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off the heat, boiling water poured over the leaf, uncovered, timed at 4 minutes

Thai tea mix + freshly boiled water, steeped hard. Brew this deliberately too strong. Each glass is going to meet a full cup of ice and then a pour of milk, so somewhere between a third and a half of what you are tasting now will be diluted away — judge the base by imagining it cut, not by whether it is pleasant to drink. Timing it matters in both directions: under three minutes and the mix has not given up its colour or its body, past five and the tannin arrives without bringing any more strength with it. Know what you are brewing — the orange is food colouring in the commercial mix rather than anything the tea leaf does, which is why the from-scratch spiced version below comes out brown.