I think what makes it quintessentially British is that tea is a hot beverage, easier to brew than coffee, and Britain is cold damp island.
Tea from freshly dried leaves is white tea.
The “common” tea, black tea, has been fermented for a period of time.
Green tea is partially fermented.
I suppose you could brew tea from the leaves right off the plant. You’d probably need a huge pile of them to equal the amount of dried leaves normally used.
~VOW
Last time I went to stay with my parents, I got accused of being lazy and selfish because I never made a cup of tea for everyone. The only problem was that I couldn’t get one in edgeways before either mother or father had produced yet another one! I couldn’t keep up!
I have an extra 220 circuit in my apartment run to my kitchen. Sounds like I need to import a British kettle. As it’s a resistive heater, the line frequency wouldn’t matter.
Every time I walk in the door at my parents house they say “The jug [kettle] just boiled. You must have known”. There is no moment of the day or night when the jug hasn’t just been boiled.
Indeed. I don’t think I’ve ever met a Brit that goes in for any of the posho teas, it is all PG, Tetley and whatnot. The other stuff is for those foreign types. It annoys the tits off of me that here in Stockholm if you go to a café you can’t actually get a non-flavoured black tea.
Speaking from experience, some tea drinkers do seem to be able to take it absurdly hot. My father-in-law, for example, will make tea for everyone, then sit down and begin drinking his straight away - if I even sip mine (which will be the same temperature), I end up with a sore, scalded tongue. He finishes his cup before I can even start on mine.
Obviously, this still isn’t actually boiling when he’s drinking it, but it is remarkably hot.
Coffee drinkers are often the same way. I always ask for my lattes to be made “not so hot” (Caribou Coffee has a button for this) because I’d like to drink my morning coffee before lunch time. But apparently, not everyone has that problem.
Standard issue teabags (Tetley, PG Tips) are so cheap that I always wondered who buys the cheap-o ones. I assume they’re horrible - I’ve never tried them. Even impoverished students, in my experience, will always have a huge pack of Tetley in the kitchen cupboard. A cup of tea is the minimum requirement for hospitality in the UK. You might have to wait while I wash some mugs, mind…
Missed the edit window, so I’m double posting.
Most people take theirs with milk. I’m milk, no sugar, which I guess is probably the most common nowadays. Quite a few people take it black. I’ve never met anyone who takes it black with sugar, but I’m sure he or she is out there.
I feel a poll coming on…
You misunderstand me. The people earnestly asking whether Assam is preferable to Darjeeling, and so forth, are those from non-tea-drinking countries.
OK, here’s my poll!
Yo! Here I am!
Actually, what you’d call “black with sugar” is probably the most common on this side of the pond.
I will happily take mine black with sugar if no milk is available, although generally I do prefer milk.
I checked, btw, and Broomstick is totally right, Lipton comes in paper wrappers. I don’t know why I forgot that.
It certainly was the case that footballers would have a cup of tea at halftime. This article from the Independent 1993 says that 82% of the professional and top semi-professional clubs in England served tea at halftime.
Note Gary Lineker one of the top players in the World in the late 80s to very early 90s is specifically mentioned as a player who would drink tea at halftime.
Nowdays I think it’s far less common, for the reasons cited in the article, i.e. it’s not the best way to rehydrate and professional football clubs and players are much, much more focused on that type of thing than they were 20 years ago. Also I think among subsequent generations tea drinking in the UK has waned, for those under 40 or so the compulsive tea drinking seen in older generations is much rarer.
That said I remember when I was about 3 years old being given warm tea in a beaker by mum to drink. Though I very rarely drink tea nowdays.
Obviously you can’t drink it straight away as you’ll just burn yourself, however it should be drunk as soon as possible. There’s nothign worse than luke warm tea.
American here, and not much of a tea drinker. But my wife drinks tea regularly - Twinings English Breakfast tea, or, as I imagine folks in the UK call it, Breakfast tea. 
She takes it brewed for precisely three minutes, with a bit of milk and two sugars in.
Well, not wishing to get into an argument, I, for one, actually prefer the new Twinings Earl Grey. It was always my second choice for Earl Grey (which is my daytime tea of choice), my first being (perhaps surprisingly, but maybe not, considering they started out as tea merchants), Sainsbury’s own brand Earl Grey. The improved Twinings Earl Grey means I don’t have to make a trip to a particular supermarket just to buy my tea (although my preferred bog standard tea remains another Sainsbury’s blend - namely their Gold Label, which to my palette is far superior to any branded everyday tea I’ve yet to find - strong, yet fresh with very well defined high notes).
Anyway that’s enough tea…
OB
Actually, we’d just call it ‘tea’ 
Most people have one brand and stick to it religiously. My partner swears by Yorkshire Gold.
I’m that rare breed - a non tea-drinking Brit. People really do think I’m weird. I occasionally drink mint tea, which probably makes me even weirder. If I visit someone’s house I literally have to rush into the kitchen to stop them pouring me a cuppa as it’s just assumed that I will want one.
My MIL thinks I’m a freak for drinking coffee. She bought me a jar of instant to make me feel at home (YUUUUK) so now I try to avoid drinking hot drinks in her house if at all possible, mainly by timing my visits for Gin & Tonic O’Clock.
My girlfriend says it’s impossible to get a decent cuppa in a foreign hotel – the tea is always too weak and the water not hot enough. She has resorted to taking her own teabags and mini kettle. If you have ever stayed in a British hotel (even a small scruffy B&B), your room will ALWAYS have tea, cups and an electric kettle provided for free. I’ve heard it grants people an extra star rating. Seriously!
Wow! A zombie thread! I must not have been around in 2011, or I’d’ve contributed some of my tea lore:
When I was staying at a pen-pal’s home in Scotland in the '70s, her mother was appalled by my drinking tea with sugar only (no milk). She also commented (as had my friends in the States) on my actually boiling the tea on the hob (stove). Sorry, but this was the way I had always done it, just like my mother (who was from Missouri).
I now make tea the “standard” way, with an electric kettle, and I just pour the boiling water over the teabags. Sometimes I use loose leaf tea in a proper teapot, but then I have to strain it as it comes out. I usually drink it with a shot of evaporated milk and a couple of spoons of golden sugar. This is normally how I start my day. If I have a cold, I add honey and lemon instead. I drink a lot less coffee now than I did even 20 years ago; I can’t handle the acid in it any more.
I’m surprised that pouring the milk in first is considered working-class. My British friends told me the tradition started to keep the cup from cracking under the heat of the tea. I’d expect this from fine china, not what Jamie Oliver calls “builders’ mugs.” But hell, what do I know about porcelain?
If what I saw in ***Gallipoli ***is true, the ANZAC forces also started brewing tea the moment they hit the beach. In the Rat Patrol pilot, Sgt Moffitt asks Troy for permission to brew tea when they’re stopped in the desert overnight.
I’ve also read that in Colonial days, New Englanders would save their used tea leaves and sprinkle them on toast to be thrifty.
I would later learn that my mother’s method is also the way tea was traditionally made in Russia. Samovars were (and still are) used to heat water for diluting the boiled tea, and the teapot it’s served in is placed on top of the central “stovepipe” (once used to burn charcoal, but now everything is electric) to keep it warm. (Nowadays, of course, Russians commonly use teabags, like everyone else, and they no longer boil the tea.) The traditional way to drink it is either with jam (sip of tea, dessert spoon of jam) or through a sugar cube in your mouth (back in the day, older Russians would have their front teeth badly decayed from doing this). I can’t recall ever seeing a Russian add milk to tea, though they do put in sugar nowadays. And like the British, they’ll drink tea all day long. I suspect McDonald’s sells at least as much tea as coffee in Russia, though the latter is probably more common than it was in the past (most likely because the quality of what’s available is much better).
[Note: terentii didn’t bump this thread; it was a spammer]
Not sure how I missed this thread the first time around. A few notes:
First, the Lipton’s sold in the US is not the same as the Lipton’s sold in the UK. British Lipton’s might well be perfectly serviceable, but American Lipton’s is just barely above the point where I’d pour it straight down the drain. There are worse teas out there, but not very many.
Second, the quality of the tea itself matters much more than how it’s packaged, brewed, or served. You can find good tea loose, or in a bug jumble of bags, or in individually-wrapped bags, and you can find bad tea in all of those forms, too. And I’d rather have a cup of good-quality tea made with warm water than a cup of bad tea made with boiling (though of course, I’d prefer the good-quality made with boiling to either). My favorite brand (of what’s available at American grocery stores) is Stash, though Twinings is also fine.
Third, if you don’t feel like spending so much on tea (though even the good stuff is pretty cheap), you’re in luck. The absolute cheapest tea you’ll find anywhere, by a significant margin, is Benner, the Aldi house brand, and it’s actually a pretty good one. Not the best, but good.
And I’m not British, but the way I like mine is black and strong, with one spoonful of honey. I steep it until I can’t see the bowl of the spoon (about five minutes), at which point it’s also just about at the perfect temperature for me, and then drink it quickly before it cools off more.
I also enjoy a nice tisane, but yes, that’s a completely different beverage (or more precisely, a variety of completely different beverages: Rooibos is as different from chamomile as either is from C. sinensis).