UK Dopers: Tell Me About British Tea

Cafe Society
1

I’ve been a tea drinker for, oh, about 30 years now. Yes, yes, I know, we Americans can be bar’brous what with the tea bags and Lipton’s and lukewarm water offered in restaurants, however, some of us do understand that loose leaf tea exists, have seen (or even possessed) electric kettles and proper teapots and so on.

Lately, (probably due to watching too much Doctor Who) I have been wondering what it would be like to have tea in the UK. Not necessarily “tea” in the formal sense, but rather what tea is actually like in the UK for the average person. So, a few questions:

  1. The British still use loose leaf tea, correct? (I’d expect you’ve heard of tea bags, have no idea if the concept have ever made any in-roads, or if it’s viewed like instant coffee is here - a poor substitute at best)

  2. What, if any, “beverage condiments” are used? Milk? Cream? Sugar? Lemon? (I think I recall the latter as being something more American, but as I’ve never been to Britain I thought I’d ask)

  3. Is tea seen as a “certain time of day” beverage or is it consumed throughout the day?

  4. What is the typical way of brewing it for an office, in the average person’s home, etc?

  5. What are the common varieties of tea usually consumed?

  6. Tell me anything I missed.

2

Not in the UK, just next door in the other main tea drinking nation in this region.

  1. Teabags are near ubiquitous in the UK
  2. Milk and/or sugar are standard. I’m sure you’d get cream or lemon the odd time but the first two are pretty much the standard.
  3. If, and I suspect it is, the UK is like Ireland in this regard then tea is drunk every time of day or night.
  4. In an office canteen there may well be a water boiler but typically an electric kettle is used to heat the water and then water poured into a mug that has a teabag placed in it.
  5. Perhaps the UK is more sophisticated than here with regard to same but typically tea is just tea, and the main divisions are by brand name rather than particular type of blend. I can’t think of what variety is the main one but it’s definitely not Earl Grey. (OK i remembered it’s Assam tea in Ireland anyway, have never noticed a difference in UK but YMMV)
  6. Just to emphasise the “down home” nature of tea drinking in these isles, people have their preferred brands, PG Tipps, Lipton, Barry’s, Lyon’s etc. but both flavoured teas and more specific varieties of teas are less common than they seem to be among US tea drinkers.

(We’ll have to see when a UKian tea drinker comes along whether I’ve posted any scurrilous lies.)

3

Also not a Brit, also no first hand answers, but regarding your first question: My British out-laws* drink teabag tea exclusively. When we first met and I pulled out the teapot they got all excited in that “Ooh this is something I remember from my childhood and only do on special occasions” way. I pretty well only drink loose leaf, so they make a fuss about my tea but when they go “home” they bring back PG Tipps teabags and post about it on Facebook… I gather my loose leaf is still only considered second best.

If the UK is anything like Australia, loose leaf drinkers are becoming increasingly uncommon judging by the relative shelf space given over to leaves vs bags in the supermarket. I’m unusual amongst my friends in predominantly drinking LL.

*Not married to their son so they’re not my in-laws.

4

3) Is tea seen as a “certain time of day” beverage or is it consumed throughout the day?

Get up, have a cup of tea.
Eat breakfast, have a cup of tea.
Do some chores, have a cup of tea.
Going to do the shopping, have a cup of tea first.
Done the shopping, have a nice relaxing cup of tea.
Have a lovely lunch, finish it with a nice hot cup of tea. And a biscuit.
Decide to watch some telly. Make a cup of tea first.
More chores. More tea.
It’s four o’clock! Time for tea.
Should really get the dinner on, will have a cup of tea first.
Enjoy dinner, would make a cup of tea, but too full.
Decide to watch something on telly, make a cup of tea first.
Program finishes, make a cup of tea.
Time for bed? Make a cup of tea to take to bed.
Finish bedtime brew. See if partner will make you another.

Information based on observations of my parents, champion tea drinkers.

5

Yup, that’s all accurate for the UK too.

Until I was about 13 I didn’t even know there were different types of tea - I thought there was just tea in different brands, same as there’s cola in different brands.

The only thing to add is that pretty much every house has a kettle, an electric one plugged into the wall which switches off automatically - I would genuinely be very surprised to enter a kitchen and not see a kettle - and when people come round your house you’re expected to offer them a drink, usually a cup of tea.

6

Thanks ScifiSam, I just sometimes worry that I have a wrongheaded impression of you guys. If you ever see me posting something wrong about the UK please correct me.

7

I’m a Brit living in Italy. I buy my favourite tea in the international shop here unlesss I can get visitors to bring it over for me.

I drink Twinings Earl Grey, there is a version of it here in Italy, made by Twinings, but it doesn’t taste anything like the English one. Italian tea is much weaker, I like my tea strong, or as you would say in England “Stewed” or “Cabbage Water”.

In Italy the tea bags are also all individually wrapped in paper which strikes me as strange but I assume it to be because they don’t use them quickly enough and worry about staleness.

I have my tea with a splash of milk and no sugar. You ‘should’ have lemon with Earl Grey but I can’t drink tea without milk.

I drink a cup of tea when I wake up, one in the car on the way to work and anything between one and four at work. I drink one as soon as I get through the front door, I put the kettle on before I take my coat off or get the children out of the car. I take one to bed with me too.

I use tea bags and Mr Scotch gave me a thermal teapot which I love, so I have 3 cups of tea on hand for several hours.

Thinking about it, I will have a cup of tea before I do anything much like sandra_nz.

Everything said up-thread rings true, especially about the kettles, I have one here in Italy and it is quite a conversation piece, as Italians boil water for tea in a saucepan. Yuk.

One other important thing about tea is that you drink it in a crisis. If something bad has happened, on any kind of scale, the correct response is always “Come over, I’m putting the kettle on/ I’m on my way, put the kettle on.”

8

UKian reporting in.

The vast majority of people drink tea with teabags, with loose leaf being seen as a luxury and generally served in better classes of restaurants. Most people drink “builders tea”, that is Tetley’s or PG Tips brand tea squeezed or sufficiently stewed so the flavour is fully in the water, before adding a generous dash of milk. Sugar is optional, a lot of people take one spoonful or a sweetner.

Tea is drunk all the time, probably too much actually as it has more caffeine in it than coffee (it’s less concentrated though so you don’t feel it so much). I do my utmost to not drink tea after 5pm. But there are the positive health aspects of drinking tea too, it’s frequently being touted as a source of antioxidants that help reduce cancer, although if that were true, given how much the UK drinks tea compared to its continental neighbours, you’d think our cancer rate would be near zero!

Not offering someone a tea or coffee when they visit your house is grounds for defriending.

In closing I would like to point out that people who drink only Liptons have never actually had tea, in the same way that people who have only eaten Quorn have never eaten meat.

9

Tea has more caffeine per pound than coffee. However, a cup of normally steeped tea will have less caffeine in it than a cup of normally brewed coffee. So someone who drinks six cups of tea won’t get as much caffeine as someone who drinks six cups of coffee, assuming that both tea and coffee are standard strength.

10

Texan here–where we drink most of our tea iced.

But I watched Gosford Park over the Christmas weekend (on my new flatscreen TV!) One character (the idiotic Inspector, I believe) betrays his humble origins by pouring milk into the teacup before adding the tea; one of the Quality gently reminds him to pour her tea first, then add the milk…

(Gosh, Julian Fellowes could actually write when he had time constraints.)

11

Brit here, what AN GADAI said.

I recall once on these boards someone (Am assuming American) said that they were a connessieur of tea and would never pour boiling water onto their leaves as this was harsh, or indelicate or something or other.

Sorry but if you don’t pour boiling water on your brew, you might just as well throw your tea down the toilet.

12

Asian types of tea demand the most care with regard to brewing temperature and time, rather than the standard British black tea with milk and sugar. brewing guide
Lots of specialty shops and blends are springing up in the US, and Canada has wonderful teas. But my favorite teas come from a tea purveyor in France. Better than any of the UK teas I’ve gotten from British specialty shops.

(I realize that, as an American, my opinion is suspect. Please ignore as desired.)

13

What you’re missing is that there are two meanings for “tea”. Most of the world uses the word to refer to blends, including green teas, iced teas, and a million other combinations which involve - well, tea.
To us British, while we might use the word in that context occasionally, when we say “tea” what we mean is one very specific way of drinking tea. Black tea, milk, (optional sugar), hot. If someone asks you if you want a cup of tea, they’re asking if you want a very specific drink.
That’s not to say we’re unaware of other tea-drinking-methods, and, indeed, partake in them to about the same extent as anyone else does, but that one particular drink is what we mean when we say it, and we drink it all day, every day. If we ask if you want a cup of tea, you’re not going to get green tea, or iced tea, or anything weird like that (and yes, most of us would consider those things a little weird and hippy).

14

So, if I was in Britain and wanted a cup of tea I should just ask for it, correct? And expect a tea bag (which is totally fine by me - I’m not a tea snob) and black tea.

What would be the proper way to request it without milk? I expect as an American it wouldn’t be considered to weird to ask for it that way.

Frankly, I think in some ways it would be a relief to be in a country where tea was understood to be something so specific unless otherwise specified - in recent years here not only have varieties of tea proliferated, but all sorts of weird herbal things AND a proclivity to add completely unnecessary fruity flavors to it. Sometimes to the point of overwhelming the tea flavor.

15

Actually, UK teas can now be found in the US. My supermarket has PG Tips and Taylors of Harrowgate for sale, or you can go to the English Tea Storeonline.

16

I’m of the opinion that if a tea bag comes individually wrapped then it is crap tea. All the proper teas come in a big box with about eleventy million of the fellas in there. I’m a PG man myself, which I can thankfully get reasonably easily here in Stockholm.

I had to buy a kettle for my office. Swedes seem entirely content to make tea using water from the coffee machine that isn’t anywhere near the correct temperature. I was having none of that. My moaning about this, bringing my own teabags to work and eventually buying the kettle myself caused much amusement amongst locals and apparently signified that I was “very British”.

17

Black tea.

“Black tea”, as in the type of tea, isn’t really said in the UK. It is just “tea”, all the other ones get adjectives to point out how they are different to tea.

18

Yup. Just ask for " a cup of tea" (or “a cuppa”) and the above is exactly what you’ll get. If you wanted something else, you’d have to specify specifically. It’s very much the ubiquitous cheap, common drink; not supposed to be anything but.

And yes, you’d be looked at kinda odd for not having milk. If in someone’s home, they’ll probably add the milk automatically unless you think to mention it beforehand - they’ll ask how you like it, and what they mean by that is “how many teaspoons of sugar?”, the common answers being “no sugar/just one/two sugars please”. If in a cafe or somewhere, the milk will come in a little jug - not because they imagine you might choose not to have the milk, but so you can (a) decide how much to have and (b) have a second cup from the little stainless steel teapot they’ll also give.

19

My Mum drinks black tea, but she’s Scottish.

20

A British friend of mine had a good laugh about this last time he was here to visit. “Why on earth would you pay $8 a box when you can get perfectly serviceable tea in the main tea section?” He drank my regular old Red Rose (that’s a brand, not a flavor FYI) with no complaints. Although he did seem to use the term “builders tea” to definitely indicate milk and sugar.