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[Loud Whispers]

You can hide the truth but you can't conceal the flavour!

[KodKod]

Oh by all means enjoy your near-flavourless hot water, but don't delude yourself into thinking that it is in the same leagues as a proper cuppa.

[Loud Whispers]

....And we're back to Quorry Bashes.

[Amallar]

I don't like tea as a drink. Instead, I grind up the leaves and mix it with sugar, powdered mint, and powdered curry; I then use it for biscuits/cookies (damn the conventions of disseminated English) with orange spread. (I will also occasionally replace the jam with spiced sausage.)

I'm surprised the recipe isn't more prevalent.

[Sadrice]

English breakfast is an inferior swill, only really suitable when being prepared as chifir', which is just about the only time milk and sugar improve tea.  For normal drinking, lapsang souchong or a nice Assam are the best black teas, usually.

[wierd]

For me, tea is meant to be relaxing, with just enough kick to motivate you to enter the brisk chilliness outside.

Coffee is for overworked office drons, suffering from sleep disorders and abused work hours.

This is why tea is popular in Europe, while coffee is popular in the US.

(Eg, I get 2 weeks of vacation PER YEAR. This is a perk! Most employees get a few days to a week per year at my place of employment.  This about US average.  Compare to Europeans and their 1month+ yearly vacation. Easily 2X what I get. Americans work themselves to death, have no time for proper outdoor activities, get shafted by cost cutting corporate policies, sleep poorly, have badfamily lives, and think everything is just fine as long as they get a beer when they get home, get smashed on the weekend, and get to watch american football.)

As for my personal tastes in tea, I like a flavorful, but not overpowering tea, preferably hot.  Occasionally I like a nice earl grey. Unlike Kodkod who insists on adding milk, I think this would be vile in earl grey. I drink it straight, without sugar or milk.  I find that loose tea in a drip style coffee maker, standard issue in the US, is an easy "no fuss" method of easily making passable tea. Most people try to boil the tea (eww!), or overheat the water for the tea (equal eww!). A coffee maker heats it just to the boiling point, and uses percolation, which lowers the temp slightly. This keeps the leaves at fairy close to the right temp, and the filter retards rate of outflow, so the leaves steep a bit before dripping out into the caraffe.

The alternative is to use a teaball, which is a pita to avoid getting tealeaves all over.

Avoid using bagged tea.  It is almost never right.

[Vanaheimer]

I have to agree. It imparts a horrible 'sour' corrupted flavour to the tanniny goodness...also tea is brown joy.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eELH0ivexKA

That man is a genius voice of a generation.

Then what about green tea or apple tea.

CHECK MATE

What about what now?

Look, you crazy person, there is only one type of tea that exists and that is black tea, in all its varieties of which English Breakfast Tea is clearly the best.

None of this nasty fruit tea, green tea nonsense!

English Breakfast: A proudly ASIAN invention!

*laughs ass off*

The English know nothing of tea and never have. The Asians know how to make good tea!

[wierd]

My sister and her husband swear by thai tea.  I find it overpowering, and mildly upsetting to my innards.  It does contain milk. Its almost like drinking coffee in terms of harshness.

Again, I like a mild, relaxing tea.  Properly prepared japanese green tea (like used in the ceremony) is good.  Most americans settle for way watered down green tea.  Proper green tea is whipped with a bamboo whip, and is slightly frothy, and quite strong.  It is not bitter like the thai tea though.

[KodKod]

The English know nothing of tea and never have. The Asians know how to make good tea!

They drink cold, mass-produced green tea out of plastic bottles bought in supermarkets and convenience stores. I've tried it, they might as well have bottled sewer water.

I rest my case.

[wierd]

Sounds like an american "innovation".

We have similar green tea swill here.  Don't get me started about the bagged stuff.

Proper green tea just can't be had over here, unless you grow the tea yourself. Drying the leaves damages green tea.

As far as traditional teas go, I like mild teas, hot, and without milk or sugar.

[Loud Whispers]

The English know nothing of tea and never have. The Asians know how to make good tea!

They drink cold, mass-produced green tea out of plastic bottles bought in supermarkets and convenience stores. I've tried it, they might as well have bottled sewer water.

I rest my case.

Pure slander! That's like saying because the English drink lipton in plastic bottles bought in supermarkets, therefore might as well have bough medical waste, and know nothing of tea!

[Vanaheimer]

The English know nothing of tea and never have. The Asians know how to make good tea!

They drink cold, mass-produced green tea out of plastic bottles bought in supermarkets and convenience stores. I've tried it, they might as well have bottled sewer water.

I rest my case.

And the English have cold bottled tea as well so of course they know nothing of tea...

Tea was invented in Asia, they have always done it best, and they always will. The English appreciate tea, but are COMPLETELY clueless in every aspect of it's production or how it should actually be drank.

[KodKod]

Pure slander! That's like saying because the English drink lipton in plastic bottles bought in supermarkets, therefore might as well have bough medical waste, and know nothing of tea!

You hush your mouth; Lipton ice-tea is delicious, that's the deciding factor.

[wierd]

For iced tea (like sun tea), I find luzianne to be less bitter.

But, if your grounds for "done right" is not based on tradition, but instead based on personal preferences, then you lose the highground for denouncing the way others drink tea.

[BigD145]

Irish Breakfast tea tends to be stronger than British. You're all pansies and should be used as a stir stick in my tea in lieu of honey.
/adds milk because IRELAND