English Breakfast Black Tea

2
Percentile
3 ratings
Picture of English Breakfast Black Tea
Brand:Rituals
Style:English Breakfast
Caffeine:Caffeinated
Region:?????
Loose/teabag:Teabag

This tea's info last updated: Jan. 25, 2017

Ratings & Reviews

Page 1 of 1 page with 3 reviews

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Reviewer pic63 Aroma: 6/10 Flavor: 4/5 Value: 3/5
(379 reviews) on

Not great, but decent and tolerable: that's how I'll characterize this blend. In my relatively limited experience, many food-service black teas (including English Breakfasts) taste rather flat, hollow, sometimes excessively bitter, or often weak, as if they've either been allowed to sit out in the open for 20 years, or dug out of the dregs of some automated processing machine and sold to the lowest bidder. Almost all have feeble dry-bag aroma. So does this one, but that's where the "Here we go again!" sentiment got cut short.

While not the richest or most robust food-service all-black tea (Farmer Brothers still takes that crown for me), Rituals darkened up quickly and presented a pleasant drinking experience with the added identity of a smooth finish and clean aftertaste. It's a basic tea without much in the way of side flavors or undertones I could detect, but still nice to drink on two cool mornings: once at the vacation home in New Hampshire where it was provided, and once after returning home to my well water.

Quantity wasn't sacrificed either, with the wet bag being duly swollen, and mildly aromatic of a somewhat above-average bagged black tea, especially for a food-service product. Odds are you'll do worse with most such teas, so when you find this one, you've got a true fighting chance to enjoy it instead of just get some caffeine poured down your gullet.
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Reviewer pic75 Aroma: 7/10 Flavor: 4/5 Value: 5/5
(1 reviews) on

Okay this is a first time tea review. My husband brought a couple of Rituals English Breakfast teabags home from a trip. I opened the first teabag and was pleasantly surprised--I had expected something pretty nasty. But I enjoyed it. Right now I am using the second teabag. Knowing that it's not available in stores makes me wish he'd brought more. Perhaps someone should contact the company and tell them we'd like this on store shelves. I am sure true connoisseurs would be more critical but as a lifelong tea drinker, I can say that I won't cringe if I come across this in the future. I will save my cringes for the next time I see a Keurig coffee maker with the stack of tea next to it... Ugh!
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Reviewer pic57 Aroma: 5/10 Flavor: 3/5 Value: 3/5
(1448 reviews) on

A humble English Breakfast tea bag, above average for a flat tea bag, pleasantly smooth and drinkable.

This brand has an almost legendary status on our website...not that a lot of people review it, almost none do, but that we get a ton of messages through our contact form, of people asking where you can buy it. And I sadly have to reply that, in general, you can't...it's only provided through the foodservice industry, wholesale, and not available to the general public. As such I've only seen it, uncommonly, in hotels or restaurants. I get the sense that people must try this when they're out and about, like it, and then try in vain to purchase it on their own.

Because of the strange amount of interest in it, I had been looking for it for some time, and I finally got my hands on one of these tea bags, this one from the Homewood Suites in Mahwah, NJ, where I stayed at recently while going to a wedding.

So the tea...the tea bag doesn't look like much, but it was in a sealed packet and had some aroma even before brewing, mostly a lightly malty smell.

I steeped for three minutes as recommended on the packet, and the result was a rich brown cup with a mild malty aroma, good body and strength, and a relatively smooth flavor. Flavor is slightly sour, which I wasn't crazy about. The aroma is pretty simple.

I liked this tea much better than most mainstream English Breakfast tea bags on the market, including Twinings, Red Rose, Stash, and many others. I think it's about on the same level with Bigelow's English Breakfast.

You may not be able to buy this one, but I recommend trying it if you have the opportunity, like if you see at with the breakfast bar in a motel or notice that a particular restaurant is serving it; it's certainly better than your default Lipton black tea.
1 Comment

Page 1 of 1 page with 3 reviews

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