What am I missing?

We’ve always used teabags for convenience, but being a coffee snob, and recently having moved to Yorkshire, I thought we’d better have a go at doing it proper, like.

All I seem to end up with is lukewarm tea (despite warming the pot and the mugs) that at best tastes no better, whilst taking a lot more faff, creating more washing up and using double the hot water (a hit on both the leccy and water bills). Most of the time it actually tastes rather worse – a bitter edge to it, despite using an identical brand of tea (Yorkshire Tea).

So is tea from a pot the working class equivalent of a Wandsworth mum’s mokawokaskinnylattewithashotofsyrup, or have I missed an essential technique to make the perfect brew?

We’ve always used teabags for convenience

I think I see your problem with regard to the taste issue.

Yorkshire Tea

urrrgghh, Northern vanity is your undoing.

So much good tea out there, life’s to short to drink whippet dust in gravy.

have you tried Teapigs? best of both worlds.

You’ve recently moved. I’ll guess that the water is different so tastes different – or do you mean mug/pot is different?

Warm the pot (metal or china?), couple of tea bags, let it brew. Are you brewing it for longer? You don’t wash a tea pot either – just rinse it. Oh – get a tea cosy too!

No tea-cozy? You need a tea-cozy.

Dont wash your teapot just rinse it out with hot water. Most people say tea bags per person +1 but i dont agree.

Teacosy will sort the lukewarm issue, if you don’t have an asbertos lined mouth, to get it down you right quick.
But double the washing up? You do know you don’t wash out a teapot only rince (as long as you haven’t left tea to go mouldy in it) & it improves the flavour

We only use ours to serve tea to guests (lots of ppl) more as a saving on tea bags than to make it better tasting. As a mug with a teabag in it’s fine for me (though milk and teabags should never be in the same cup at the same time).

EDIT: Man I’m slow typing sometime (re the above two posts)

if you’re using teabags, there’s nothing magical about using a teapot vs brewing in the mug. i’ll be asked to leave the county, but yorkshire tea is very average. Try different tea* – loose if you really want to use a teapot.

(*assam is nice, or darjeeling. lapsang souchong if you’re up for a challenge.
use hot, not boiling** water, don’t brew for too long, don’t use milk)

(**there’s nothing magical about boiling water either, but it can make the tea taste bitter. tea is often grown/drunked at altitudes where the boiling point of water will much lower than 100dC)

Yorkshire Tea

😯

urrrgghh, Northern vanity is your undoing.

So much good tea out there, life’s to short to drink whippet dust in gravy.

Stoner’s right you know. You need to get yerself to somewhere that has a proper decent selection of fine teas, then you will learn what it’s all about. A nice mug of PG Tips is fine at home and that, but a decent cuppa cha is a real treat.

Pity the Bramah Tea and Coffee Museum closed down. I had the most amazing pot of Lapsang Souchong in there one time. And I remember the spicy tea I drunk in Bangladesh as a kid; a tea similar to Assam, which is not that far away from where I was, made with fresh buffalo milk. Mmmm….

i’ll be asked to leave the county, but yorkshire tea is very average.

Nope, I’ve never got on with Yarkshire Tea either. But then, I’m in Lancashire.

Sorry – should have said -been using loose leaf tea in the pot.

Water shouldn’t be an issue as the bags stil taste as expected.

Sure, the pot doesn’t get properly washed, but I’ve still got to scrape the tea out, then rinse it and dry it, rather than just chuck the mugs in the dishwasher.

The pot might be part of the problem – its the SOs parents one they were given when they maried, and is a big old lump of clay. Despite filling it half full of almost boiling water to warm, I suspect it’s still sucking all the heat out of the “tea water”. Doing the same with the mugs, just to try and keep heat loss to a miminmum.

Problem is, I like my tea *hot*. Currently by the time it’s been made and i’ve sat down with it, I have to gulp it down or it’s got icebergs floating in it. No lip-scorching sips over the next 5 or 10 minutes before I can actually take a mouthfull.

Get a porcelain teapot and a tea cosy, and use loose pg tips, charity shops are good for getting nice teapots,
PG ooop norf, Yorkshire dahn sarf.it’s all about the water……

I always understood that Tea-Bags/Tea had their blends adjusted to suit the Hard/Soft water in a given region?.Warm the teapot with boiling water first.Then re-boil kettle with fresh tap-water,tip out the water in the teapot when kettle boils,chuck in tea-bags/tea.Give it 3-5 mins and you are home.(Tea cosy does help).Enjoy cuppa!.

All I seem to end up with is lukewarm tea (despite warming the pot and the mugs)

Boiling water can be tricky

[video]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_BSbfJMtDt4[/video]

Good luck 😀

Same-brand tea does not always taste the same in bags/loose – you have tried brewing latter in a mug of course?

Dunno why you bother, get yourself some Twinings etc, that Yorkshire stuff is crap.

From what I remember of my mum making tea – always heat the pot with one lot of water then pour it away and add the tea water along with the teabags.

And don’t forget – one teabag per person and one for the pot.

At least that is what my mum always said.

Teapots – best I’ve found for retaining heat is a Le Crueset stoneware one (takky Max do ’em cheep) that and a cosy (though if anyone can point me in the direction of a manly teacosy I’d be grateful).
I’m not a fan of Teapigs – the Earl grey was particularly insipid.
I also don’t get the point of the whole geekery of coffee/tea making so my opinion probably counts for nought round these parts…..

I’d never bother warming the pot. Just make sure you put the right amount of water in for the number of cups you want (measure it when you put it in the kettle – either using the cup numbers on the kettle and multiplying them depending on how big your mugs are, or just by pouring mugs of water into the kettle).

We have London Pottery Company teapots, they seem to work okay and keep the tea too warm for me to drink by the time it is poured. The big 10 cup one is seriously large, great for guests (although two boils of the kettle to fill!).

We are stingy and often do one teabag for 2 people, which seems to work as long as you leave it to brew.

Joe

Aah the joys of beverages 😯

I like to mix a few ingredients and brew them for a prolonged duration at a low heat.

Unfortunately I have to go to work but I will come back later and contribute to the thread 😀

As promised I have returned to amaze you good peeps.

I enjoy brewing tea, infact I use a lot of different ingeridient, everything from herbal remedies to berries and nuts(not my own)

Just now I have some goji berries with fresh sliced ginger mixed with pepper mint / spear mint as well as green tea, then a tea spoon of honey, after that add the beer and red wine and you have a tasty medicinal beverage.

The trick is not to boil the ingredients at too high a heat, but to simmer for a decent period at a low heat, this way you don’t destroy all of the goodness.

As for what you peeps are drinking, not for me thanks, but each to thier own!

I cant abide teabag tea. It’s got to be loose leaf in the cup and lip burning hot.

We don’t wash the teapot, just rinse with hot water. We use Clipper teabags. We have the coolest knitted tea cosy in the world!

IMAG0104 by will jenkins, on Flickr