How long should you leave the teabag in?

I bet you didn’t know that there is an optimal time to leave your teabag in the cup did you?

Well, according to the Tea Advisory Panel, yes there is just such an organisation, says it is up to five minutes in hot water. The longer you let it brew the bioactives (active beneficial ingredients) you get, but the downside or upside perhaps, is that the longer you brew the stronger your cuppa will taste.

The Tea Advisory Panel recently conducted a survey of tea drinkers habits and found that there is a generational gap between the young and older tea drinkers. A third of younger people leave their teabags in longer than their elders. Good for them because they will then benefit from extracting the maximum benefits of the extra polyphenols that improve brain health, mood and cognitive function that comes with relaxing blood vessels. Relaxed blood vessels allow more nutrients and oxygen to get to the brain.