Thread: A nice cup of tea

I have been drinking PG Tips for about 6 years until I recently cracked onto Barry's lovely Oirish tea. Before PG Tips I was drinking Twinings Assam Bold.

Barry's kicks the arse of PG Tips and I stocked up, but then Chitty put me onto Yorkshire so I had a look and they sell this stuff in Woolworths.

Yorkshire Proper Strong. Only available in Australia according to Wikipedia.

It is crackling good stuff.

There is 2.6g of tea in a bag of YPS which is more than Yorkshire red (2.2g) but less than PG Tips at 2.9g and less than Barry's at 3.1g but the quality must be up there since it tastes at least as strong as Barry's, probably stronger. Assam Bold is 2.5g

PG Tips used to be the king of the hill at 3.4g per bag until they cut the weight in 2015 although they proclaimed on the box at the time that the flavour remained the same.

I think good tea taste is more about quality than quantity though, else you could just use 2 bags of cheap stuff, which does not work. But quantity must still be a factor.

Any other top tea recommendations from the cuppa connoisseurs?

...and to go with a nice cup of tea, a nice slice of cake. I bought a lovely rainbow cake yesterday in preparation for Big Gay Sunday.

But after gorging on a thick slice on Sat'day night I was overcome with feelings of guilt and self-hatred when I woke on Sunday Morning.

Luckily I was saved on the sabbath by a lovely Luhya lady from Kenya's 2nd largest tribe who came round to perform some voodoo incantations and pray the gay away with me.

Yorkshire Tea as a brand was launched in 1977, originally conceived as 'Yorkshire Tea for Yorkshire people, and Yorkshire water-types'.

not sure if you are qualified to be drinking it, so you could be drinking it under false pretences.


for max flavour it should brew for 3 minutes, and for max max flavour, yorkshire loose, brewed in a teapot, is the way to go.



https://www.bettys.co.uk/yorkshire-tea-250g-leaf-tea

Indeed.

Anyone who drinks tea made from teabags after actually researching the topic is, at the risk of seeming blunt, a fkin' mountebank and clown.





Still, at least some of the shit mound on that balcony appears to have been blown off in a storm.

Nice aircraft collection Looper. Where are the Migs ?

I want to start a collection like that. Military and civilian.

As Cyrille points out, tasting notes on tea bags is a bit of a joke.

An afternoon tea that I do enjoy is TWG's Gentleman's Earl Grey, despite the pink tin.

I usually go with PG Tips without thinking, mainly because 'The PG Tips pyramid tea bag gives the tea leaves more room to move around than a flat conventional tea bag. So the tea bag works like a miniature tea pot. This allows for all the freshness to be released for the best tasting cup of PG'.

So no need to carry around loose tea and a tea pot.



I've also been working through packs of Tetley at home. I often buy Tetley because the tea bags are separated into sealed sachets inside the big pack, so they keep fresher if you bulk buy and keep it for years. Tetley make round tea bags, which are generally accepted as being better than square ones.

But now I keep hearing about Yorkshire Tea, Barry's Tea and even Shutree's Miles West Country Tea!

I'm thinking of being more adventurousness with my tea drinking, and if I do manage to get back to the UK before going home I'm gonna pack a load of different tea bags along with my Cathedral City cheddar cheese and tins of SPAM.

Originally Posted by cyrille

Anyone who drinks tea made from teabags after actually researching the topic is, at the risk of seeming blunt, a fkin' mountebank and clown.

Still, at least some of the shit mound on that balcony appears to have been blown off in a storm.

Lulu on a bike. Can anybody post up a nice bit of positivity without that chip on your shoulder getting the better of you?



An Earl Gray man here.

Except when I forget to buy some and have to resort back to my emergency box of yellow Lipton wax coated teabags.

Originally Posted by Mendip

along with my Cathedral City cheddar cheese and tins of SPAM.

Please, not SPAM.

If you are in the UK then your cheese choices are many. Dill's Black Bomber looked good. After I saw that I realised that I was confusing it with one that I enjoyed very much, the Black Bomb.

Shorrocks Cheese | Lancashire Bombs |

This is a Lancashire cheese and a nice change from cheddar.

Or you could opt for a bit of Wensleydale as a Wallace and Gromit tribute.

Sorry Looper, I'll be right back on the tea topic as soon as I wrestle my way past the demons who guard the gates to posting TD images.

^^^I should add more smileys.

Obviously it's a trivial matter.

We just don't get each other.

I've been quite resigned to that for many, many years and of course it isn't a big deal either.

^Personally, I drink EB more than EG simply because EG often demands I put in an extra spoonful. EB has more of a kick.

Originally Posted by Shutree

Please, not SPAM.

A waste of the limited baggage space. Get one more Cheddar cheese instead!

Okay. What is actually in the house? For sure, some Twinings. I recently finished my supply of their Strong English Breakfast, that would be my first choice. Next to that, the benchmark English Breakfast. I still have some Ceylon, which I prefer in the afternoon.




My attachment to Twinings goes back to my uni days when we sometimes visited the Twinings shop in the Strand. In those days it was a mere 250+ years old, today it is past 300 years. Twinings is the UK's oldest logo in continuous use, older than the Constitution of the United States. Oh, and they invented Earl Grey.

^^ Yeah, but try making fritters with cheese!

A while ago I asked a mate joining the boat from the UK to bring me a few tins of SPAM, corned beef and Frey Bentos pies. He said he'd visited aisles in the supermarket he never knew existed! He is a fair bit younger and eats a bit fancy though.

And he brought me some PG Tips... to keep this on topic!

In Isan, beggars cannot be choosers and after my Miles tea and my Twinings Strong English Breakfast were gone I had to move on to humbler stuff.



Waitrose Fairtrade. Maybe on a par with PG Tips. Maybe not.

Originally Posted by cyrille

Anyone who drinks tea made from teabags after actually researching the topic is, at the risk of seeming blunt, a fkin' mountebank and clown.

Happy in my ignorance here drinking shitty Lipton.

I've been meaning to change it up since forever but just haven't bothered. Now that's dedication to tea-drinking indolence!

I prefer loose tea. Not snobbish about the convenient tea bag, loose tea simply tastes better. I like my black tea with milk and in Isan the milk isn't ideal for tea, in my opinion. Apart from Twinings I have:



It is okay, just okay.

The difficulty I have with loose tea is not the fussy process, it is that after hundreds of years of practice they still cannot make teapots which pour cleanly. In Thailand I have this one from Whittard:



It is guaranteed to pour tea down the outside of the pot and onto the tablecloth.

Originally Posted by Shutree

I recently finished my supply of their Strong English Breakfast

I didn't know this existed.

Just had a look and it seems only in teabags, so I will stick with the medium.

Finally, of course I have some Chinese tea here too, although lacking all the paraphernalia to do it justice. Also lacking someone to share it with. Not being unkind to the good folk of Isan, they just don't have the cultural wherewithal to appreciate this hand made Chinese tea.

Originally Posted by cyrille

Just had a look and it seems only in teabags, so I will stick with the medium.

I have only had the Strong in teabags.

Originally Posted by Shutree

It is guaranteed to pour tea down the outside of the pot and onto the tablecloth.

For this reason a product named tea cloth has been invented, it fills many other functions as well.

Originally Posted by Shutree

The difficulty I have with loose tea is not the fussy process, it is that after hundreds of years of practice they still cannot make teapots which pour cleanly.

So ditch the teapot.
For a cup for one, get a small strainer / sieve that will fit into the cup, fill with leaves and pour through. Allow to soak. Lift the strainer out and then clean up the drips the strainer leaves behind. Avoids the necessity to clean up teapot drips.
Or you could lift the strainer out and onto a small plate, saucer or bowl.

^ I find the royal Albert poors quite nicely myself. I quite like Dilmah Ceylon tea There is extra strength for philistines who reject the more subtle tones of the tea.

^ has it got a metal ring around its spout?

Originally Posted by Shutree

I prefer loose tea. Not snobbish about the convenient tea bag, loose tea simply tastes better. I like my black tea with milk and in Isan the milk isn't ideal for tea, in my opinion. Apart from Twinings I have:



It is okay, just okay.

The difficulty I have with loose tea is not the fussy process, it is that after hundreds of years of practice they still cannot make teapots which pour cleanly. In Thailand I have this one from Whittard:



It is guaranteed to pour tea down the outside of the pot and onto the tablecloth.

You could always use a french press.

I tend to drink espresso in the mornings and tea in the afternoon when it's warm and swap to tea in the morning when the temperature drops. Twinings EB is a great morning tea. I also love the chinese 'brick' teas.