English breakfast tea will 'brew properly' and 'taste better' if you use saucer method

A cup of freshly brewed English Breakfast tea has become a quintessential part of British culture. While everyone has their own way of making tea, whether that's with a lot of milk, or black, with sugar or without, some tea experts claim there is only one 'proper' way of making the 'perfect cuppa'.

Tea taster Dominic Marriott, or Ahmad Tea, has shared a step-by-step guide on how to brew a perfect cup of tea using a teabag. He stresses the importance of being patient, only using freshly boiled water and keeping a saucer handy, but not necessarily to drink with.

In a video on YouTube that has been watched more than 560k times, Dominic said: "When people are using teabags, they are often in a rush, and they don't make the tea properly." However, as the video goes on, he urges tea-lovers to take their time as this helps makes a cup of tea 'taste better' and 'as intended'.

Explaining the first thing people should do, he said: "Take your teabag and put it in your cup. Some people would actually also like to warm the cup first so that it will help the tea brew." As for the kettle, he recommends only ever using water that has just boiled.

"Next, we need to take freshly boiled water. If the water is already boiled, it would have lost a lot of oxygen and that will mean the tea won't brew properly and the resulting infusion will be flat and dull," he explained.

"So, you must always use freshly drawn water and allow the water to come fully to the boil. It should reach 100 Celsius for the tea to brew properly. So as the kettle is now coming to the boil we just turn it off so again it doesn't over boil and lose all the oxygen. Then pour this straight onto the teabag."

He said the tea should be brewed at a temperature close to 100 Celsius so it gets a "really good infusion". The tea professional continued: "My Managing Director always tells me that you should treat teabags as you treat a loose tea, so give it as good a brew as possible."

A utensil that not everyone would consider using when making or drinking a cup of tea is a saucer. However, Dominic says a saucer can come in handy when making a tea as it can help with the brewing process.

"One of the things you can do if you've got a saucer, is cover that over to help keep the heat in," he told viewers. "This is where people often go wrong with a teabag. They will stand and dunk a teabag and as soon as the colour looks about right they will think it's ready to drink. Teabag tea is the same as any tea, it needs time for the full flavour to come out."

Regarding how long people should wait, he said: "For teabags, we say you must give it a minimum of three minutes to brew properly." Showing viewers how the tea he is making in the video is coming along, he says: "Now it's looking like it's got a good strong colour, but the flavour will also have come out."

The final step is to remove the teabag and give it a last squeeze to extract all the flavour. "And there is your perfect cup of tea," he said.

Dominic says you could keep the tea as it is or customise it to your liking. "You can drink that however you like: you can drink it black, or with a little bit of milk, or lemon, or sugar - that's up to you," he said. "You have now given the tea a chance to develop the full flavour which we intended."