English Breakfast Tea

English Breakfast is a blend of black teas, usually Assam, Ceylon and Kenyan, cut small so it brews dark and fast. The cup is malty and brisk, built to stand up to milk and sugar. Brewed in a teapot at 98°C for three to four minutes.

Origin & Story

A name with two disputed birthplaces

Nobody can say for certain who named English Breakfast. British tea sellers were advertising a breakfast tea by the late eighteenth century, but the name English Breakfast has two competing origin stories, and neither has firm proof.

In the American version, a New York tea merchant, Richard Davies, an immigrant from England, sold a blend under that name in the 1840s. The story is usually traced to a piece in the Journal of Commerce that nobody has been able to find; the nearest surviving account, in the Daily Alta California of 1876, repeats the story and dates it to 1844. Davies's blend was built on Congou, a Chinese black tea, with a little Pekoe and Pouchong. An American publication mentioned English Breakfast tea by name in 1884.

In the Scottish version, an Edinburgh tea blender named Drysdale made a breakfast blend, and Queen Victoria tasted it at Balmoral in the early 1890s, liked it and took a supply back to London. Tellings differ on the dates and details, and the story is hard to check. Whichever is closer to the truth, the earliest breakfast teas were Chinese, because nearly all of Britain's tea came from China until Indian and Ceylon tea took over in the second half of the nineteenth century.

What goes in it now

Modern English Breakfast is mostly a mix of Assam, Ceylon and Kenyan black teas. Assam, from the river plains of northeast India, gives malt and weight. Ceylon tea from Sri Lanka adds a bright, crisp edge. Kenyan tea brews dark and strong and gives the cup its color. Pricier blends sometimes add Keemun, a softer Chinese black tea, and Irish breakfast tea leans harder on Assam and Kenyan leaf. Each brand keeps its own recipe, so two boxes with the same name can taste quite different.

Why it is made of small pieces

Most English Breakfast, especially in tea bags, is made by the CTC method, short for crush, tear, curl. Withered leaf runs between toothed rollers that cut it into small, hard granules, which then oxidize quickly. The first CTC machine ran in Assam around 1930, under William McKercher at the Amgoorie estate, and the method spread through India and Africa from the 1950s. It suits a tea bag because the small pieces give up their color and strength in a few minutes, and today most Indian tea is made this way. Loose-leaf breakfast blends often use broken orthodox grades instead, such as BOP, broken orange pekoe; the grade names describe the size of the pieces, not quality.

Tea bags won. The UK Tea and Infusions Association says Britain drinks about 100 million cups of tea a day, and most of them are brewed from a bag.

Milk first or milk after

The British argue about this more than they argue about the tea. The international standard for brewing tea, ISO 3103, which began as British Standard 6008 in 1980, puts the milk in the bowl first: 2 g of tea per 100 ml of freshly boiled water, six minutes for black tea, then the tea poured onto a little milk. It was written so that professional tasters could compare teas fairly, and the standard itself says it is not a recipe for the best cup. At home, adding milk to a brewed cup lets you see the color and stop at the strength you like.

Brewing it

Warm the pot first, then use 3 g of leaf, or one bag, for each 240 ml of water just off the boil, at about 98°C. Steep three to four minutes. Go toward four if you take milk; at three it can taste thin once the milk is in. Taste before you add sugar. Past five minutes the cup turns bitter and drying, and milk only partly covers it.

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