It all started on a regular Monday morning in the office kitchen.

I was fetching my morning cuppa when my boss, also an English Breakfast drinker, began preparing her brew next to me.

As my tea was steeping, I looked over and saw her nonchalantly pouring milk into her mug STRAIGHT AFTER she added the hot water. The horror!

Not wanting to question authority, I casually asked, “Oh, do you add milk straight away?”

And she was like, “Yeah… why?”

Trying not to sound like a know-it-all, I said, “You know that stops the tea from actually infusing into the water because the milk brings the temperature down?” absolutely sounding like a know-it-all.

She shrugged and said something along the lines of, “Surely it doesn’t make that much difference.”

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After she left and my tea was still brewing for my self-sanctioned three minutes, I couldn’t stop thinking about our interaction.

Something I held so true to my heart, something so engrained into my morning ritual… might be a lie.

I started questioning everything I ever knew about tea, which is not a lot, but enough to warrant further investigation.

Google didn’t help.

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Reddit had no concrete answers either, just passionate opinions mainly from Yanks who put their milk in before the water which is a whole different issue in itself.

So, I was left with no choice but to take matters into my own hands and put the two techniques to the test on my colleagues.

 First, I brewed it according to my boss’s technique. It almost killed me to do it, but, I persevered. 

I then served the dishwater, I mean tea, to three of my teammates.

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During the blind taste test, all of them agreed it was weak and the predominant flavour was “water.”

The only person who said it was nice was my boss, no surprises there.

In hindsight, she probably shouldn’t have been involved in the experiment but I didn’t think that through.

In round two, I added the hot water to the mug, waited three minutes, added a dash of milk, and served it to them again.

This time, it was a big yes from everyone!

Except for Liz, but Liz doesn’t like tea in general so she probably wasn’t a good participant either. 

Whoops.

In the end, I got the answer I wanted but clearly, the integrity of my experiment was compromised by its subjects. 

At this point, I stopped caring about looking like a know-it-all and called in an expert to settle the debate once and for all.

I spoke to Yorkshire Tea’s leading tea expert and senior buyer Suzy Garraghan and thankfully, she confirmed my beliefs.

“Putting milk in straight after boiling water will slow down the brewing process which can impact the taste because the tea is unable to unlock all its flavour,” she said.

So, what’s the correct amount of time to wait then? 

According to Suzy, “Patience is key.”

“Tea needs time, so give it four-five minutes to do its thing,” she explained.

So there you have it, EMILY!

See you in the kitchen tomorrow.