What is 'white tea' when builders ask for it?

[Liriope]

Not from the UK, and currently living in Cambridge. Every time I've offered tea or coffee to builders, plumbers, electricians they ask for 'white tea'.

Is this just normal tea with milk?

DH says they mean Silver Tip White Tea.

Yes just tea with milk not a specific brand

Just normal tea with milk I'd have thought?

White just means they take it with milk.

Yes, normal tea with milk :)

Lol to silver tip white tea

They mean tea with milk.

If be very surprised if they meant anything other than a regular cup of tea with milk in it.

Silver Tip White Tea

Fussy buggers

Yes tea with milk. It's to pre-empt the next question of "how do you take it?"

Tea and milk. Normal tea bag. I tried to give mine earl grey one time. They were not impressed.

Normal tea bag eg PG Tips/Tetley, brew in boiling water for a few minutes, splash of milk.

I recently asked the decorators what they wanted and they said builders tea so I said what white with 5 sugars? They said they were lightweights so no sugar.
But yes it’s tea with milk. Just quicker to say white tea.

Agree with above. You can also get White with 2, Black none etc. That means tea with milk and 2 sugars, tea without milk or sugar and every variant therein. Also “white none” is common instead of white tea.

Just with milk
Builders tea usually refers to the strength of the tea (strong/dark ) rather than sugar
It used to be that all builders drank it with copious amounts of sugar but I've noticed over my working life (on many many many building sites) that sugar consumption seems to have gone down.

DH says they mean Silver Tip White Tea

Sorry OP, that's hilarious and I'd love to be a fly on the wall if you did offer an average British builder fancy, artisan tea.

Obviously it's a stererotype that won't apply to all, but there's also the expression 'builders tea' which means standard black tea (so PG Tips, Yorkshire tea or similar) made very strong, using teabags, with lots of milk and sugar.

It's regular tea like pg tips with milk in. I'm going to have to Google silver tip tea now!

Oh just googled, yeah don't do that. Silver tip seems to be some rare tea. It will not be what they are expecting at all!

@wonkylegs That's interesting, I always thought builders just meant bog standard rather than Earl Grey, etc. and not strong tea. I may have been serving underdone tea!

Agree with you that much less sugar is asked for than it used to be.

Also “builders tea” usually means something standard like PG tips and quite strong so brewed for a while and not too much milk. Also definitely only ever cold milk - something that certainly used to very hard to get in certain coffee drinking countries years ago.

Reading again, you didn't say that the tradespeople were British, but in any case, in the situation you describe, most people expect to be offered basic tea and instant coffee with milk and/or sugar according to preference, and not fresh coffee or herbal/artisan tea.

yep tea with milk.
just like 'white' coffee in a coffe shop gets you filter & milk.

Ooops crossed post.

White tea
Black coffee

It’s not difficult!

Tea with milk. Black tea is tea without milk.
Coffee is the same.

fedup

No it's not difficult, but the cultural importance of tea to the British, especially at work, is one of those aspects that may appear baffling to those from overseas who haven't grown up here.

I’m still laughing at the silver tip white tea. Do you have it in the house or were you going to have to get in a special supply?