Five Golden Rules for proper tea making.
1. Use good tea
The high-quality blend we issue produces better tea and yields
more cups to the pound.
2. Use freshly drawn, freshly boiled water
Water easily goes “stale” if allowed to stand, and water that has
been previously boiled should never be used for tea-making.
Again, water that has not come to the boil or has been overboiled
causes tea to be flat and insipid. Therefore, use water
that has just reached the stage of bubbling fiercely. If there
is any doubt about whether your hot water apparatus is working
at maximum efficiency, use kettles for first infusion.
3. Warm the pot
This rule is in the “old and true” category. Teapots should always
be warmed or rinsed thoroughly with boiling water before
putting in the dry leaf. The reason for doing this is to keep up the
temperature of the infusion. If water is poured into a cold pot it
will be off the boil and thus defeat Golden Rule No. 2.
4. The short pourTo get the full benefit the water should reach the tea leaves as
near boiling point as possible. If kettles are being used the rule
is: take teapot to kettle, and NOT kettle to teapot. If, as is more
likely, it is a question of boilers, then make sure the teapots are
brought right up to the boiling water outlet. Always infuse the tea
first with fresh boiling, bubbling water.
5. Tea should be brewed, not stewedThe time to be allowed for infusion should be between four and
six minutes, depending upon the size of the pot and the softness
of the water. The larger the pot, the longer the time for infusion:
natural soft water infuses tea more readily than hard.
Finally, almost qualifying for inclusion in the above basic list is
the rule that whatever method of making tea is adopted, the tea
and the milk should come together at the last possible moment.
