Tea – One Scoop or Two?
The basic rules that most people follow today includes using freshly drawn and boiled water and allowing one scoopful of loose tea or a one tea bag per person.
Brewing time is, it is agreed , all-important and depends on the type of tea you are brewing, Darjeeling requires from 3 to 5 minutes, Kenya form 2 to 4 minute and China Oolong 5 to 7 minute. At what point you add milk, however, has been a contentious subject for decades, Victorian etiquette was definite on the matter; the milk or cream had to be put in last, so that its addition could be rejected or limited. The British novelist and essayist, George Orwell, who also published his own eleven golden rules for a “nice cup of tea’ in 1945, had equally firm views. Last was best, he wrote, for “by putting the tea in first and then stirring as one pours, one can exactly regulate the amount of milk.” The last word goes t Nancy Mitford, the English aristocrat novelist and biographer, who claimed that “milk in first,” know as the “MIF” debate, was without doubt, not the “thing” to do.
Excerpt form Where to Take Tea: Susan Cohen