English Breakfast

This tea makes me want to quote one of my favourite movies. “I know you can be overwhelmed, and I think you can be underwhelmed, but can you ever just be . . . whelmed? — I think you can in Europe.”

Well this one left me whelmed. Nothing stood out for me, and nothing made me dislike it. It was the quality I expect from a looseleaf brewed cup of black, but it wasn’t memorable at all. I guess since it is a staple tea of choice for most people, that’s a good thing? Myself, though, I like my blacks a wee bit more distinctive.

Day 15 of the 24 Days of Tea

At first sniff: What does English Breakfast actually smell like. Not a whole lot. It smells like tea.

At first steep: I was actually really excited to try a humble blend from DT. I haven’t before and I don’t normally buy humble blends in loose. It brewed up nice, with a deep rich red brown colour. I added cream and sugar to it, as standard. The first 5 mins of it was good, then it got horrible bad. It was dry, astringent, made me scrunch my face and pucker my mouth. I even tried warming it up in the microwave in hopes that hotter meant better. The damage had been done though and there wasn’t anything that was going to save it. I dumped it down the sink. SO disappointing. I’ve had other breakfast blends that didn’t do this, so I will stick with them. It’s a shame really because the flavour was good, I didn’t over leaf it, I didn’t over steep it. I will try again and we will see. Until then, my rating is low.

First, thank you to Courtney for sending me a sample of this.

It was very un-tea-like of me, but in my haste to get ready this morning, I completely forgot about this pot of tea and it brewed for up to 10 minutes. It still turned out wonderfully! It’s strong with pleasant tannins and no bitterness. It stayed really good even when it got cold. This is a nice English breakfast tea, nothing standout about it, but it’s very good.

Waking up in my house surrounded by Snowy Landscapes.
While listening to this song : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lrBZeWjGjl8

The music and this tea goes along perfectly.
A perfect balance between the light ambiant/flowery tones of the Sri-Lanka leaves
and the energic/spicy beat of the Assam leaves.

In fact, this blend goes just along with my morning.
I love so much Sri-Lanka tea that I couldn’t make a bad review of it…

Seriously worth the money.
It’s a pleasant decent cheap tea.

Don’t expect a very unique flavor here.

Have a good day my friends!

A relatively standard black tea. Everyone knows this one. A guy that I was dating really loved this tea and was nice enough to give me 10-15g. It was one of my to go black teas for a while. I liked it.

Here I am, nearly 4 years later trying this tea out again from DAVIDsTEA. I don’t notice a huge difference in terms of taste/quality than the bulk barn version that I was given. I get some floral notes in taste, accompanied with some bitterness. It’s an OK tea. I still enjoy it, but I have come across other black teas that I enjoyed much more (Nepal Black and Wild Black Yunnan).

I will try resteeping this with shorter steep time and see what I get.

I really love this as a morning/breakfast tea, better than their Orange Pekoe actually – sorry aisling (and aisling’s cat)! ;)

I kept going through different straight black teas and blends trying to find the “perfect” breakfast blend for me .. not thinking that it might just be the cheapest one that they sell, lol! I will definitely stay stocked up on this blend and enjoy it on a very regular basis. To me it just has the right blend of floral and sweet/malty notes, without being smoky or bitter. But anyway, to each his/her own!

Now, don’t get me wrong, my absolute favourite teas are hearty, robust English Breakfasts. But neither of DAVIDsTea’s attempts managed to do it for me. Their regular EB was much better than the Organic EB, probably because there were more Sri Lankan leaves in the blend. The Organic tasted….just… meh. Incredibly uninspired.

The worst part of it is that both of them were as fresh as they could have been, too. The sales girl was pouring them from their delivery bags into the canisters when I came into the store. Because of that, I got 100g of each so I’d have the tins to keep them extra fresh.

I tried valiantly to like these, really, I did. I steeped each of them at a regular strength, re-steeped those leaves, and tried them at double-strength with fresh leaves. I tried it plain, with cream, with sugar, with milk and sugar, and with lemon. There just isn’t anything I can do to make these teas drinkable.

After trying to love these over the course of a week and a bit, I actually broke down and went to my Sri Lankan grocery and bought a pound of imported fannings. So much better.

I’ve only had bagged English Breakfast teas before, so I saw this and said I’ll try it. It’s very similar to the bags just with the higher quality and better flavour that comes with loose leaf. It’s got a deep flavour similar to that of an earl grey with a bit of a twist. But, it’s just a straight black so nothing extremely flavorful, but still good with breakfast or anytime of the day. Alright straight up, but much more enjoyable with a little milk or cream and a spoon of sugar.

High-grade type English Breakfast taste yet fair price. Lower the steep time if you wish to drink it black and longer steep will be much better with a dash of milk.

Grabbed a sample of this from a previous TTB. It’s decently rich and hearty. I had it sweetened with milk, and it was pretty satisfying, though not as nice as some other versions.