Tag: Black Tea

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PG tip’s English Breakfast

English Breakfast by PG tips
Black Tea / Straight
£1.00-1.99 for 100g (40 sachets)

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First Impressions

I’m all for a good, plain straight tea. I grew up on orange pekoe, so having a good plain tea makes me nostalgic. Sometimes it’s just better to have a nice plain cup of tea that isn’t full of frills and thrills in the flavouring. There’s a tea for every occasion, and the last several mornings I’ve been having PG tip’s English Breakfast. there are 40 pyramid sachets in this 100g box, which works out to be 2.5g of tea per pyramid, a decent amount. The tea itself smells a bit malty. The material of the sachets feels papery, I would say likely compostable although the packaging doesn’t indicate as such. While the sachets aren’t translucent, I can tell that the tea in the pyramids aren’t large pieces at all, there’s quite a bit of dust that is loose in the box.

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The ingredients are simply listed as being black tea. English Breakfast is traditionally a blend of black teas (Assam, Ceylon, and Kenyan), although the packaging for this English Breakfast tea doesn’t boast as such. What the packaging of PG tip’s English Breakfast does boast is the fact that they are Rainforest Alliance Certified, and that the tea farmers are paid a living wage and have access to things that you and I may take for granted, living in a country like Canada. Not everyone has access to education, medical care, and safe housing so it’s nice to see that the company is conscientious of things like that for their tea suppliers.

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Preparation

PG tips’ recommends steeping in “freshly boiled water” for 1-2 minutes. I’ve varied the amount of time I’ve steeped this tea for the last several mornings, opting to change it up and I find that 4 minutes is about the longest I would go before it gets to be quite bitter. The ‘sweet spot’ for me would be about 2½ minutes.

First Taste

English Breakfast steeps to a beautiful deep red and smells like toffee candies. I’ve got quite the sweet tooth, so having a tea remind me of candy is a good thing. However, it doesn’t taste quite like toffees at all, it has some maltiness to the flavour with a very mild astringency at the end of every sip. There’s a bit of a woody flavour to it that I find interesting, but not off-putting to say the least. I don’t really like English Breakfast plain though, and even PG tips recommends it with a splash of milk.

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I added honey and evaporated milk to mine and it tastes wonderful. I really enjoy it doctored up a bit and find it much more palatable when sweetener and dairy added to it, it cuts the astringency down a lot. While the astringency didn’t bother me, having the astringency toned down makes the tea even better, in my opinion.

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A Second Cup?

I attempted to resteep English Breakfast and it wasn’t very good at all – it made for a very sad and watery cup of tea that I didn’t even want to drink.

My Overall Impression

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I liked PG tip’s English Breakfast. I’m always a fan of having a nice, affordable tea in my tea stash. Having a solid, plain black tea fits into my tea stash quite nicely for when I’m in the mood for something easy on the tongue. My biggest problem with the English Breakfast is my ability to find it in Canada, at least the PG tips brand. I will have to see about trying other versions of English Breakfast if I want an easier to find version of it. Overall, I find English Breakfast to meet my needs of having a simple morning tea. It is caffeinated, so it’s not something I would drink throughout the day, but I find it to be enjoyable and I would definitely suggest to follow the recommendations of adding milk to it.

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DavidsTea’s Nepal Black

Nepal Black by DavidsTea
Black Tea / Straight
$10.98 for 50g

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First Impressions

Going to start off this review by saying that Nepal Black is really pretty. The dry leaves are huge (for the most part) with just the slightest twist in each leaf. They’re dark with some golden tips for some of the leaves, pretty indeed! The dry tea has a bit of plum in the scent, I find, along with some woody notes, and honey – it reminds me a lot of an Assam because there’s some malty notes in the fragrance of the dry tea. Even a small amount of this tea takes up a lot of volume in the bags – which helps to prevent leaves from being crushed and broken.

The ingredients for Nepal Black are simple: black tea from Nepal. Easy to remember, given the name of the tea.

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Preparation

DavidsTea recommends steeping in 96C water for 4-7 minutes. I steeped for about 4 minutes.

First Taste

Nepal Black steeps to a beautiful golden orange colour, and it smells just as the dry leaf did: a little bit of honey, some plum, and then rounding it out with some smokiness and woody notes. The little bit of honeyed taste to the tea makes it just a touch sweet and it does really well without the addition of sweetener (of course, you are welcome to add some to personal taste – I just find it sweet enough). It’s a very pleasant tea, I know a lot of the time when black teas are steeped in too hot of water or for too long, it ends up being very bitter – this is not the case for Nepal Black. Granted, I only steeped for four minutes, which is on the low end of the time range they offered.

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A Second Cup?

I resteeped Nepal Black twice. The first resteep resulted in a very similar pot of tea as the first in terms of strength of the aroma and flavour. The second resteep was lacking the natural honeyed taste and the other mix of flavours were starting to wane. I would say that Nepal Black is good for one more steep only, although the second resteep is still an okay cup of tea.

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My Overall Impression

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I loved DavidsTea’s Nepal Black. One of the things that I really enjoyed about Nepal Black is the complexity of the tea in terms of the flavours that I can pick out from a straight tea. It’s enjoyable, it resteeps at least once well. There’s a great mixture of flavours that mingle well together on the tongue, and it is an overall just good cup of tea. I would recommend trying it if you’re looking for a black tea to add to your tea cupboard, I certainly like it and will definitely steep this one again.

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Steeped Tea’s Earl Grey de la Crème

Earl Grey de la Crème by Steeped Tea
Black Tea / Flavoured
$7.00 for 50g

I received a bag full of Steeped Tea samples via a craft swap that I participated in, this is one of those samples.

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First Impressions

I’m a sucker for Earl Grey tea, it’s one of my favourites and I love it. Steeped Tea’s version has very few ingredients – black tea, cornflower petals, and natural flavours. I get the slightest hint of citrus when I first smelled the tea. This may be due to the fact that it is allergy season and I’ve been having the sniffles lately. But overall, it smells like Earl Grey – a hint of citrus, a hint of vanilla, the black tea base does come through, which is promising!

Preparation

The instruction that came with my sample state “steep 2-3 minutes in boiling water” – I couldn’t find steeping directions via the Steeped Tea website.

First Taste

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I steeped my sample tea bag for about 3 minutes. The result is a deep mahogany that is clear. This Earl Grey de la Crème smells decent, I don’t really get a lot of citrus from it at all though, which I feel like I should. The taste has a bit of astringency to it, definitely has a pucker feel to it. It has a touch of creaminess to the tea even without added milk or cream, but the vanilla isn’t as strong as I like. It’s a pleasant cup of Earl Grey, but the lack of strength behind the bergamot is a bit disappointing.

A Second Cup?

I attempted to resteep my Earl Grey de la Crème teabag and wound up with a weak cup of black tea with little to no bergamot taste to it at all. I would say that Earl Grey de la Crème is good for only one steep.

My Overall Impression

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I thought that Steeped Tea’s Earl Grey de la Crème was just okay. I’ve had really good cups of Earl Grey before, and really good cups of Cream of Earl Grey. This is not one of them. If you hadn’t tried an Earl Grey with a stronger amount of bergamot flavouring, you might like this one. I think it could be improved upon with some sweetener, maybe some cream, but I think the lack of citrus is disappointing. It’s not a terrible tea, but it isn’t the best I’ve had and it’s certainly not something that I would want to keep a stash of at home.

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