Irish Breakfast

It may not be morning and breakfast has long passed but I am in urgent need for a builders tea (strong, sweet and milky). I’m trying to do my house chores which should have been done on the weekend but I was out of the house most of the time. I need to defrost my freezer and clean the fridge, mop the kitchen and do some clothes washing. I’ve done a few other bits but my back is killing me today, must have been all the walking I did on the weekend. A cup of tea and a little time to relax should do the trick before I carry on.

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This is a nice tea, subtly smoky and malty but smooth and with good strength. Perhaps not as strong as my personal taste for a breakfast tea but not far off. Half way down the cup and it tastes much richer than it did before and with a touch of gentle spice.

Good quality and nice flavour considering it’s a bagged tea.

bitter, even in a mug mug and at the minimum brewing time listed. No biggie, since I was planning to add Bailey’s anyway. 2 tbsp smoothed it out nicely :-)

Steep Information:
Amount: 1 teabag
Water: hot carafe water, paper cup
Steep Time: 2 minutes
Served: Hot

Tasting Notes:
Dry Leaf Smell: black tea, toasty
Steeped Tea Smell: black tea, toasty
Flavor: thick, dark
Body: Full
Aftertaste: bitter
Liquor: opaque dark brown

Post-Steep Additives: white sugar

Not the most fabulous tea, but it was very good at waking me up during the meeting I was in. I think the tea might have been a bit better had there been boiling water. A surprisingly good teabag.

Images: http://amazonv.blogspot.com/2010/11/bewleys-coffee-and-tea-company-teabag.html

A co-worker of mine is originally from Ireland and she brought me a few bags of this to try.

This tea is packaged in the traditional white, circular filter-paper teabag. The fragrance is light but definitely creamy with notes of pepper.

Upon adding the boiling water, it was immediately black which foreshadowed the strength of this tea. It was highly astringent with an underlying malt. I don’t normally add anything to my tea, but this one needed a little sweetener and cream to get through.

The power of this tea took me off guard at first, but it grew on me. If anything, it will wake you up!

I quite like this as a simple tea, though not quite as much as my Red Rose. However, somethign interesting to note, perhaps, is that this tea place is so old, and so Irish, that it is mentioned in James Joyce’s novel “The Dubliners”!

Anyway, this is your basic breakfast tea, nothing too special, but very good. My only issue is that I love to re-steep my teas once or twice, but if you do that with this one, you somehow get a fair bit of flavouring from the bag its in, which is really odd. But I’m sure that isn’t a deal breaker for anyone!

Some friends of mine went to Ireland a few months back, and gave me a cup and saucer with shamrocks all over, very cute. They also added a few bags of this tea, because they said that they could not find any Irish Breakfast tea where they went. I finally made a cup, and it’s actually very nice and surprising! I tried it first without milk or sweetener, and it would have been fine that way, but the bag did suggest that it went well with milk, and that’s the way I’m drinking it now. Typically if I add milk, I add sweetener, but this is just great as it is.

I picked up a few of these bags randomly while in Ireland last fall. I wish I picked up more. An enjoyable strong breakfast tea. I really needed it this morning and it really hit the spot.

The morning I recently flew to Ireland I was rummaging through my cupboard thinking it was a shame that I didn’t have ONE more cup left of Butiki’s Irish Breakfast (or ANY Irish breakfast) to commemorate the start of my journey. Subsequently I bought just about all the Irish breakfast teas I could find, including swiping all of the Bewley’s tea bags that my hotel provided. I’m under the impression that a hearty tea in the morning is standard for the Irish, but I was surprised that there wasn’t a broader selection of teas.

This steeps up pretty rich, but when I put creamer in it, the flavor almost disappeared. As I sip on the flavor slowly reemerges. There is a dry papery tobacco note to it… maybe a slight bit of malt. I’m not finding that this tea really shines. It’s just a standard bagged tea, not that I expected much else from it. It would be nice in a pinch, but not when I have my cupboard accessible.

This came stocked in my hotel room at the Spencer Hotel in Dublin, Ireland. I like it best with a shorter steep. I drank it plain. For a breakfast tea, it’s not overly bitter. I detect a slight malty note. Overall it’s pleasant and drinkable, good for waking up / staying awake when you need to keep to a schedule because of jet lag.

Very nice if not exciting tea brewed loose – good morning tea.