The beginner's guide to a perfect cup of tea

Sadly, most Americans are not very good at making tea. Which is too bad, because it has a lot of health benefits. Many Americans have resolved to drink more green tea, and end up drinking sugary chilled bottled water beverages instead. Blecch!

Selecting Tea
If you are new to tea, one thing you have to understand is that you get what you pay for. Skip the giant boxes of Nestea and Red Rose teas. Those are terrible! Most grocery stores carry a pretty good selection of Stash tea. The benefit to buying a box of Stash is that each teabag comes in its own foil pouch. Thus it will stay fresher longer than something like Celestial Seasonings, where all of the bags start to go stale the instant you open the box.

For beginners I would recommend trying a good green tea (I like Stash "Premium Green") and a mid-range black tea like Earl Grey. The super-strong black teas like Irish Breakfast can be off-putting to the uninitiated. And some blends can have strong flavors, like the wood smoke flavor of Lapsang Souchong, or the "Rice Crispies" taste of Genmaicha.

Preparation
1. Be sure that your water is hot enough. Microwaving probably won't do it, you need a full rolling boil from a tea kettle. As a distant second choice, and only if you are stuck at an office and have no other choice: the hot water from the red tap on a water cooler or coffee machine.

2. Swish some water around your brewing container (be it a teapot or a mug) then dump it out. This warms it up, so that you don't lose valuable temperature to heating the pottery.

3. Put in your teabag(s) and pour hot water over them, always in that order. Otherwise the teabags tend to bob obstinately on the surface.

4. Steep it as the directions recommend. Set a timer. A few minutes either way can make the difference between a great cup of tea and a bad one.

Image courtesy Flickr/Alexandre Dulaunoy