English Afternoon Tea
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Ratings & Reviews
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70 Aroma: 6/10 Flavor: 4/5 Value: 4/5Tchuggin' Okie (479 reviews) on Oct. 2nd, 2026
This was part of a three-tea assortment within a teal-colored tin (also pictured in the photo section) of "traditional English teas" that I got on sale at World Market. Even at normal prices, this came out to around 18¢/bag, which is not too bad in this inflationary era, so I would rate the value fairly high unless quality was bad. It's not. Leakage (see below) was a minor occasional nuisance but not severe enough to preclude trying more.
The tin contained three sealed, reflective chrome-style plastic sacks containing 24 bags each of traditional (as advertised and labeled) English tea types: afternoon, Earl Gray and breakfast. The afternoon tea had weak and nondescript dry-bag aroma—as I've noticed with a lot of Ceylon teas—but came more alive in the cup and in the wet bag. One would think, given the very finely chopped leaves, it would release flavor quickly. Brewing the usual 3-4 minutes does render a dark, flavorful but not very strong-tasting tea, that is remarkably well-balanced between modest bitterness and astringency. Brewing longer (5-7 minutes) largely solves the weakness problem without penalizing the tongue in the form of excess bitterness. So, steep a few extra minutes, if you want this to be a suitably stout English blend with the friendly flavor of an afternoon tea but the vigor of a breakfast tea.
This seems an archetype of such a blend. The main drag on the overall rating is that the normally steeped flavor is not stronger, and that a minority (3 or 4 out of 24) of bags got leaky. The one pictured had a small split on each of two opposite sides, where the edges were not well-sealed, tea already was close to the edges (nonuniform inner edge) and split the bag open while sitting in the brew. The bags are similar in pillow-type style to Celestial Seasonings or Murchie's, but weaker in construction, so be ready for that.
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