I’ve been drinking iced Earl Grey with no sweetener for years. How do you do your brew?
I make Chai from scratch decently often. I use whole spices, give them a couple cracks with a pestle and add them to a pot of boiling water along with loose leaf black tea. I then let it continue to boil, or just cut the heat for a couple minutes, then add milk. I then bring it back to a boil, and wait for it to try to boil over. When it tries to boil over, you beat back the foam and take it off heat for a little. If you do that over and over, eventually, it won’t foam up anymore because those proteins have denatured. That’s when the tea gets that nice and silky texture. I’ll also throw some honey in there.
I always make a big pot and have plenty of leftovers for cold chai.
I don’t really measure anything, even though I should. I also change up ingredients. At a minimum, I always have green cardamom, ginger, and tea, but sometimes I also use black cardamom, cinnamon, cloves, aniseed, nutmeg, black pepper, or vanilla.
Ive been mostly doing western style with an infuser basket and a temperature controlled kettle, but I also have a gaiwan for when I feel like sitting down and doing a gongfu session.
Spring/summer Im mostly drinking chinese greens (longjing and biluochun) and high mountain oolongs (alishan, baozhong, dong ding). Fall/wintee I might still have those occasionally but Ill do more wuyi and dancong oolongs (shuixian, duckshit), and the occasional ripe puer
With bags like a savage usually, no sugar or milk. I’d up my tea game but I’m usually more of a coffee drinker.
Glad I’m not the only uncultured swine here haha.
Toss a big mug of water in the microwave with like 3 teabags in it. Nuke it for like 2 minutes 30 seconds. Then I add some French vanilla creamer in it and a ice cube to cool it down. Yum yum . If I really need some caffeine I add like 5 tea bags and make sure I squeeze them after microwaving.
India, China, Britain, all Arabian countries and the Friesians just declared war on you specifically.
You should be in prison.
I just dunk the whole bag in room temperature water and suck on them throughout the day.
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 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
Electric kettle and french press.
- Add sweetener and vanilla extract to mug.
- Fill and start kettle.
- Add loose leaf Earl Grey and lavender to french press.
- Pour boiling water into french press.
- Steep for 3 minutes.
- Press and pour the tea into the mug.
- Add a splash of oat milk.
- Stir and enjoy.
It’s called a London Fog and it’s delicious.
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
Infuser in hot water for two minutes, add cream and sugar after removing infuser
Electric kettle + tea berry and a one minute timer. Leave the bag in for extra goodness.
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?
An electric kettle for the water and loose tea with a strainer. I’ll usually make it in a mug, occasionally a small teapot, or a thermos if I’m traveling.
grandpa style, just loose leaf in mug and hot water
Kettle, teabag, milk.
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.
