jeff_lindqvist wrote:Slowly getting the hang of it. Sunday morning I brewed a cup of tea that reminded me of my trips to Ireland.
I've always had trouble getting tea in that style outside the UK/Ireland. Eventually it got to the point that people here thought I preferred coffee because every time I was out or at someone's house and they offered me 'tea or coffee?' I chose coffee. The real reason is that I couldn't bear to get a glass with tepid hard water and stuff floating in it, and teabag with paper like blotting paper. Much easier to just take the coffee which is at least well made.
A girlfriend of mine, without telling me, investigated tea-making English style and when I stayed at her mother's house she made me a cup of tea which was very good indeed.
At home I use loose tea, but as well as that the key ingredient is the water filter to soften and decalcify the water. It makes a hell of a difference to the flavour and appearance. I come from a soft water area and tea made with this water is like liquid velvet. Later I lived in the Ribble Valley area and at some point (though I don't know how far up it reached) they connected the north's water supply to North Wales, which is a hard water area. This itself must have been connected to a real hard water area and this altered the quality significantly.
Water where I am in Utrecht is not soft, but not overly hard. Without a filter it leaves magnesium/calcium deposits and makes the tea dull and a bit metallic. In north-west England where my grandparents lived they didn't need to filter the water and it left no deposits in the kettle. The tea was divine.
Tea in the East and south of England, where the water isn't filtered, is horrible.