I am Jack’s indignation.
It’s not like I haven’t had this tea before. I have, and it was pretty good. Not great, but pretty good. Certainly worth sharing with Mum, who likes both peachy and gingery things. The last time I had this, I noted some bitterness, and I knew it was my fault for leaving the teabag in the cup as I sipped. I was certain that wouldn’t be a problem this time, since I planned to remove the bag after the tea’d steeped. Hmph. I was wrong.
I have to learn to trust my gut. A box containing black, bagged tea recommends steeping for five minutes in boiling water, and upon reading this my gut went, no, that’s asking for trouble. But I went ahead and followed the instructions anyway, and the result was a brew not too bitter to be drunk, but too bitter to be really enjoyed. This tea really does have a lovely peach flavour (I tasted and smelled a bit of ginger last time, but it wasn’t there at all this time), which was greatly marred by the bitterness. The worst part was that Mum’s a Tetley tea drinker, and every time one of “my” “fancy” teas turns out blech, there’s this only-partly-imagined accusatory glare: “My Tetley would never do this to me.” I say again, hmph. I blame H&S for the dodgy instructions, but myself for not knowing better. Next time I’m going to try a three-minute steep, and I’m going to take the tea out of the bag, put it in an infuser, and grate some fresh ginger into it. That should do the trick. (Thank goodness I have a box of this to find the right formula…)
I’m going to have to lower my rating from 75 (my “hey, this is pretty good!” range), though, to something in my “decent, but could be better with help” range, because I think it really does need help to shine.
