There seems to be two very Irish ways of making tea – weak or strong.
By weak, the tea bag barely graces your cup of suitably boiled water, usually getting a quick dip that more stains the water a light brown colour.
For the strong cup, the tea bag usually goes in, gets a stir, then gets mashed into the side of the cup as hard as possible. Two or three “good goes” should suffice. Then again, we’re a nation of people who don’t typically do things by half-measures.
But each time the goal seems to be to get the teabag in and out as quickly as possible. We just don’t seem to take the time to let a tea bag brew and do the work that it was ever-so-carefully engineered for. I’ll agree with Twinings when they say you deserve a better cup of tea.
Sure, you could go for the aforementioned Twinings, Pukka, Thompsons, Clipper, Tetley, Yorkshire or the Irish household choice of Barry’s or Lyon’s (and you’re either one or the other, trust me), but your brand of choice doesn’t matter so much to me, it’s more about taking that extra 1-2 minutes in your day to let the tea brew.
The secret here is that flavour takes time.
You can make a cup of water look like a cup of tea in a second, but the taste difference you’ll get by leaving it to settle for that minute longer could be the real difference in enjoying your daily cuppa or really enjoying your daily cuppa. After all, you’ve waited for the kettle to boil, so what’s the rush in getting the tea made?
If you’ve ever made a cup of herbal tea (think green, rooibos) you’ll have no doubt seen the labels hanging off the fancy strings telling you to give the tea two minutes, three minutes, even up to five minutes. It’s done for a reason.
So next time you’re looking for a normal run-of-the-mill Joe Soap cup of tea, don’t be afraid to take an extra minute and let that tea bag do its thing.
