How to make the perfect cup of tea

Tea scene. Credit: Martin Poole/Gett
Tea scene. Credit: Martin Poole/Gett

It’s a debate that has divided Britons for centuries – when making a cup of tea should you pour the milk in first or the tea? Vote in our poll to have your say…

Tea scene. Credit: Martin Poole/Gett
Are you in the milk first or the milk after brigade?. Credit: Martin Poole/Gett

The issue of whether to pour the tea first, or the milk and then the tea is a hot debate in Britain and has been since it became a fashionable drink here in the mid-17th century.

With the former method you can judge the strength of the brew, while with the latter you can gradually bring up the temperature of the milk rather than ‘boil’ it.

Author George Orwell was outspoken about his preferred method: “The milk-first school can bring forward some fairly strong arguments, but I maintain that my own argument is unanswerable. This is that, by putting the tea in first and stirring as one pours, one can exactly regulate the amount of milk whereas one is liable to put in too much milk if one does it the other way round,” he wrote in an essay on the subject ‘A Nice Cup of Tea’, published in the Evening Standard in 1946.

Vote in our poll by clicking below