this post was submitted on 14 Jan 2026
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They also just drink "tea" and don't conceptualize the different kinds thereof. English Breakfast vs Earl Gray vs an Oolong and all the aromatic teas... AFAIK they traditionally just drink English Breakfast black tea, which is why the Lipton yellow bags aren't even labelled.
The more I learn about British tea culture the more confusing it gets. Drinking unlabeled black tea in a bag is disgusting bottom-of-the-barrel type stuff. No wonder they drown it in milk.
As someone with 2 cupboards full of different teas, herbs and infusions, I'm almost offended when guests reply "just regular tea?", like there only is the one.
Not everyone likes a ton of milk though, people often prefer but a 'splash'.
On the other hand, I do also buy 600 x breakfast tea bags pack...
It's the tannins in british tea that help it mix with the milk. All those black teas you get in europe and asia just turn milk into a swirly mess.
British tea is legitimately its own thing
The color of my mug after a (admittedly high-end) black tea leads me to believe it's not lacking in tannins. I've not tried to put milk in it since I was a kid at my grandparents' who always had some good teas as well.
My understanding is that the "default" British tea is English Breakfast tea. Which is not a bad tea at all, but it's not "special", it's unflavored black tea. I don't refute that the tea culture is unique over there but I don't think it has much to do with the leaves themselves which famously don't even grow in England lol
Of course, but the type that we import tends to be of the high tannin Assamica variety from China/Sri Lanka, whereas the european varieties tends to be lighter and more aromatic as you say, making it harder for the milk to bind
Since we don't have a tea culture I don't know that it's possible to generalize European tea in any way. Feels like half the time when I ask for tea someone pulls out a box with a bunch of aromatic leaves but literally not a single tea leaf (not exaggerating, I've had to drink some herbal mix because I didn't want to be impolite). If they do have some actual tea, it's either litpon yellow (tasteless and inoffensive) or English Breakfast/Earl Gray (actual proper tea that I suppose you could mix milk in just fine).
Habitual tea drinkers such as myself do have the good stuff though, aromatic or not, and we don't put milk in it. That behavior eludes me, if you don't like the taste but want caffeine just drink coffee and milk, and if you do like the taste why dilute it with some hyper-caloric stuff? I posit that's what makes British tea culture, y'all put milk in your black tea because you don't like the strong taste but still you drink it for cultural reasons.
It tastes good though! It's a hot morning broth almost.
When I was living abroad, I genuinely missed having a nice creamy tea to tide me over. Tea instead became this meditation thing I now had to "sip" whilst inhaling the steam. That's an alien thing in of itself!
This whole conversation is making me feel just a little bit lighter about the fascism going down in my country.