Tea-Tasting - English Breakfast

Five different brands of Breakfast Tea Bags were selected. They were brewed for 2 minutes and I tasted them without any added milk or sugar.  I also cut open each tea bag to inspect the cut leaves.

Contents of the dry teabags

English Breakfast is a blended tea, usually made up of teas from Assam, , a strong malty tea, Ceylon, a good all rounder and excellent base to include in blended teas, and Kenyan which is brisk and lively.  However it is up to each tea company to select leaves that suit their own blend.

Newby English Breakfast tea bags. Newby used the very finely chopped leaf that is typical for teabags. This tea bag can brew quite happily for 4 minutes to give a really full depth flavour and lacking the tannic aftertaste that I might have expected – to me this suggests they use a good quality leaf however finely chopped.  I felt these are very good value pricewise especially as each bag is individually wrapped and sealed.

Teapigs English Breakfast was a very close second with regards to flavour and smoothness. Interestingly this looks quite different. Firstly the leaf is obviously a chopped leaf and this is enhanced by its fragile looking gauze bag, emphasising the fact it is a leaf that is being brewed not an opaque bag with dubious contents. They are expensive per unit though especially bearing in mind these are not individually wrapped. Once opened it is important to store these in airtight container so they are not tainted by any strong flavours in your store cupboard.

East India Company Breakfast Tea I found it much rougher in the mouth than I like. However, much against my natural inclinations, I have warmed to this as I would suggest this could be what many people regard as a good gutsy English tea – lots of texture and flavour.

My Cup of Tea Breakfast Tea has really lovely packaging, very pretty and very nice – it has a gently flavour that needs at 2 – 4 minutes to really brew properly. However for me it is not as punchy as I would like for the morning. I would be more inclined to drink it in the afternoon.

Twinings I was indifferent to this – for me it did not have enough character compared to the other four. Considerably cheaper but again suggest storing in an airtight tin to prevent tainting.

Conclusion: think about the contents of the bag rather than the bag itself and be aware that we are paying a high premium for packaging – it probably costs more than the contents of the teabags. Certainly I am happy to do this as I cannot really engage my brain properly in the morning to deal with the disposal of loose tea leaves – and of course I can chill them afterwards to lay on my eyelids when wishing to relax – a further contribution to my inner and outer loveliness!

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