Irish Breakfast

Mostly I drink tea without anything added—no sugar, no milk, just the tea itself. The exception is a nice, chewy English Breakfast kind of black tea. Which can be difficult to find—though it’s gotten easier, at least around here, to get PG Tips, which is kind of my baseline for “the kind of tea you put milk in.”

I’ve bought any number of teas marked “English Breakfast” in the hope they’d be that (to me comforting and comfortable) milky tea hit, but mostly they’re miserable with milk and much better without.

This tea, though, stands up to the milk. Very nice.

Yes, I know, it’s Irish Breakfast, not English. And I could have bought English Breakfast instead while I was in the shop, but a while ago a friend of mine, when we were talking about the milky tea issue and the inadequacy of American teas called “English Breakfast,” told me that in her experience, Irish Breakfast was more likely to deliver the goods. She was talking specifically about Harney and Sons Irish Breakfast, and she gave me a sample, and I agreed with her assessment. It was the stuff.

So when I was at the London Tea Room the other day, I bought Irish instead of English. It’s the stuff.

Maybe some time I’ll try it without milk, just to say I did, but this is the kind of tea I drink when I want milky tea.

This is everything a good Irish Breakfast should be. Malty, strong, and robust. I can taste the Assam and Kenyans nicely in this.