It's been a really long time, and I haven't rated this tea yet, so I decided to finally do it.

I think Lipton gets a bad rap...it's the brunt of all the tea enthusiasts jokes, which makes sense because it's the #1 brand in the US (and some other parts of the world as well) by sales volume and presence. And I really do not believe that it's the worst tea out there. It's not even close! That said, I'd never choose to buy or drink it if given other options. I might even choose to drink (gasp!) coffee over this tea! And among teas, there are a lot of brands that are better AND cheaper, even in the low-end tea bag market. Foojoy is about the same price range and they even have a good black tea, and I think they BLAZE Lipton.

I think this tea tastes best when brewed with boiling water and steeped for exactly 1 minute. 3 minutes is too long, and leads to an unpleasant, harsh-tasting cup with too much bitterness and astringency...bleh. Perhaps palatable if I added milk but I prefer not to do that. I think this tea is actually very picky about brewing though. If the water temperature is too low, it's almost flavorless, and if you steep too long, it's a disaster. So the difficulty of satisfactory brewing bothers me somewhat...I'd expect a widespread, mainstream brand like this to be easy to brew to my liking, but this one is not.

The aroma is, interestingly, not what I expect for a typical breakfast tea. There's not much maltiness, and the flavor is more savory than bitter...it almost tastes salty to me. The aroma is also a bit dusty and flat, almost cardboard-y like I'm tasting the tea bag or packaging. There is a little of the dusty, "damp basement" smell that I get from some low-quality shou Pu-erh...not a fan of that either.

I much prefer the character of other brands of breakfast tea, from Yorkshire tea or even Red Rose, which have more maltiness in the aroma and less of the savory flavor.

There. I just rated Lipton, after 800-some-odd other teas.

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Comments:

Darqi wrote: on January 21st, 2016

Malty? Anyway, the general brewing time for steeping is 2 minutes if you want anything decent at all for a perk up, imho. RateTea.com is really fun, and I look forward to reading more of your reviews Alex, since you must be some connoisseur. However you will never guess that what made me join this rating site is the lack of flavor of some of these so-called gourmet organic teas!

teaberg wrote: on January 10th, 2017

Nice review. Accords strongly with my experience.

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