“Cup of tea, with an embarrassing amount of milk. Thanks.”

When it comes to tea and coffee, everyone has a slightly different set of requirements. First there’s the caffeine vehicle of choice: coffee (instant, decaf, filtered, percolated), tea (normal, earl grey, mixture of both, fruity, chai, fair-trade, bags or leaf) or neither.

Having got through the first set of attributes, there’s more detail to collect. Strong or weak, sugar (brown or white).

And then there’s milk. Without (easy). Just a tad. Or lots. And for tea, do you prefer the milk in the cup before the tea (to prevent the milk being scalded)?

In my case, I’ve a standard response to the question “tea of coffee?”

“Cup of team, with an embarrassing amount of milk. Thanks.”

Keep pouring the milk until you feel embarrassed about squeezing any more out of the bottle/jug into the mug, and then stop. I’ve yet to be served tea that’s too cold or too milky.

But other people seem to have more trouble getting their cuppa right. So the nice people at Suck UK are about to launch a set of MyCuppa mugs, that include mini-colour charts on the inside of the white mugs to help identify your preferred colour of beverage. Now there’ll be no excuse.

And in case people have trouble remembering what the rest of their house wants, Suck UK have another helpful product, with stainless steel selector rings to mark people’s preferences.

(via Shiny Shiny)