An American has weighed in on the proper way to make tea. The great Anglo-American War will commence shortly.
…Michelle Francl, a chemistry professor at Bryn Mawr College in Pennsylvania with a new book on tea, has suggested techniques for making a perfect brew that are unfamiliar to many Brits.
She advised that adding a dash of salt could help the tea to taste less bitter. She went further, recommending a squeeze of lemon, which helps to remove the “scum” that can sit on the surface of the water. She is also a fan of vigorous dunking and squeezing of the tea bag.
She’s a scientist. She can’t be wrong.
Francl seems to be serious about her tea advice. In her new book, “Steeped: The Chemistry of Tea,” she documents tea-making practices that date back more than 1,000 years. She advises using short mugs, with less surface area, to help keep the tea warm, and she says warming up the cup beforehand is important as it increases the amount of caffeine and antioxidants released.
Throwing caution to the wind, Francl bravely weighs in on the Great Milk Debate and concludes that it’s better to use warm milk and to pour milk in after the tea. This, she says, will reduce the chances of it curdling.
Of course, we recognize that that is the perspective of a radical professor at a liberal arts school. We have to consult the US Embassy for the more conservative, diplomatic method of making tea.
My wife will be relieved that she has been following the recommended American protocol in making all that tea that she drinks.
Don’t tell anyone, but in addition to being a socialist, atheist, DEI-loving liberal, I also have an electric kettle in my office. I know, my list of offenses is already long enough.
In the words of the immortal Mrs. Doyle, “Oh gaiwan, gaiwan!”
What? Is the U.S. Embassy revising history. Wasn’t there a small matter of a War of Independence sparked by a tax on tea?
Amazed that the US Embassy didn’t mention Washburn’s Equation… (look it up, gaiwan, gaiwan, gaiwan )
I don’t really get what the big deal with tea is. Microwave water for four minutes. Place the bag of commercial or store brand tea in water to steep. Add maple syrup and vanilla flavor soy milk. Enjoy. I’ll skip the salt.
Also vinegar works to dissolve the brown deposits that accumulate inside the mug over time.
I am not a fan of iced tea southern style loaded down with sugar. Gross. Ice T the hip hop artist (hi John) is OK though.
I prefer coffee (cold and black) over tea.
The beverage wars begun they have.
Bags suck. They’re usually leftover dust from leaf processing. Use loose leaf and an infuser. Pre-rinse the tea with hot tap water. That will rinse away the dust which greatly reduces the bitterness (and improves clarity for iced tea)
You should use water from snow from blossoms on a sacred mountain and matured for years (or something like that).Why has nobody cited Orwell’s essay? https://www.orwellfoundation.com/the-orwell-foundation/orwell/essays-and-other-works/a-nice-cup-of-tea/
I’ve also got a couple of infusers in my office. My treachery knows no bounds.
Hot cocoa FTW
Yes. But remember that the vinegar does not go in the tea; rather, this is an occasional cleaning step while the cup is not in use.
My Grannie’s method (she died in 1961) was simple. Put 4 or 5 spoons of tea in a large pot. Boil water, fill the pot, leave on hob until needed. For those who don’t know them, the range and its hob were central to urban working class life in her generation. An open coal fire (kept burning all day), with an oven one side and a water tank the other. A flat surface on each side for keeping things warm, and a hinged grid over the fire that you could cook on. Just a couple of years before I remember, she’d been treated by her family to a gas water heater and a gas stove with oven, so by now the range was only used to heat up the big tub of water for washing day or Grandad’s bath after work (he worked in a foundry).
To serve the tea, a china cup and saucer for all but Grandad who got a mug, yellow sterilised milk (no fridge), and about 3 spoons of sugar. It was bright, almost Trump, orange. It tasted foul, but as a polite little boy I sat and drank it and thanked her.
No doubt some Yorkshireman will tell me she was lucky…
This is similar to my battle to prepare pasta in sauce the proper way. Family and friends are horrified that I don’t rinse the noodles. There have been actual tussles and ploys to take my pot from off the stove and over to the sink to drain and rinse before I can properly “marry” the sauce to the noodles using the cooking water. If I have been allowed to finish “my way,” some have actually refused to eat it.
Real tea is green, and it is bitter.
Professor Francl’s method is very close to the way I make my tea, so I’m probably going to get hanged as a traitor once the war erupts.
(I’m still not going to try salt in it, though, any more than I would go back to taking milk and sugar.)
Salt in tea is unusual, but not unheard of. I’m a bit more surprised that a chemist finds any value in increasing antioxidants.
Tea should remain as a poor substitute when the Coffee runs out.
We in the UK do have standards, you know.
In particular, ISO/NP 3103, formerly BS 6008:1980, which received the 1999 IgNobel Prize for Literature. 1999 was a good year for tea at the IgNobels, as another of the prizes (Physics) was for calculating how to make a teapot spout that does not drip.
The other weird thing is the British getting offended like they own tea. They’re kind of latecomers to that tradition.
If you are drinking stuff that has vegetable input maybe you should try the polynesian stuff, kava. But don’t mix it with alcohol. The thing is, you get mildly intoxicated but not aggressive.
Myself I am a coffee guy. I tried tea for a while, but it didn’t stick.
Proper coffee is boiled, the old fashioned way. The leftover stuff from coffee when strewn on the ground initially prevents plants from growing, but after a while it becomes great fertilizer.
I am ashamed to say that Swedes are second to Finns when it comes to coffee consumption. The Finns must have stomachs of iron.
Screw that. I’d rather drink slightly bitter tea than drink salty tea.
Everyone KNOWs that proper electric kettles only operate on 240 volts, so PZ’s office kettle which undoubtedly is plugged into a 120v receptacle certainly doesn’t qualify;)
And that 60Hz thing is probably pushing the boundaries as well!
birgerjohansson @18
I drink Gevalia.
If you don’t like bitter tea shorten the time you brew it for, if you want more bitterness increase the length of time you brew. Personally despite being British I like my tea pale and interesting, rather than orange and intensely bitter, my way you can taste far more flavours even from the cheapest tea (loose leaf of course, I do have standards). I
f you want a dribble free teapot I can recommend the London Pottery Company’s teapots, guaranteed not to dribble, all with internal strainers, and the pebble design ones feel wonderful in the hand as you warm them. I have no connection to the company other than as a satisfied customer of non-dribbling tea pots.
Right then, listen up Johnny Foreigner! What sort of blasted kerfuffle do you think you’re starting, eh? Only a tawdry colonial could think that it’s up to chemistry to determine the right way to make tea. Not at all, dear boy – Jingoism is how to do it.
My ancestors didn’t take over half the world in pith helmets and sensible trousers just to have some miserable yank chunter on about using salt water and other devious barbarian rubbish. Tea should be made as God and the Queen (much the same thing in our theology) intended – in a china pot, brew for two minutes, milk and two sugars, biccie on the side for dunking. Anything else is bloody bally treason and should get a man shot, so it is.
Also, we don’t tell the Chinese how to make tea. They have their own way of doing things, and we’re generally too busy trying to make them buy our opium at gunpoint. Likewise the Indians, for whom microagressions are a waste of time in the face of the many macroagressions we dreamed up for them over the years.
No, it’s specifically the Americans and Australians we reserve our tea-making contempt for (the Irish have been judged entirely competent in this matter, and are considered honorary English when it comes to tea culture – the greatest accolade a former colony can receive, in our eyes). Our general opinion is that you’re basically not really another culture at all, just a bunch of stray Englishmen who are very bad at it and in need of paternalistic guidance to help you improve.
You’re welcome.
I’m from the South…the place with the ultimate violation of the sacred tea gods whether Lu Yu, Inari, Shennog or whoever. Here’s the recipe I grew up on: Lipton’s in a tea ball (later tea bags), boiling water poured over it, let steep for a bit, add sugar, let stand until cool, put ice in a glass and pour in your tea.
Yum. Perfect for a steamy hot day in the swamps of north Florida or the fields of southwest Georgia.
Now I’m sure some will say that’s not tea, but that’s just elitist bias. I grew up on it just fine and was straight and narrow until I started drinking coffee at the tender age of 21. That’s when I became a degenerate, dope addled hippie…in fact almost at the same moment.
Milk first. Fight me.
Any method of brewing tea (including ISO/NP 3103) that even mentions the word “milk” is an abomination. Milk (or cream) belongs in coffee. It totally changes the taste of tea, and in no way enhances it. (this from a Canadian). Why go to all the trouble described in making the tea “the proper British way” if you are going to drown out the tea taste with milk? NO MILK!
Did no one notice that the scientist’s recommendation is that you only add a tiny amount of salt? Not enough to taste the salt?
Hemidactylus, I actually clean my coffee mug (also used for teas) using drain cleaner. Seriously. Half hour soak, dump, rinse the living hell out of the cup, clean as if brand new.
As for tea, the only proper way to make tea is with heated sulfuric acid at 70%, 30% fuming nitric acid, steel tea and glycerin together just shy of boiling, enjoy your new kitchen afterward. Any residual makes for an excellent nasal rinse.*
Oh, for clarity’s sake, the amount of salt suggested was below the threshold of taste. Thanks, but no thanks, I actually find any slight bitterness enjoyable.
And I quite enjoy using my electric kettle. Mine came with an infuser as well, should I want to make a gallon of the iced variety, which I occasionally do.
The UK, who introduced the world to tea, civilization and blood pudding.
jacksprocket, nearly bought an antique stove of that sort. Was considering it for a backup at our vacation home in the mountains, should our cooking gas supply play out on a holiday. Would’ve, save then I’d have had to move the cast iron monstrosity and well, I did say mountains, so I passed on it. I’m also one of the vanishingly few of my generation who knows how to operate a coal burner. I was actually a licensed US Army fireman, meaning that I was licensed to operate some ancient coal furnaces for our antique barracks (since, converted to oil heat).
*Don’t try this at home without first acquiring an explosive demolitions permit, which will be denied by anyone sane. The nasal rinse, only to achieve one’s Darwin Award. And yeah, there are worse things that I could add to the acid mixture, I’ll just not discuss them
Tea needs to be steeped in high temperature and tea bags can make good tea if steeped properly. I’m guessing most Americans have not experienced a properly brewed tea. If you have access to any kind of thermoflask that can keep the temperature, you can preheat with hot water then use it to steep tea. Or you can just use the method used by a lot of countries where you steep the tea in a little tea pot over lightly boiling water.
Personally, when I see a discussion about how to make tea, I can think of nothing but the section of the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy where The Heart of Gold ends up being attacked by the Vogons after Arthur asks a drinks dispenser to make him a proper cup of tea, which requires the drinks dispenser and ship’s computer to collaborate to the extent that anything else gets ignored.
Also I should add that as both a tea drinker and a coffee drinker that I recognize that tea drinking is a nice and harmless activity while coffee ends up being a cult. Remember guys, if people around you start buying scales with 0.1 gram precision, or water recipes, know that you are too deep and you need to get out.
cartomancer: the queen’s dead, mate.
This is an old misapprehension.
Most people use tea bags, they are super-convenient.
If they really were leftover dust, then the processing must be extremely inefficient, because more tea is sold in bags than in loose leaf form.
No, they’re just ground-up leaves, and the finer grind means quicker to infuse. Quality varies, of course.
Like pre-ground spices, they will lose “top notes” — the more volatile compounds — quicker, so they go stale quicker. Storing them in airtight containers helps.
—
Caps in original:
Q: WHAT PERCENTAGE OF BRITISH TEA IS CONSUMED FROM A TEABAG?
A: 97.5%.
(https://www.tea.co.uk/tea-faqs#)
rojmiller,
I noticed; I can even quote her:
So the intent is to change the taste of the tea, by removing some of the ability to taste its bitterness.
Thing is, as a habitual and long-time tea (infused black tea for me, generally) drinker, I have become accustomed to its flavour profile. Why would I want to miss out on the bitterness?
(It would be like drinking a G&T without the bitterness)
Debittered tonic, wouldn’t that just be seltzer water?
Oh, really want to have fun, compare US vs UK tonic water…
Heh, heh, heh. Surely you’re joking, Dr. Francl!
wzrd1, ah, right — the high fructose corn syrup instead of sugar.
Wow, and you mob have sodium benzoate as a preservative? Righto.
I’ve been drinking tea for 60 years, give or take. Never seen curdling, milk first or not. Storm in a teacup, full of sound and fury signifying nothing, etc. Yawn.
I have seen milk curdling in tea, but always when the milk was on the turn and the milk adder had not realised this.
Until recently another reason for not using tea-bags is that most had a considerable plastic content to make the mesh stronger, which has to be sieved out of compost should you want to add your tea remains to a compost bin. Nowadays some companies have returned to bags made of entirely rottable material. We still use loose leaf tea because we think we can taste the difference, we may be wrong, but it harms no one so we’ll go on doing so as long as we can find it, which isn’t always that easy as John’s quoted 97.5% of Brits using tea bags would suggest.
Proper tea doesn’t involve tea-bags and tea that has been oxidised within an inch of it’s life. I get half a pound of Tie Guan Yin sent to me by Chinese friends every six months.
Oolong, Atticus? It’s fine stuff, a bit weak for my liking.
I myself am partial to lapsang souchong, but most people aren’t into it.
Two leaves and a bud, ie., loose tea.
OR
Grate black tea off of brick into tea pot/cup.
Add boiling water and enough sugar to stun a small pony (lemon optional).
Stir until the sugar is dissolved. When you pull out the smoking stump of the teaspoon, it’s ready.
Salt? To take away the bitterness? That’s what the avalanche of sugar is for.
Really, what is wrong with you people.
There’s a lot of diversity of Tea.
Tea covers a role range of things and flavours, ceremonies and events and uses.
The perfect cuppa is the one you prefer most and enjoy for yourself most or helps most when you need it most.
Like this time – note the bit at the start
The best one? Depends on your preference, the person and the moment.
Oddly, I’ve never really thougt of tea as bitter although I guess it can be esp when made strong.
Me? I’ve enjoyed a lot of different teas from cans of hot sweet tea in vending machines in Japan to the black tea on a sailing ship, from tea bags to tea leaf, green teas, Lapsang Souchong*, Earl Grey, Lady Grey, English Breakfast, Russian Caravan, Australian Afternoon tea, Roobos, Chamomile, Peppermint and Chai latte if that counts.
. My Mums favourite and one I also enjoy – nice smoky unique scentand flavour. (Nods to #42)
Usually, making it, I have a couple of tea bags in a pot, warmed with a splash of just boiled water from the kettle then stewed for five minutes and poured with a splash of milk added either before or after – but that’s just me.
@ ^ Of course it seems fronm that link that the Doctor has forgotten Colin baker for some reason? Unless Imisheard. (Alwys possible.) Never been ginger?
@30. wonderpants :
One area where the tech in Trek is clearly superior with their replicators making not just any tea but Picard’s iconic Earl Grey on demand.
Hmm, where I’m from we absolutely put a few drops of lemon juice in, tap water is mineraly enough, and skip the milk. Add rum if needed.
Father is West Indian so I grew up drinking tea. He wouldn’t allow us to drink coffee. To this day I can’t drink a bad cup of tea but I’ll drink bad coffee as long as it has milk and sugar. He barely tolerated Lipton tea and any other brand was “beyond the pale”. (Do Americans use that expression?) The water had to be boiled otherwise you’d get that white stuff on top and you couldn’t boil the water for too long . Though to be honest , nowadays I just toss the teabag and water in the microwave which doesn’t get it hot enough. Despite that I still use the better tea brands . Usually have about 10 different types in my kitchen at any one time.
Darjeeling is a favorite. I’m gonna commit blasphemy by saying I like iced tea . I’ll commit further heresies by saying I like Earl Grey iced tea. You can make regular iced tea 2 ways . Either boil a lot of water then put several tea bags in it. Or leave a tea bag in a tall glass of very cold water for an hour. Sugar , usually too much, is a necessity. (Southerners gotta have sugar and my mom was from North Carolina). Ice isn’t alway necessary if the tea is cold.
I’m another lapsang souchoung fan, along with Earl Grey, jasmine green tea, and assam depending on mood or perhaps what my taste buds feel like at the point of putting the leaves in the pot.
Shucks, I just want to commend the US Embassy for what I thought qualifies as an hilarious press release. Most diplomatic communications are as dry as dust.
Lapsang souchong . One of my favorite authors when I was a kid described it perfectly without naming it in one of his fiction books about Asia . As soon as I tasted it decades later when I was 35 I recognized that smoky tarry flavor immediately! At this point I don’t remember whether it was James Clavell or James Michener.
They’re not leftover dust, no. But it is true that they’re the result of a somewhat more…expeditious process than decent loose leaf, and are a fundamentally different product as a result.
Loose leaf tea (and other traditional forms, like the solid pressed pucks you can find in China) are generally more carefully processed. In even moderately high grades, each leaf is plucked off individually by hand. As a result, a pound of good loose leaf is a pound of almost pure tea leaves. Mostly intact ones, at that.
In contrast, the black tea in tea bags* is usually made via a less labor intensive process: the plants might be simply mechanically stripped, and the results tossed wholesale into a chopper. While it’s not correct to call that a by-product (though it wouldn’t shock me if leftovers from hand picking were reprocessed in some cases), it is a very different product. A pound of what’s in a tea bag isn’t necessarily a pound of tea leaves. It might be more like 3/4 pound of tea leaves, and another 1/4 pound of finely chopped stems and twigs.
To be clear that’s not necessarily a bad thing — the twigs have their own flavor, and the distinct combination of flavors in tea-bag tea can be perfectly enjoyable. Even preferable. It’s just different. (For some of the same reasons, traditional teas made with more or even mostly twig matter also exist, like hojicha and kuchicha.)
At least the sort that come 50 bags to a cellophane wrapped box. Obviously these days there are also some much fancier grades of tea sachet available, usually at some very profitable multiple of the price of not only regular tea bags, but even the bulk loose leaf packed in the sachets.
jack, yes indeed.
—
* In passing, because there’s some limited support for markdown on this platform, single asterisks beginning a line are elided as they are taken as tag. One can use the escape character ‘\’ to avoid that.
My biggest issue with tea is cafes. I don’t particularly like the taste of coffee (I even tried a bunch of different types to see if this was true; chai latte I don’t mind, but the rest – eh, I can drink the stuff, but I don’t enjoy it). So if I’m in a cafe, I’ll usually order tea (Earl Grey by preference, English Breakfast is also fine). The number of cafes that will promptly serve me up a tea bag is surprisingly high (I mean, it ought to be zero, but it’s at least 50% or so – tough to be exact, since I won’t willingly go back to a cafe that does this to me).
Now, some of you coffee drinkers might not think this is a big deal. But I ask you – if you went to Starbucks (or whatever) and ordered a short black, and saw that the barista opened a packet of instant coffee, added a teaspoon of it to some boiling water, and handed you the result, you’d be at the very least surprised and doubtless wouldn’t go back. I don’t see why if a cafe is going to charge me roughly the same amount for tea as for coffee, that I should have to put up with a tea bag when the coffee drinkers get the fancy machinery.
I’m not even saying tea bags are awful. (I dislike cheap tea, but you can get decent tea in bags). I’m just saying I shouldn’t have to pay for it – if I’m paying, make the effort.
Possibly this is just an Australian thing.
garysturgess:
Let me attempt to explain it to you, then: basically because you are not getting instant tea, you are getting actual tea that has to be steeped properly.
As per jack lecou’s informative post above, bagged tea is finely ground tea and probably some stems and twigs, too. But actual tea. Think of it as very finely ground coffee with some impurities from the plant itself. Right? The ground product, but not the “instant” product where you add water and voila!
I mean, instant tea is actually a thing that exists, but since tea is so much simpler to make than coffee, it’s not a thing that’s common.
I reckon that cafe tea is probably not even as good as you can make at home; gotta have actual boiling water to pour on the tea bag in the mug for best results. After which the bag will sorta float to the surface of the poured water, which now is no longer boiling, but remains very hot. No worries. Can try to jiggle it a bit, but it hardly matters at that stage. After at least a few minutes, it will have soaked up and plumped out and sunk down some and have infused itself nicely into the liquid, which hopefully remains quite hot still. Jiggling now and then during those minutes will help, but are not that necessary, since convection currents and ordinary diffusion have spread the steeped infusion by then.
Anyway: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instant_tea is not the same as regular tea-bag tea, which vitiates your would-be analogy. Doesn’t work.
A cuppa at would cost you maybe 5-10 cents, depending on whether you want regular or premium.
Actual tea, not instant tea. No better but no worse than at home.
Now, I myself don’t have a proper coffee machine, so the best I can do with coffee is to use a dripolator.
Not quite a DeLonghi coffee machine, as we had at my last place of employment.
So, I’d pay for a proper coffee, sure, because of quality and even value for money.
But a tea bag for inferior quality that I could do at home for a few cents? Hardly.
Possibly this is just a me thing.
John Morales @ 38, tonic in the US has a lower quinine content than the UK version.
garysturgess @ 54, I drink loads and loads of coffee. My preferred being any pure Ethiopian blend – better aromatics.
I also drink a wide assortment of teas, both tea tree type and herbals. Earl Grey, Assam, Darjeeling, Orange Pekoe, assorted green varieties (yes, fellow USians, there are varieties of green tea) to name a few of the tree variety, hibiscus, chamomile, saffron tea, ginger tea, artichoke tea being some herbal favorites and trust me, my tea needs a cabinet for the wide variety I enjoy. Note to self, replace the lost in the move infusor, dammit.
birgerjohansson @ 18, kava? Why go halfway, when you can go with poppy tea? ;)
Seriously though, reasonable antidepressant, slightly sedating, other alkaloids look consistent with cumulatively behaving like a mild muscle relaxer. Probably work for my occasional spasms, with less side effects than the drug varieties. It is on my list of rare herbals I’m willing to try medicinally. Chamomile I already do use as a short stop for when doctor fails to refill my blood pressure medication, gives a few hours of lower BP.
Saw zero impact on my BP with hibiscus tea, but it just tastes so damned good!
Oh, all teas I tend to drink neat. Coffee gets milk and sugar.
My standing joke with teas being, “If God intended tea to be diluted with milk and sugar, the plant would come with a nipple and sugar built in”. Really though, I just like the flavor as provided by desiccation and nature.
jack lecou @52:
IOW you are telling me that bagged tea is less harmful to the people harvesting it? Or harmful to fewer people per serving of tea?
Tesco video:
I refrained from commenting earlier as my wife and I are currently attending the 10th annual Toronto Tea Fest.
I am much more a beer drinker than a tea drinker, but tea has been my wife’s passion for a number of years. I don’t consider myself a tea expert, but I have learned a few things over the years.
Tea bags contain what is in the business is know as CTC tea, “Crush, Tear, Cut”, which means they are often mechanically harvested and can contain chopped up twigs or other non-tea, that is, plant material which is not camellia sinensis. This does not mean that they make bad tea, but it is not the same a loose-leaf.
Tea is generally divided by the processing method, with white, green, oolong, black, and puerh. These are grades of processing where the least processed is the white and the puerh (or puer, or pu-er) teas are actually fermented (there are two type of pu-er, but that’s something we don’t need to get into here). There is one French company which promotes a “blue” tea, but that is simply an oolong with a different translation. If you hear about “blue” tea, remember that it is the same processing as an oolong, the “blue” part of it is entirely marketing.
Each type of tea has different brewing properties. For example, green teas are best brewed with water which is not boiling as that brings out the bitterness. If you really want to get the best flavor from a green tea, brew it in water at 90C (180F).
According to Victor Mair, in his 2009 book, The True History of Tea Lapsang-souchong was originally an export tea from China, and was considered by the Chinese to be only suitable for barbarians. Your milage may vary, I kind of like it.
Tea, technically, is only brewed from camellia sinensis. Other drinks can be made with boiled plant matter, but they are better described as tisanes rather than tea.
My wife tells me that cold-brewing tea can be just as effective as hot-brewing, as long as you are prepared to wait for the cold-brewing to complete. In fact, a cold brew tea generally avoids the bitterness which can occur with using boiling, or near-boiling, water. There is a style of tea brewing, called “grandpa-brewing” where tea leaves are placing into a bottle and cold water is added. During the day the water is drunk, and more water is added, so the same leaves are used for multiple cold brewings. The first brew is the strongest, but the stimulant of caffeine will be consumed in lower dosages throughout the day as the water is replenished.
My wife has had me drink all manner of teas with varying levels of sugar, honey, milk, cream, and we’ve been experimenting with some other flavors. Here at the Toronto Tea Festival we’ve tasted a large number of tea samples, including the the traditional flavors of bergamot (earl grey) or rose hips, but also coconut, chocolate, and ginger to name a few. Frankly, I think tea with ginger is something I will probably want to have in the future as it’s quite tasty.
There is really no wrong way to make tea. Make the tea you enjoy, and enjoy drinking the tea you make.
Now, I’m going to have another Guinness. Cheers!
@54. garysturgess :
Presumably you mean a tea bag inside a cup with hot water and milk available on request? Not just a single tea bag with nothing else!
My understanding of this practice would be that they are letting you decide how strong you want your tea to be – how long you steep or stew the bag to suit your taste. Giving you the power to have it as weak or strong as you prefer. They may also, depending on circumstances and place, give you your own milk to add if you want in a way that lets you choose how milky or otherwise you want it. I don’t have any problem with this.
Heh.
https://www.theguardian.com/food/2024/feb/16/deja-brew-chemistry-professors-latest-advice-on-tea-drinking-try-grapefruit