Coffeehouses in eighteenth-century England also served tea, and like the teahouses of imperial China, they served as public venues for discourse and debate. As boisterous political forums, coffeehouses garnered the antipathy of the authorities and were instrumental in stoking the revolutionary ideas that colored the history of the era. In the words of the Stash Tea Company's overview of English tea history, "Exclusively for men, they were called "Penny Universities" because for a penny any man could obtain a pot of tea, a copy of the newspaper, and engage in conversation with the sharpest wits of the day."
Unlike tea drinkers in Asia, who emphasized purity in both the form and content of the tea ceremony, Western tea drinkers like to mix things up by adding milk or lemon and sugar, and by blending fruit and floral flavors with traditional black tea. Earl Grey tea, for instance, is black tea infused with bergamot orange oil--an additive that was first used to flavor snuff and gin. Herbal teas, also known as "tonic herbals," have become increasingly popular in modern times. They are not made from the actual tea plant at all, but from various flavorful or medicinal plants, like ginseng or chamomile.
Rather than directly depositing the loose leaves in the cup, as is the popular Eastern method, Westerners have developed handy ways of keeping the leaves out of their tea. In the late seventeenth century, people used a silver spoon called a mote skimmer to remove the leaves floating in their cup. Soon after, tea strainers and tea balls came into use.
Today, tea bags provide a convenient way to enjoy leafless tea. This commodity has not quite caught on in the East, however, and many Chinese tea purists are still happy filtering their tea the old-fashioned way: spitting out the leaves with each sip.