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.

It’s not that usual to ask for ‘white tea’ - most people would reply like your friends do, 🤷🏻‍♀️

It’s a crime not to have ‘normal’ milk in though when you have visitors or ‘workmen’ coming to the house!

Ooh this is really making me want a cup of tea

DH brought home a box of Twinings extra strong last week. Never loved him more.

Having tried most plant milks I am intrigued by pea milk. What is it exactly?

Loving this thread. Where I work the first cup of tea of the day at work can sometimes be the first proper cup of tea you’ve had in days so you really look forward to it. We seem to have a strange politically incorrect slang that I haven’t heard anywhere else when asked how you have your tea (or coffee.) The most common answers to the question are either Julie Andrews or Whoopi Goldberg.

'White tea' and 'black tea' to differentiate between tea drunk the English way - with milk - and tea drunk the immigrant way - without milk - makes complete sense to this immigrant with English as a second language. It's exactly the same construction as 'white coffee' and 'black coffee'. Not that it made any sense to our British friends. For them there was just 'tea'.

So imagine our confusion when white tea and black tea became available in the supermarkets, but white tea is drunk black, whereas black tea is drink white!

It was the British builders who taught us how to make tea that English people recognise as tea. The first time a builder asked me for "white, two" I brought him two mugs of tea-with-milk that I had made using one teabag. Fortunately, he was a lovely man with a sweet sense of humour!

peridito I'm nearly 60 but have a 16 year old for my sins so I'm reasonably up-to-date on slang, not that she'd ever ask for a cuppa in any form!
All of you with builders etc coming, don't forget your box of sugar lumps! Much better than a rarely used bag of sugar with a wet spoon shoved in

VaguelySensible it depends where you're an immigrant from. In Germany black tea and white tea are tea varieties as green tea, fennal tea, berry tea, and 999 other teas are. Ask a German for white tea and you'll only get tea with milk if they have learnt that white tea is an idiom in British English for strong black tea served with milk.ask for white tea in Germany and you'll get a white tea variety, no milk involved.

I never ask for tea outside my own home or workplace, and at work they refer to PG Tips Made with strong two cup pyramid bags, with milk, as "English tea" - a couple of people now drink it and find it amusing to make me a cup correctly, but I order the teabags online and kick myself for saying early on that people can help themselves to them as although most colleagues and clients dislike strong tea with milk a couple have very much aquired the taste

'English breakfast' is another way of specifying a good strong cup of tea, if ordering in a cafe, for example.

I've read fiction set in the US in which someone put a teabag in a mug of cold water and put it in the microwave

MarySidney I tried buying English breakfast tea bags when I first moved to Germany, but the stuff sold here as English breakfast tea is still so insipid and weak that you have to leave it to brew until it's lukewarm before it's got any kind of taste, and then it has a faint bitterness from being left too long, as well as being disappointing due to the temperature.

The only thing I order from the UK after many years living abroad is tea bags. I live in a country where everyone thinks they're a tea expert, but what they mean when they say tea (Tee) is herbal infusions, only tangentially related to what British people mean by tea.

@Backinthebox well I'm sorry but you can't leave it there !

Where I work the first cup of tea of the day at work can sometimes be the first proper cup of tea you’ve had in days where do you work ? Arctic expedition ? Submarine ?

Julie Andrews ?Whoopi Goldberg ? do what ???

@MarySidney - the microwaved cup of tea was demonstrated by David Tennant in Broadchurch .Very worrying .

See, I drink white tea, so if was asked for white tea it wouldn't occur to me that they mean black tea with milk. I've never heard that referred to as white tea. Usually it's "tea". And I'll ask if they take milk/sugar.

Definitely just a bit a tea, often fairly strong, with some milk.

@peridito - long haul aircraft. Some far flung parts of the world have strange tasting milk and British tea is usually stronger to deal with having milk in it. A delicate but foreign black tea doesn’t hit the spot, and when you get back on the plane home and they have tea and milk you are used to it’s lovely. Julie Andrews = white nun etc. Heather Mills is white one 😳.

Thank you @Backinthebox - that all makes perfect sense !

I'm a bit obsessed by frozen wastes /modern day Shackleton hence my hopeful guesses .

I fly over the arctic - massive and terrifying wastes! I take my hat off to anyone who explores up there. I fly over deserts too, but there is usually signs of human life even in the desert. No so in the frozen north.

Pea is a common allergen, please don't give it to people instead of milk without explicitly stating it.