, God forbid, peach ::shudder:: flavour in it, well, there just aren’t words to describe that abomination.
And as for flavoured coffee? Since this ain’t the BBQ pit I can’t express myself on that subject in this forum. Ugghhh. Nasty.
No, that’s just for maccha (powdered green tea) which is used for tea ceremonies. Regular Japanese green tea is brewed in a teapot just like English tea. The main difference is you don’t use boiling hot water. Instead, first pour the hot water from the kettle into a cup (one made specially for this purpose is called a yuzamashi), let it cool for a minute or so, then pour into the teapot.
Lapsang Souchong! The Dark Smokey Elixir of Happiness.
My Taiwanese friends tell me that this is considered an “Old Man’s Tea”. So be it. I can’t get enough of it. I’m off to make some now. It gets me a little bit high, and I get all philosophical. Whoohoo. The kettle starting to make a cheerful sound. The tea is locked into the infuser. The teapot is primed. I am so happy.
Mmm, lapsang… the best tea I ever had was from Peet’s Coffee & Tea in California. It was Scottish Breakfast, and IIRC, it was lapsang souchang and Indian tea blended. Kinda like drinking nice, warm, smooth scotch. I think I’ll have to order myself some online.
Dilmah loose leaf tea, milk in the cup first, one sugar. I like Twinings Earl Grey for a change, but keep it in teabag form. I also have and enjoy Lady Grey, English Breakfast, Irish Breakfast and Prince of Wales teabags in my little collection. I will drink Lipton’s Yellow Label teabags when I’m home alone (it’s not worth making a pot for one), but prefer real tea.
My father hates teabags and will only drink loose leaf tea. He says they fill the teabags with the scraps they sweep up off the floor.
Oh, and I know it’s horrible to put sugar in tea, but I do. However, I think I will grow out of it. I knew a was a teen no longer the day I discovered that two sugars were too sweet and cut down to one. Now I’m getting to the point where half a sugar seems better than a whole one.
First, I find a really big cup and I fill it with water.
I put it in the microwave for a while until the cup gets hot enough to scald my fingers when I’m taking it out.
Next I dip the teabag in a few times and then leave it there for a coupls of minutes.(Usually Lipton or Community tea. My mother taught me long ago not to buy the store brand unless I was in the mood to be tortured.)
After the magic teabag turns the water into tea, I pour in about half a can of sweetened condensed milk and then add a few spoonfuls of sugar for good measure. Unfortunately, I do not get to have hot tea very often because that would entail gathering my tea things and walking all the way downstairs to wait in line to use the only microwave allowed in the building.
I used to hate iced tea until I found out that what my maw maw called iced tea was really no such thing. It was just brown teabag water with no sugar. The tea I make is much better. (Don’t tell her.) I like it strong with more than one spoon of sugar in the entire pitcher.
PLEASE PARDON ME IF THIS IS DIFFICULT TO UNDERSTAND.
I FIND THAT I BECOME INCOHERENT WHEN THINKING ABOUT THINGS LIKE TEA AND SUCH HERCULEAN EXERTIONS AS ACTUALLY MAKING IT MYSELF.
1.) Earl Grey
2.) Assam tea with something chocolatey to eat. YUM.
3.) Japanese powdered green tea–the stuff they use in the Tea Ceremonies, although the leaf form is good too.
4.) Mint tea
The jokes on me, owlstretchingchap, I like Earl Gray also. But I can’t claim to be a purist or a connoisseur.
I have a water cooler in my apartment which provides hot water, but it’s not boiling, so I have to heat it on the stove. (I don’t own a microwave, so I can’t do the Picard imitation. OTOH, it is a gas stove, with real fire, so I play Tom Hanks: LOOK WHAT I HAVE CREATED!!!)
Where was I? Oh yeah, the boiling water goes right into a mug, followed by a bag of Bigelow’s. Steep for three minutes. No milk, no sugar, no lemon. But Scotch shortbread cookies on the side would be heaven.
Story: My wife was going to the store and asked if I wanted anything. “Yeah,” said I, “We’ve got twelve different kinds of herb tea, but no regular tea. Wouldja please bring me some honest black tea? Without mint, without ginseng, no St John’s Wort, no orange blossom, no sleepy-bear honey-peach-ginger-bee-pollen tea? Just good old plain regular black tea. Please?”
She brought me Lipton’s. [sub]blargh[/sub] I’m no connoisseur, but I do have some standards.
My father was a career soldier and used to swear by the British Army’s world famous tea. THis was used for everything from drinking to treating bullet wounds. Its called “Gunfire”. It’s made by boiling up a huge kettle, adding twice as much tea as usual and pouring in condensed milk for sweetness. It’s bloody horrible, but he swore by it.
nb is it true that kettles are not common household things in the US? (a lot of people are making their tea in a microwave. Don’t get me started on just how wrong that is)
Started with mint tea, with honey and lemon when I was a just a liddle un. Then black tea, anything from oolong to liptons cheapo when I was a poor student. And of course celestial seasonings. I think at one point I had every Zinger ever made in my cupboard (mango zinger is the best).
Not to mention the holy repository of marketing/import failures that is Odd Lots. Love that Odd Lots beverage aisle.
I drink it straight, sugar only, milk only, milk and sugar, or lemon and sugar.
Depending on the tea, or the weather, or the phase of the moon, or if I’m out of milk.
My current favorite is Yogi Tea brand cocoa spice. Different and very good but a hard to find in this area. I ended up having to re-stock online. Anyone who has a grocery that carries yogi tea should really try it. And tell me where you found it too
The only essential thing IMO is that the water. must. be. boiling.
As coffee makes me jittery, I’ve been drinking enormous quantities of tea lately. My usual variety is Red Rose orange pekoe. I’ve been persuaded to try various exotic products such as Lapsang Suchong (sp, I’m sure), chai, and yerba maté, both of which, I’m convinced, taste like infusions of pre-smoked tobacco.
This probably wasn’t a fair test, but a year or two ago out of curiosity I bought a box of Twinings LS tea bags. “Smoky,” the package said.
Well, yeah - shit tasted like hot liquid bacon! :eek: ptttui!ptt!ptt!
Now, as for powdered maccha for tea ceremony; I had it a couple of times when I was in Japan (Nara, the city where I lived, boasted a tea-whisk industry that was quite reknowned…among people who really know their tea-ceremony supplies…:D). It’s, um, an acquired taste. More to the point, it’s an acquired texture since it’s so thick and foamy. Kinda like sucking down tea-flavored shaving cream.
When I drink tea (I’m usually a coffee drinker), I make it with loose leaves in a teapot. I use about a tablespoon of loose tea for each cup, plus one spoonful for the pot. I boil water, then dump some in the teapot, dump that out, and put in the leaves. I pour the hot water on top of that, cap the pot, wrap a tea towel around the pot, and leave the whole mess to stew for about 15 minutes. It comes out good and strong; in fact, it’s almost the color of coffee.
I use cream and sugar in my tea. I like Twinings Teas, pretty much any kind, or Williams and Sonoma. I really like loose leaf tea. I’m not crazy about tea bags or herbal teas.
Where I went to college we had tea time every day at 4 o’clock. A bunch of us girls did it for ourselves in the dorm, and it was awesome fun. By the next year, most of us had graduated to much more serious stimulants (espresso, baby!), and Gamble Second Floor Tea Time was relegated to fond memory.
Well…
I do love tea but please forgive my transgressions. What I drink most often is iced tea and it’s Luzianne decaf. This is because I can get it in large quantities easily. I drink three or four gallons a week.
Hot tea is wonderful too and I make it the proper way with boiling water from the kettle right into a brown betty. I’ve even got a little tea cozy. Earl Grey, Assam (really good for chai), Jasmine, Russian caravan, Irish Breakfast, Lapsang Souchong, all good. I recently tried Camel’s breath, an aged/fermented pu-erh tea - that stuff will knock you on your arse.
I like the green teas too, especially Dragonwell and Gunpowder green. I long to get an Yixing teapot someday when I can afford one.
Tea, tea, tea, tea…
I can’t abide coffee. Wretched stuff. Don’t even like the smell.
