🇬🇧 How to Make Builder's Tea

Craving Builder's Tea? On FoodNeverComes the food never actually comes — so here's how to make real Builder's Tea at home, in about 5 min, with stuff you probably already have.

🛒 Ingredients

Tap ingredients to tick them off as you shop or cook ✔️

• 1 strong black teabag (Assam or an English Breakfast blend)
• freshly drawn cold water
• a splash of whole milk
• sugar, to taste

👩‍🍳 Method

1. Fill the kettle with freshly drawn cold water. Re-boiled water has lost its dissolved oxygen and makes noticeably flat tea — this is not folklore, it is the difference you can taste.
2. Warm the mug with a little boiling water and tip it out, so the brew does not lose 10°C the moment it is poured.
3. Pour water at a full rolling boil straight onto the bag. Black tea needs the heat; water gone off the boil under-extracts and the tea tastes thin.
4. Brew 3–4 minutes. Squeezing the bag hard releases tannins and makes it bitter, though a builder's tea is squeezed anyway and nobody has ever complained.
5. Milk after, for a mug with a teabag in it. Milk first belongs to the teapot, and the argument over which is correct has run for three hundred years and will not be settled here.
6. It should be the colour of a terracotta pot and strong enough to stand a spoon in.