Agreed. At the most, tea should be left to infuse for 1 minute (loose tea less than that), especially for Black tea blends. Any more and it just kills the flavor.

I'm willing to bet she was doing it for some sort of DIY health thing. People do silly things like over-doing something if they think it's good for you. Well, that then makes it bad for you.

There's a great book on all this called The Book of Tea by Okakura Kakuzo :

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Book_of_Tea

A very good read on the subject. I think Google Books probably has a free translation.

> Agreed. At the most, tea should be left to infuse for 1 minute (loose tea less than that), especially for Black tea blends. Any more and it just kills the flavor.

Depends. I can leave my Pu-Erh in overnight, and the flavour is still fine. (But Pu-Erh is well known for that.)

Pu-erh is not like ordinary loose tea so it's quite safe to do that. Without stirring or pressing, you don't get too much of the flavor into the water and it's much more coarse. You'll find a lot of the green teas also don't over-flavor the water because of this.

Yes. I guess your 1-minute rule is more appropriate for black teas than anything else. I like my teas more overbrewed in any case.

Strongly disagree; I like tea primarily for the tannins, the almost dry taste on the tongue, moderated by the milk. Such a short steep will make a very weak mug.

If you're drinking the tea without milk, I can see preferring something weak.

Adding milk is more of a Western thing ;)

There are some Sri Lankans who do that due to the British influence and I imagine in India as well, but that's not the case with most of the tea cultures.

Also, if you're doing this for health reasons, I strongly recommend avoiding milk and switching to green tea instead: http://www.npr.org/blogs/thesalt/2012/09/27/161895873/health...

> Adding milk is more of a Western thing ;)

> There are some Sri Lankans who do that due to the British influence and I imagine in India as well, but that's not the case with most of the tea cultures.

I wonder where the Mongolians got their milk-tea from. Probably not from the British.

You mean Suutei tsai. It's actually more of a soup than just tea. And milk is just one available ingredient :

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suutei_tsai

An old tradition among many Mongols was to not drink water straight. This could have been a result of the Mongols’ belief that water was sacred. It could also have come from the need to conserve water

Yes, that's what I meant. Thanks! And indeed, it's closer to a soup. It takes a while getting used to.