I’ve been drinking iced Earl Grey with no sweetener for years. How do you do your brew?
Kettle, teabag, milk.
Electric kettle + Celestial Apple Cinnamon tea in a Yeti thermos. Let brew for 3-4 hours. It is absolutely glorious.
I didnt know you could brew it that long and have it taste good! Do you just use one bag and leave it on the counter?
I mostly drink Shan tea which has added toasted sticky rice flavour and a very strong black tea with milk and sugar, the way indians introduced back in colonial time.
Shan tea is simple. Just put it in a flask with hot water, wait a bit and drink slowly.
Black tea with milk has to be brewed hard though. Tannins are part of the flavour. I personally brew for about 15 to 30 mins. Actual tea stalls brew much longer, like hours long. Also tea leaves to water ratio is quite low as well. The tea needs to be fairly tart. Then we add evaporated milk and sweetener. A serving should be quite small because the tea is strong. May be around 100-150ml.
Depends on tea…
I start with boiling water because I don’t have a fancy kettle.
Tea bags? Leave in for a while, sometimes indefinitely, sometimes til the string annoys me. Black unflavored?With a little half and half. Sometimes brown sugar, tannin content depending. Black flavored (like Earl grey)? Plain. Green? A little honey. Most others? Plain
Loose? Timing depends on tea type, and can change based on specific tea and quality. Usually: Black/flavored green/lower quality teas? 3 minutes first brew, 5 till indefinite minutes second brew. Green? 1 minute first brew, 2 minutes second brew, 5 minutes third brew. Oolong/puer? 5 second rinse, toss the rinse, 20 second first brew. Or, without rinse, 30 second first brew. 1 minute second brew, 2 minute third brew, etc.
A lot of loose leaf depends on tea to water ratio too, these work for me. Quality and size of leaf effects how quickly the flavor can get into the water. Sometimes I’ll just stand over the brewing tea and sniff the whole time to determine best brew time. I might be a little crazy about it though.
As a British person, I want to go mad with the downvotes here.
Wondering how it is done in Britain is a big part of what inspired this question. What would your say is the common method?
Tea bag in a mug. Boil the kettle. Pour boiling water into mug. Give it a little stir and leave it for a couple of minutes. Remove tea bag. Add sugar and milk to desired taste. I’d say that’s probably the way most brits make a cup of tea.
Whether or not you have sugar is quite controversial too. I was raised in a “look down on the sugar people” family. Some people are more live and let live. I think I try to be the latter but if you say you want 3 sugars I have my nans voice in my head going “If you hate the taste of tea that much just have something else”.
I basically take everything ‘black’ with two sugars, I never put milk in my tea. And I’m particularly partial to Earl Grey and peppermint.
Also, Demerara sugar FTW.
How is the iced Grey? Doesn’t sound like my cup of tea (tee-hee) but your choice is very intriguing…
Its great! I saw the little “try over ice!” on the box and never looked back. I reccomend an extra tea bag and steeping a bit longer, then pouring over more ice than you think you need. You want to flash cool it. I dont add anything to preserve the strong flavor, but I know many throw in some sugar.
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I have a really nice Bodum glass kettle that I use every day. I usually drink it with a bit of honey. For chai, black tea, and other dessert-y teas, I like to add a bit of milk (powdered or almond).
I really like disposable, compostable tea bags. They’re made of the same stuff as coffee filters. But tbh I use pre bagged most days because I’m lazy.
On special occasions we bring out the Yixing
Three ways, depending on circumstances and need.
First is the fast cup. Nuke a cup with tea bags in for 2 and a half minutes, fuck around while walking when it beeps, mix it up. Drink. It gets the job done fine overall, but you lose spme of the delicate flavors from any tea.
Second is the almost as fast, but better. Nuke the water for three minutes, add preferred tea, wait four minutes and enjoy.
Third is more traditional and gives the best tea. Since I don’t have a kettle that will keep hot water ready, I bring the water to a boil in a pot. Loose tea only, no bags, in a steeper in the cup. Pour water over tea, wait four minutes, begin fixing.
I’m a sweet and milky guy. Two sugars, splash of milk for an 8 ounce mug. It’s almost always earl grey, though I will do chai. That being said, every now and then I have breakfast tea (English or Irish) with one sugar and lemon.
Iced tea I do southern style. Big pitcher, super strong, lots of sugar. Sometimes lemon, but usually not.
Hot water, rip off the paper label, leave in and forget
Electric kettle. Boiling water. Infuser basket in tea pot for 3 - 5 minutes depending on the type of tea. Drink pot and repeat around 1400
Bag of breakfast tea, boiling water, splash of milk
There’s no improvement to be made on perfection
- Heat water to 70 degrees using electric kettle.
- Put loose leaf green tea in a strainer thingy. Leave room for it to expand 4 times as big
- Swoosh some of the 70 degree water around a glass kettle to heat it up, pour it out.
- Put strainer with tea in glass kettle.
- Pour water over tea.
- Let sit for a few minutes.
- Drink.
- Reuse the same leafs throughout the day using same steps.
I usually use unflavored green tea with decent quality. Very different from tea bags.
It’s been a while since I’ve had tea and it’s not fancy or anything but what I did was I would start off with either an unsweetened green or black tea bag (just whatever I had at the time) and steep it in twice as much water that was recommended on the box. After I removed the tea bag, I would then add a lemonade drink mix and either 1 packet of sugar for green tea or 2 packets of sugar for black tea.
I don’t remember any specific combinations of brands but I think I remember sweeter lemonades working better with green tea and tart lemonades working better with black tea. Just avoid True Lemon, I haven’t tried their other drink mixes but I remember the regular lemonade drink mix being terrible in tea.
