Twinings of London

Enjoyed first thing in the morning, out of a tin enamel mug.

I had this tea before I had breakfast, since the morning was a bit rushed.

This is a very straightforward tea. A little bit of malt, but the same smoothness you would find in a solid black tea. There is some tannin on the finish, with a tasty body that doesn’t overload the senses. I brewed mine a bit strong but that’s how I like it, and for that it didn’t acquire any of the bite you might find in Scottish or Irish breakfast teas. Some people are looking for that bite however to counter with some cream or sugar.

This is a solid choice for a bagged tea, with traditional flavors. It’s limited due to that but I would have no qualms about enjoying a cup each morning.

The caffeine fix was definitely noticed within about 20 minutes, this blend is a great standard for workers and homebody’s alike.

One of my favorite breakfast teas. Nothing stands out, nothing is out of balance.

For what it is, it’s not so bad. Drinkable enough on a night I really wanted tea but didn’t want to deal with measuring and minding temperature. The honey and vanilla aren’t really present, but it’s an alright base. Smidge of red berry flavor. Probably would’ve been better amended instead of neat; I’ve got another bag, so I’ll try it that way next.

A week ago I ordered a new supply of breakfast tea, but it hasn’t been sent yet. Presumably this is to do with the pandemic and so I’m not going to pester them for the time being.

In the meantime, we bought a box of this. Emergency rations, guys. Our supermarket only carries Twinings in bagged form and Husband finds one bag for a pot of two large cups is fine. Whereas my instinct says one bag for a cup and two for a pot.

Probably as a consequence it’s rather thin. I feel like I’m drinking hot water with milk. It’s not good. I have asked him to try and make the next pot either with two bags, or with a significantly longer steep, just so we can at least find out if it really is that poor and lay the dosage discussion to rest. (I’m pretty confident in my two bag theory, though)

On a different note we are both healthy. Husband is working from home for the foreseeable, whereas I still have to go to work. (I work in a hospital lab. We are important for diagnostics, and so essential personnel.) The Outside, on my commute, is nearly deserted. Looks like I’m travelling in the middle of the night. Otherwise we are staying in and being careful. As an introvert, I feel like I’ve been training for this my whole life.

OK, so another one of the discount store ones. This one is actually labeled for somewhere around November of this year, so despite there being “Milk” listed as an ingredient, I think we are good there.

This is… well it’s a spicy chai all right. Much spicier than the Cafe Escapes one, which in comparison is rather one-note cinnamon. This one actually tastes like it has a profile. I’m getting cloves, cardamon, and a bit of other miscellaneous spices. I swear there is a touch of anise in this, but it could be just me. Sadly, the black tea base is mostly missing, but that’s to be expected for these things. It certainly isn’t as sweet as the other one. I don’t know how to describe this. It’s more complex than my other one, but also the flavors don’t pop as much. So it’s complex but subtle. I really don’t know which one I like better. At first, when I sipped this I thought it was gross, but I’m only halfway through the cup and it has already grown on me.

For chai k-cup? This has a surprisingly rich profile. There’s a tingle to it in the mouth, like a good chai should have. Overall, if you have a Keurig and want a quickie Chai latte, go for it. That’s what I bought it for. (A surprising number of my cups are quickie cups). Most people on here though, I don’t think it would suit. It’s good for a K-Cup… which is even less impressive than saying something is good for bagged. In my experience, loose tea is usually better than bagged, and K-Cups are usually lower on the spectrum than bagged. The only thing I’ve had that K-Cups consistently beat is powdered tea, and that should speak volumes. That said, I have a rather unrefined palate, and I can easily stomach things most people on here never could.

So yeah, for a K-Cup? It’s a C
For tea in general? Fail.

It is black currant tea with ginseng and vanilla.

At least it should be. Actually it is another one of the generic fruit teas . Yeah, there are some black currant flavours, it is tart after black currant, but I expected more full taste. Maybe the vanilla is smoothing it too much. It was quite boring tea. There are bit of herbal notes, I think it is that ginseng. But overall, even after 5 minutes of steeping, it tasted still somehow rather water

Another shame tea :/

Finally finished off my box of this. Now, I didn’t actually use this up in any traditional sense… I actually don’t really like jasmine green tea, because the aroma from the scenting process is typically so strong and perfumey that it irritates my head. The sorts of jasmine teas I like to drink are typically when light jasmine is added with other flavors. What I use this tea for is flavoring white rice, because I can’t put soy sauce on my rice since it is a migraine trigger. So I add the teabags to the water that gets “soaked up” by my Minute Rice to add flavor to the rice (ginger is one of my other favorites, especially when I’m having a “bad GI” day).

So I can’t judge this tea on the merits of if it is a “good” cup of jasmine tea, but for my purposes of making decent jasmine rice, it has served me well. I have certainly had to experiment a bit to find the proportions to get a good batch, since I’ve definitely botched a few batches along the way (a good cook I am not). Mostly it was a) finding the right amount of teabags to get the jasmine flavor to come through in the rice decently and b) getting the right amount of water to account for the fact that the teabags are going to soak up a bit of the water, so using the ratios on the rice box don’t work so well. I always use the “2 serving” directions (one cup water/one cup rice) and find four teabags with 1 1/4 to 1 1/2 cup water is the sweet spot. Times when I tried to use more teabags than that, or only the one cup of water, my rice tended to be far too dry.

I really like that using the teabags to flavor the rice gives it that nice floral flavor, but the aroma that normally is really strong, wafting, and like old grandma perfume from the cup is completely gone from the rice. Since I make this quite often I should probably look for a cheap jasmine green looseleaf that I can bag myself that will last a while, but for now at least this is easy for me to restock at the local grocery.

I don’t have a plain boxed black tea in my cupboard, which I really need for those hectic mornings when I have just enough time to boil a thermos of water but not the extra 2-3 minutes to steep/strain a cup of looseleaf tea to put into the thermos. Currently the only black bagged offering in my cupboard is an EG, so a plain breakfast offering is definitely needed, but I’m admittedly very picky about them. I really liked the Taylors of Harrogate one, but it isn’t sold in my local grocery, so I’m going to have to go with a different option… I’ve done well with Twinings of London as a brand on a whole in the past, and I had a single-serving teabag sampler of this that I picked up from, I believe, PDX Tea Fest 2019. So I decided to brew it this morning.

I kept to a briefer two minute steep time (as I said, I can be a little iffy when dealing with black CTC breakfast teas) but I have a nice color with some reddish tones an aroma that is very bready, with notes of malt, toasty baked bread, cinnamon, and molasses. I think my steep time was spot on for my personal tastes because the tea isn’t too strong and doesn’t leave an unpleasant astringent bite after the sip like I’ve found with many breakfast blends; the flavor starts out with a strong notes of malt, bread, and autumn leaves, with a touch of citrus and spice coming in closer to the end of the sip and lingering on the tongue.

I am enjoying this one… I believe I’d tried their Irish Breakfast at one point and it came off too strong/astringent for me, but this is just right, especially at these steep parameters. I know my local grocery carries this, so next time I have to make the grocery rounds, I will probably add a box just so I have a quick grab-and-go brewing option for a breakfast black tea.

Tucked into a box of Christmas doo-dahs from a friend. She actually got the UPS clerk to put “doo-dahs” on the manifest :) It tastes just like a butter mint. A lovely little sweetie for the evening.

I posted elsewhere that, having been on the road for a week, the hotel tea was just not doing the job. Bigelow English Teatime, while perfectly acceptable, was not countering the long conference days and nights without my own tea in my own cup in my own jammies.

This kept me upright. Nashville is growing crazy fast—we counted nine high-rise cranes at work at once; mostly apartments. The completed buildings have nifty little trails and green space and parks behind them—and one full-size Publix underneath them! A friend and I just walked up and down the aisles to gawk and see what the city folks buy. (Cut me some slack. My little hometown is population 1,051). At any rate, they had Twinings, it was strong enough to counteract the Styrofoam-and-plastic cups and lids, I am one little plane ride away from home, and I am TIRED.

Sipdown!
Dry it smells of strawberries and blueberries.
Steeping you get more of the black tea and the fresh fruit smell is slowly going away.
Taste of strawberry medicine and sadly I am not a fan :( It smelled really good dry with the fruit and such but the black tea just overpowers it. It tastes like the traditional black tea with artificial flavoring.

A good, affordable substitute for the Recover tea from Teavana, which I still miss at this time of year. The ginger and lime together remind me of Coca-Cola, although I got a note of coconut as well. It’s… almost Christmas-y. I quite like the smoother flavor of white hibby.