I am also an American. So I have a large Borosilicate glass bottle- I put 2-4 tea bags in it, add cold filtered water, and next morning I have ice tea without boiling or leaving it in the sun for the bacteria to grow. I use Celestial seasonings black tea with lemon.
IMHO green tea tastes like ass… or is that grass?
My wife does use the kettle for her coffee (french press) and tea, and if I want hot chocolate, I use it also.
I used to like lapsang souchong a lot, decades ago. Recently i tried it again and it was a bit much – definitely a tea with a helluva bold character, though. I don’t put milk in my tea, so it might be more enjoyable for me if i tried it that way.
Most teas, other than chai and other flavored/spiced black teas, it seems to me get overwhelmed with milk – certainly green teas don’t marry with it as well as black, and white teas? Forget it. The flavor’s too delicate for any such adulteration.
Bergamot? Eh – maybe in Lady Grey, but it spoils Earl Grey for me.
The Republic of Tea, an online seller, has a huge variety of teas – black, green, white, roiboos, herbal – and I usually have several different cans of their teas on hand. Whole Foods does stock some of their offerings but the website has their whole range, searchable in various ways.
Taylors of Harrogate is another source of excellent teas, including, besides British and Irish, a marvelous Scottish Breakfast Tea. And their Yorkshire Gold black tea. I’ve found that in a local nonchain grocery store.
Whatever the particular tea, my method’s the same – put bag in mug, heat water in electric kettle to just boiling, pour gently over the bag and let steep for whatever time the container instructions indicate. Take the bag out, squeezing, with tea tongs, and enjoy.
True, and the weird thing about these prescriptive viewpoints is that we tend to think of our own as perfectly reasonable, and other people’s as pedantic and unwelcome interference.
Pretty sure the gag is more about how persnickety British people are about their tea than it being “wrong” to make it in a microwave.
And if it is true, I have had a cold the last few days and have made so many cups of tea in my microwave that I may have caused The War of 1812 The Sequel: Now With More Canada Action.
Sounds like my husband needs to try two different experiments: pouring the water over the teabag vs putting the bag into water, and heating water in the microwave vs the kettle. How do you know when the water’s hot enough, do you wait for bubbles to appear in the mug?
I do heat other things in mugs in the microwave, like milk mixed with water for coffee. I usually take it out and swirl it around a few times halfway through to avoid the superheating - no idea if this is really necessary.
Looks nice, my mum has something similar that she uses for loose leaf tea that I think is actually a coffeemaker.
I got a glass teapot from Amazon that has an insert for this purpose, it’s good because the holes are very small so not much escapes.
I wanted to try it, so I bought a box from the supermarket. 
Supermarkets in the UK generally have a very good range of real and herbal teas, though I order mine online now.
Instead of Brits, I get to horrify Indians with my tea, by drinking chai masala (confusingly just called ‘chai’, which is the Indian word for tea) make by pouring boiling water over a premade mixture of tea and spices, and then not even adding milk or sugar.
Sorry, what? That is literally impossible.
I used to be an Anglophile tea snob. Then I went to my first salon de thé. The English can suck it, the French are definitely better at doing tea.
When I was in the Navy in Gtmo Bay I lived in a multi story barracks.
My roommate and i had a single electric burner and a small metal pot to boil water which had an internal heating coil.
Both items were confiscated during a surprise inspection and stored away until I was transferred to another base.
Funnily enough I recently saw Randall Munroe onstage having this conversation with math podcast guy Matt Parker. They ended up agreeing that hot water is hot water.
Part of the thing is that the American electrical system being what it is, it takes much longer to boil water in an electric kettle there than it does in the UK. Which makes the microwave option more attractive.
This, I think, is why making tea with microwaved water isn’t as good. I mean, if you heated the water up in the microwave and then poured in into another mug with the teabag in, it would be better.
On the other hand, if you microwave the water correctly and then drop the teabag in, you can get that sudden boiling effect which is rather fun. But still doesn’t make as good a cup of tea.
Don’t get me started. The loss of Twinings’ Lapsang Souchong (for supply reasons IIRC) still hurts.
I have some of that and sometimes do that. I also have a spice mix to add to loose tea when making tea that way. Occasionally I make it from scratch but you can’t really just make one cup - it’s a saucepan-full.
We have an electric kettle at work for meetings if someone prefers tea or hot chocolate instead of coffee made in the brewer. It takes forever.
At home I can heat water in a tea kettle on my electric stove in minutes.
Right now my 15 year old tea kettle needs replaced as it is starting to show it’s age.
My small electric tea kettle (no more than 2 mugs of water fit in it) does not take terribly long to heat that water, despite the 120 current.
I got it because i used to boil water in a small cast iron kettle, and it pissed off my husband that i would leave it on the heat until it boiled, often allowing it to boil over a bit. (Page the “things that bother you even though they don’t matter” thread.) So this was a joke present to him. That is, the joke was that i bought it for myself, but it was really for him, because now i don’t let water boil over on the stove. It’s nice because it’s set-and-forget. I fill it, set the temp to 205, and head downstairs to clean the litter boxes. While i do that, it brings the water to the indicated temperature and holds it at that temp for a while. (15 min? 30min? I forget) Then turns itself off. So i do the litter boxes, fix my breakfast, pour the water over my loose tea, and then enjoy breakfast, without anything boiling over, and without worrying about timing.
Also, it looks elegant, pours precisely with its little goose neck, and makes for a satisfying little morning ritual.
My electric kettle is
if anyone cares.
Bah, it’s BS. Just people holding onto old traditions or that drink tea all day and prefer a kettle on the stove so there is always hot water available.
I used to make tea every morning for my drive to work. Zap a pyrex measuring cup with two cups of water and a tea bag in it. Pour it in a travel mug and you are good to go.
Hot is hot. Water is a simple compound.
What do the French do differently?
My gf has told friends about our first “date” and how I made her tea after dinner, pouring from an actual teapot that I kept covered with a cozy.
I thought that was the way to do it.
The problem with the “mug of water in the microwave, drop in a teabag” method is not the water, it’s the teabag. 95% of bagged tea is swill.* Get yourself some high quality looseleaf tea and then you’re in business.
*I massively exaggerated for effect because I am a tea snob. Yes, I know there are high end bagged teas - I occasionally drink them when I am slumming.
Serve better cakes, for one thing.
But seriously - better blends (IMO), and a better atmosphere in the salon. I’ve taken tea in various places, from Bath pumphouse on down, and the French just do it better.
This actually looks interesting. One of these days I might try this.
Your microwave oven ought to be very consistent. So a little experimentation will tell you whether e.g. 90 seconds is enough or you need 2 minutes. Then just use that duration every time. IME most ovens get the water and the cup plenty hot enough at 2 minutes, and you will have visible boiling at 2:30.
I’m perfectly content to heat / cook almost everything just by repeated pushes of the “add 30 seconds” button. I rarely fuss with exact times.
You and/or Husband maybe fussier than I.
Superheating was much more of an issue before microwaves had turntables. Or for people who heated things for far longer than was necessary. As in “Hmm, it’s not boiling; I’ll run it some more.”
I had a cousin who served tea like this for awhile. Delightful.
Even if that’s the correct temperature, I can’t get that. The laws of physics dictate that I cannot heat water higher than about 95 C.