h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I have noticed at work, with frankly some horror, that a large number of my collegues make tea by first putting milk in a cup, then adding hot water and then adding a tea bag.

This seems to me to be an unholy crime against nature and reason. Surely it is not possible to make a nice cup of tea by this mechanism.

Is this wide spread? or am I the weirdo?

FB

I can't say that I've come across this clearly evil method of making tea before.

My wife tends to put the teabag in a pool of milk, and then adds the hot water. This, too, is evil. I've just seen someone in the office use this method though, the poor misguided fool.

I would have though it self-evident that the tea bag needs pure hot water to ruminate sufficiently for a decent cuppa to result. Milk should be added later in the process.

Surely no good can come of these wrong-headed attempts at tea making.




Geggs

I agree - the tea bag needs to be separate from the milk in fresh, boiling water in order for the flavour to be appreciated.

There are two alternatives:
Mug - You can put the tea bag and boiling water in the mug first and add the milk later, when the tea bag has done its job.
Tea pot - If you are brewing for large numbers (or in the unlikely event of using fine bone china which could crack if boiling water is added first), add the milk to the cups first while the tea bag is brewing the water in the tea pot (kept warm with a tea cosy) and add the tea from the pot when it has brewed.

The important point is that the tea bag and milk are separated until the tea is brewed.

<BB<

But if you're using a tea-bag surely all you taste in any case is the paper?

Well, putting milk in is the first mistake... using teabags rather than leaf tea is the second... both together, I can't imagine

If you use paper or polystyrene cups, all you taste is the paper

<BB<

and, certainly with Coffee, and I guess is probably also True for Tea, if you get it from any one of a number of seemingly very popular, high street coffee/tea outlets, it has absolutely no taste whatsoever. Even the flavour from the cardboard of the cup would be a slight diversion from the otherwise just full of boiling hot water cup. I find it a marvel of overly expensive, overly complicated devices for the production of tea dn coffee, that such outlets, manage to utterly fail to produce something remotely as drinkable as one can achieve with a 9 quid coffee pot, or a five quid teapot... They must really go out of their way to make it so utterly repugnant and tasteless, I cannot think of any other alternative
Mind, the only tea I really drink now is the small leaf asan from the tea/coffee shop in town... who's continental coffee beans I get through by the kilogram

I've begun read a series of murder mysteries set in the Indigo Tea Room in Charleston, South Carolina. In the first book in the series, a disliked real estate developer dies after drinking a cup of poisoned tea.

>>Is this wide spread? or am I the weirdo?

My other half makes tea this way, I've no idea why. Maybe it makes less difference with a teabag, since the tea is already ground into an unappetising dust.

I'd recommend giving up putting milk into tea, because quite apart from any effect it has on flavour, it is far more convenient to be able to go out somewhere and know that your tea won't have to suffer from something awful like UHT milk.

I rarely put milk in tea anyway. Lemon? Certainly. Sugar? Not often, but some iced teas come to me with sugar already in them.

if the milk is put in first, then the boiling water is added, this process boils the milkand how then are you going to safeguard against burning the inside of your mouth?

You really should call in the Health & Safety brigade on this, civic duty and all that, FB.

The best way to make tea is to get a replicator and say, 'Tea, Earl Grey, hot'

<BB<

>>The best way to make tea is to get a replicator and say, 'Tea, Earl Grey, hot'

They never say please, do they? But they would do if Data made it.

Laura puts the milk and the bag in, then the water. It's ridiculous, and it fills me with hate.

But, as Arthur discovered, you can't get a decent cuppa out of a replicator... it requires leaf tea... and a teapot... damniit.... when did I turn middle aged and form highly evolved and stubbon held beliefs regarding the nature and formulation and construction of a cup of tea... hmm... some time in my late teens I guess

I've been informed that one should not boil the water in a microwave, either before or after a tea bag has been added.

I'm sticking to .

A microwave! to heat the water!
*faints*
so wrong... so so wrong...

The water should ... has* to be boiled, in a cast iron coldren, over an open wood fire, with fresh, cold stream water, and used, once it has hit a running boil, and never* never* reheated once its been boiled once, not for use in making tea at least
And, of course, it has* to be bone china, and you should only use silver, solid silver, teaspoons, as other metals affect the taste
ya know... if only I were richer, I'd have made an excellent snob
*looks disparengenly at collection of assorted ancient mugs in cupboard... I don't even know where any of these came from...

I have been informed (reliably, I intimate) that nowadays tea is formulated to make an excellent drink when made in a cup, with a bag.
I infer that such tea must be grown on genetically modified plants, in order to allow this unnatural practice and still give an excellent drink.
I do not wish to be persuaded of the above and, myself, still make it in a warmed pot, with boiling water - though usually with a bag. It is not as i remember tea but hey ho.

Coffee, though - well, with a little effort it can be made at home, using simple means, to compare not too badly with the best in town.

I think this is one of those things they teach in wife school.

Teabag first, then very, very hot water, and only after you've removed the bag do you add the milk & sugar.

But, to be honest, I find the best cups of tea are those you get given when you're really gasping for one, however they're made.