Orange Pekoe

A few years ago I was on a big coupon kick and received a coupon for Tetley tea. I was not impressed. Compared to Red Rose, I found it rather blah. A basic black tea for a basic price.

This is the tea I grew up on, and I drink it now when I’m feeling sad or nostalgic, with milk & sugar as my Comfort Tea.

Long story short, I’ve been seeking refuge at the in-laws because the bf and I found fleas at home. Not a huge infestation, but enough to send me into a cleaning and panic frenzy for the past few days (probably more to come). And since I don’t have my tea gadgets here, I wanted something simple and bagged.

This will do! Nice and strong, half a teaspoon of sugar, and I can calm down for a little while.

It was already hot today when I woke up, so I decided to play around and try making a cold tea latte. My initial efforts failed spectacularly, in which I dropped a tea bag into cold milk and hoped for the best. After like an hour, some tea flavour had come out of the tea bag and there was a little tea taste in the milk, so I said, fine whatever, I’ll just drink it weak because I didn’t want to wait anymore. So I added my usual amount of sugar and this drink was SWEET. Like, unbearably so.

I then poured that tea into a container to hopefully salvage later, stuck it in the fridge, and went back to the drawing board. This time I figured I’d start with some hot water to extract the tea flavour, so I used a small amount of boiling water in a mug and steeped a second tea bag just fine as expected. Super dark, looks very strong. This cup too I put into the fridge to cool down.

Once everything was cold, I took my original drink, added a bunch more milk to it and most of the “concentrated tea”.

The result – a drinkable cold tea latte or rather a container with enough tea for two cold tea lattes!

I think I more prefer this tea warm, but I guess this is okay to keep me cool.

This is the only tea my mom owns. It is one if the first teas I tried and I hated it. For years I thought I hated tea because of this and Red Rose.

Well today I was supposed to get on a train back to London but I missed it and will now be taking a train tomorrow morning. As such, all of my stuff is packed and still in the back of the car, including my tea. That’s why I decided to revisit this.

Honestly, while it is much more palatable than it was when I was a child, it still isn’t my favorite. It is smoother than I recall (probably because I actually know how to brew tea and didn’t drastically oversteep it) but also much more boring. A slight bit of malt and a slight floral-ish quality but not much more.

Delicious black tea, good on its own but ideal with a bit of milk and some honey.

Isn’t this the tea that we all grew up on? To me this tea has memories of great conversations with family, long night conversations and just the perfect cup of tea. Sometime the most simple down to earth teas are the best.

A solid black tea and, with milk, my go-to choice every morning. It’s a good balance between flavour and price.

I went away this weekend and my choices for tea were limited. I had two mugs of this with milk and sugar and it was actually pretty good. I enjoyed it.

I find this orange pekoe bitter and overly tannic. The colour is a strong orange and there is a slightly malty flavour and smell to the tea. It isn’t a terrible tea, but I do prefer other brands of orange pekoe.