how do I get that tea glow?
I drink even more tea than you (with milk, no sugar) and yes, the quality of the cups can vary widely, although I don’t get that afterglow. (Making I’m drinking it wrong.) Off the top of my head, here are some possibilities: 1) As has been mentioned, making the tea with fresh, boiling water and drinking it out of a good cup can make it taste better. 2) Optimal mix of tea and milk, or milk freshness, can make a difference. 3) Optimal temperature: I find that if the tea has cooled slightly, the flavour seems fuller than when it is too cool or if it is scalding. 4) If you have eaten foods with flavours incompatible with tea, or if it has been so long since you’ve eaten that your breath goes bad, those tastes can react badly with the flavour of the tea, no matter how well it is brewed or what temperature it is at.
You can get as insane as you want with brewing tea. A guy I know carefully weighs the quantity of leaves he uses, always uses very fresh-boiled water that has been drawn from a tap that was run for quite a while before filling the kettle, and brews the tea in special teapots depending on the type. He will also, on the first few brewings of a given tea, measure the temperature of the water to get it to the recommended range. Sometimes that is close to boiling, other times a minute off. Different teas take different situations. Quality of leaves is definitely extremely important. I can’t comment too much on black tea, but oolong tea made in an Yixing teapot is of a really noticeable quality difference than oolong made any other way.
I drink a couple of pots of Yorkshire tea every day, and though I don’t take things to the measurement level I do think I know what you’re talking about. My sense is that there’s a “tang” to the mix that is a combination of sharpness in the tea, governed by the steeping time, sweetness from the sugar and smoothed out by the milk. Too much fat (over 2%) and it gets overwhelmed by the creaminess. Too much steeping and you can’t add enough milk and sugar to take the bitterness away. Too much sugar and it’s just too sweet. I think these things are very personal and it may be impossible for any of us to satisfy your quest for this knowledge, but now I’m inspired to master my brew! Oh, and PS, one of my archetypes for a great mix was the tea you get on UK National Rail trains. Poured out of a pitcher!
I agree that temperature seems to have something to do with how my tea experience is. I’m not really a fan of very hot (scalding) liquids, but there is a sweet spot just below the scalding mark that is ideal for me to get that tea glow. I’ve found that a teapot (I brew in a cast iron teapot that is squat and has a very small opening for releasing as very little heat as possible) that keeps the temperature high throughout the life of the pot is the best for achieving this desired result. But I also think that it has something to do with the type of tea. There are a few types (lapsang sauchong and orange pekoe) that have higher success rate than other teas.
