Afternoon tea is one of my favourite indulgences. It’s one of those rituals that can be as simple or as complex as you want it to be. Do you like your tea in a mug & with a choc-chip cookie or with silver service & hand cut sandwiches? After water, tea is also the most widely consumed beverage on the planet. Here’s my guide to making the perfect cuppa. I’ve been making tea & coffee in cafes for five years now & it still gets confusing & freaks me out sometimes. Hopefully these tips will help.

The Tea Leaves

One of the first things to take into consideration is the tea itself. Tea is harvested from the Camellia plant & cured & oxidised to yield black tea, oxidised for green tea & left alone for white tea. Red tea (or Rooibos) is derived from an entirely different plant altogether. The quality of tea will also effect the taste of your end product. Good quality loose leaf tea free of artificial flavourings is best. If you drink decaffeinated tea make sure you buy a leaf that has been decaffeinated using CO2 rather than methylene chloride (or an acetate, both of which taste a bit off). If they don’t state which method used on the label then methylene chloride has most likely been used, so ditch it quick!

Tea bags are a convenient way to brew tea but not many people know that the tea contained in them is the tea-dust from the bottom of the shipping bins. The flavour & quality of loose leaf tea is superior & when combined with a tea-infuser or tea-egg is just a little more environmentally friendly; it cuts out all that excess packaging. When brewing tea in a pot the general rule of thumb is one teaspoon of tea per person plus an extra teaspoon of tea ‘for the pot’. From experience this works out nicely :)

Milk & Sugar?

White, green & herbal teas aren’t generally served with milk while black & red teas are. The tea I chose to make today is a beautiful loose leaf Earl Grey (those blue flecks are bits of dried cornflower, yum!); a black tea flavoured with Bergamot essential oil. Bergamot is a species of citrus & so it doesn’t make sense to serve a tea like this with milk. Traditionally Earl Grey is served with a thin slice of lemon.

If you like your beverages nice & sweet then by all means use sugar or honey. Sugar cubes are a really cute way of serving & displaying sugar with your tea set. Otherwise Demerara sugar is best for sweetening up your cup! I will add though, that the flavour of unsweetened tea is subtle & delicious & those of you with a constant sweet tooth should definitely try it out sometime!

Service

Traditionally all tea services were made out of porcelain. However these days you can buy tea pots, cups & saucers, milk jugs & sugar bowls in glass, ceramic, earthenware, wood, stainless steel & precious metals like silver & gold. I say variety is the spice of life – so go for whatever piques your interest.

Brewing Times

Each type of tea will require a different brewing time & if you’re really professional, different water temperatures.

• Black tea can be brewed for up to four minutes (at 100 degrees Celsius),
• Green tea for up to three minutes (at 70 degrees Celsius),
• White tea for up to six minutes (at 80 degrees Celsius)
• Red tea for up to five minutes (at 100 degrees Celsius).

How to Brew a Pot of Tea

1. Boil enough fresh, cold, filtered water for one pot of tea.
2. While you’re waiting for the water to boil, fill the tea pot with hot water form the tap & let sit. This keeps the tea pot nice & warm. Pour this out once your water has boiled.
3. Fill a tea-infuser or tea-egg & place in the pot. If you don’t mind tea-leaves in your cup then just spoon the loose leaves right on into the tea pot. This is great for tea leaf reading!
4. Pour the boiled water into the pot leaving about 2cm of room at the top. (The tea leaves will expand making an already full pot will overflow!)
5. Let the tea sit & brew. Relax. Eat a sandwich, have another tart or sing a song while you wait.
6. Pour into cups & enjoy!

This post was written by Bella Blithely (contact).

It was written on March 17th, 2009 at 5:17 pm and was filed under How To, Tasty Foodstuffs and tagged with the words afternoon tea, How To, Sweets, tea .

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