Today I may have learned why it is that I don’t like tea. As I’ve always suspected, we Americans do not know how to make tea.
First, the water must be boiling when it meets the leaves. This business of a bag of Lipton’s finest in a styrofoam cup makes for some really lame tea.
Here in the States, tea tends to be boiled in a tea kettle, then poured into some sort of cup with a tea bag in it. A good English-style tea involves a third vessel – the tea pot (short and stout). One warms the tea pot preemptively lest it cool too quickly. The tea bags go in this pot – not in the cup or in the kettle as the water boils. The boiling water goes into the pot. Then tea happens.
In England, people sometimes drink tea with milk in it. I’m going to try that next time I make tea. Evidently the milk goes in the cup first, so as not to scald it.
Now everyone go make some tea and tell me how it goes.