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It took me an hour and a half to make tea today.

But before I launch into this tragic episode that exposed my very un-British self (as if the accent and the American diction hadn’t already), I must point out that even as an intern, I had escaped making tea for six entire days at an average of two cups of tea a day (excluding the one for breakfast).

It all started with a rancid packet of milk. To my defense, I don’t understand why we keep milk on the cabinet outside of a refrigerator. To their defense, the director next door has a refrigerator, but storing it there would be inconvenient to say the least. Anyway – after filling the water filter, boiling it in the same electric kettle I have at Harvard, and pouring it in the lovely teapot whose tea filter I had filled with three tea bags, I certainly waited long enough. But there began the troubles. I had poured the milk into some of the cups first (so as not to scald it, as I have heard), so when I added the tea, I managed to ruin three of the five cups immediately.

Not to be deterred, I tossed the offending brown with white-flakes slurry down the drain. Once more, I filled up the filter, boiled the water, and poured it into the teapot. I figured that by letting it steep long enough, the once used tea bags would still have enough zest to flavor more cups. So after waiting and getting three new mugs, I repeated the entire procedure. The next milk packet, while fresh, dribbled onto the carpet (did I mention that the opening is a hole on the top of a rectangular carton?). The result: two cold mugs of plain strong tea, three mugs of weak milky tea.

I admitted defeat.

However, I was not pronounced guilty because I hadn’t been instructed in the “proper art of making tea.” Of all the British stereotypes, their tea drinking appears true, unlike this article’s opinion.

What followed was an extensive, interactive lesson in tea making. After washing out all the mugs and teapot (and realizing that I had accidentally used the director’s green tea mug!), we filled the kettle, boiled the water, filled the teapot with three bags, and poured in the water (which should be poured in while still boiling). Then, we waited.

“How long,” I asked.

“Five minutes.”

“It’s been five minutes.”

“No, longer.”

“A long five minutes.”

Interjection from 3rd person: “Well, it has to be longer than five minutes. Five minutes gives you the color. But it has to be longer to taste well.”

While I waited, I opened up the package of biscuits (the first British diction to stick) to begin to look. Because my oh so esteemed instructor and I apparently looked so amusing while examining the chocolate covered treats, my boss, the lovely 3rd person, decided candids with the camera would be a great idea. By the time that was done, a good fifteen minutes had passed. And so, we could pour the tea – four mugs with an appropriate amount of tea, and one with a little less for the one person who prefers more milk (and half a packet of sugar). So far so good. “Ah, what a lovely color,” I was informed. Brown, in other words.

In with the milk. Which to be culinarily correct should go in before the tea, but to be socially correct must go in after. Then again, with plain tea, you musn’t put in any milk at all. And so to be logically correct…

Esteemed instructor: “To be nice, you should always pour the milk into your own mug first, to check.”

3rd person: “No, you should always put his in first.”

EI: “And then stir it around for a while”

3rd: “And you can use a spoon, not a fork”

EI: “Well, not if you want the froth.”

3rd: “Or if you want to annoy people with the sounds.” EI scrapes the sides of the mugs an extra bit.

Tea finally completed and passed out, I sipped at it a bit anticlimactically, while defending my honor “Swedes drink coffee!” Besides, as my coworkers remembered, the last American intern hadn’t been able to make tea either. In fact, when one of my coworkers had visited a girlfriend in New York, he had been offered a drink in the evening. “I could kill for a cup of tea,” he had said, whereupon the family had exchanged uncertain glances. Unearthing their kettle had taken a while, as had heating the water on a stove and hunting down a packet of tea. “I should have asked for a beer,” he recalled.

More tea trivia:

Did you know that you should only boil water once because otherwise it loses its oxygen content?

Tea should be about 65 C, so that “vulgar slurping” does not occur, according to a BBC slideshow. Without a tea cosy.

A seller of electric tea kettles claims that boiling in the microwave is inferior. And they don’t have any hidden motive?

And it must be room temperature milk. With a tea cosy (contradictions abound!)

Or, if reading is not your style, here’s the most watched youtube clip on “How to make a British cup of tea.”

Finally, for the obsessed, you can take a 175£ masterclass in tea making from the Official UK Tea Council. Somehow, I don’t think that they would approve of this adorable tea timer.

Before you perfect you tea making abilities though, this sage advice offered on BBC will do:

For best results carry a heavy bag of shopping – or walk the dog – in cold, driving rain for at least half an hour beforehand. This will make the tea taste out of this world.

~Ingrid

Listening to: For the Price of a Cup of Tea, Belle & Sebastian