A professional food and drink taster says most people are making their tea the wrong way.
Martin Isark says the secret is in the water, and not to boil it or you risk burning the tea inside the teabag.
He explained to The Hard Shoulder: "It burns the tea and stops it releasing full flavour.
"The only reason that we boiled water is because the the water wasn't good quality when it first came about.
"So people boiled it to get rid of the bugs.
"Most people's water is pretty damn good."
And the perfect cup of tea? Martin said: "Different tea depends on what kind of tea - whether it's green tea or black tea, oolong tea."
But for the average cup of black tea, he explained the correct temperature is "around 80°c."
Image by PDPics from Pixabay"If you've got a kettle that delivers the right temperature, has a temperature gauge on it, that's perfect.
"But a simple way of doing it is you boil the kettle, and for every percentage of water - so if you want the tea down to 80% - you add 20% of cold water - you'll get water at 80%, and then that's the perfect temperature for black tea, which is your teabag tea.
"If you put 80% into your cup, and then you put a teabag in it, then let it infuse for a while - then you take it out and you put your milk and sugar in it, then you've got a perfect cup of tea."
Asked about the myth that tea tastes worse in places like airplanes, as the water is not boiled, Martin explained: "I think [on] aeroplanes it's that your body changes.
"It's the same with wine and that, it tastes different.
"It's not the tea that's changing, it's your body."
Asked what the best way to do it, Martin said: "If you're going to use milk and sugar, I think it's [best] to put the milk in after you've dumped the teabag.
"Therefore then you can gauge what colour you want the tea, or how much milky you want the tea.
"There's always a risk of you curdling the milk".
