Tea is Britain’s national drink, with over 165 million cups being drunk in the UK every single day of the year, but how to make a perfect cup of tea continues to divide opinion.
Should you put the milk in first? Does using loose-leaf tea really taste better? What sort of mug gives the best sip? Luckily, the British Standards Institution (BSI) has prepared some rigorous guidelines on how to make the perfect cuppa.
The six-page 2008 BS 6008 guidelines, which became ISO standard 3103, say that tea should always be brewed in a “white porcelain or glazed earthenware” pot, with 2g of tea per 100ml of water.
The tea should then be left to infuse for six minutes to extract the maximum flavour from the leaves.
When it is ready to be poured, 5ml of milk should first be added to a large mug (57-63mm tall) or 2.5ml added for a small cup (49mm tall) and the tea should be at a temperature of no hotter than 85°C when poured so as not to scold the milk.
Their guidelines for adding the milk first was supported by a 2003 study from Loughborough University, where researchers found that adding the milk second caused the milk proteins to clump together and negatively impact the taste of a cuppa.
Milk was also added first traditionally, so that it would cool the boiling hot tea a little and prevent cracking of fragile bone china teacups. Modern mugs may not be affected in the same way, but it appears that in some things the traditional method remains the best.
Despite its gift to humanity on how to make a perfect cuppa, the BS 6008 guidelines won an Ig Nobel Prize for Literature in 1999.
