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I’m going to be honest, the main reason I went with Imperial Breakfast is because I saw that even though this blend has many different ingredients which all have different prices, the blend costs the same as it’s lowest priced ingredient (I think). I like to feel like I found a discount, as tiny as it is.

I’d say this is a solid blend. There is a mild chocolate taste and smell to it. That’s all I can really say about specific taste. With Verdant tea, I’m always tempted to keep steeping the tea past its limit. I think I can safely say with this particular tea, if you use 3 grams of leaves and a 1/2 litre of water for each steep, by steep 8 you are going to have some gross tasting tea. It’s good stuff, but don’t be greedy like me.

I guess this tea deserves a review from me since the quality of it has surprised me. Despite coming from such a huge tea company the taste isn’t all that bad.

I am reviewing the loose leaf Irish Breakfast and not the bagged tea. I have no proof, but It does make sense that Twinings would put a lower grade tea in the tea bags and save slightly better tea for the loose leaf. The people who buy the loose leaf on average will be much more critical when judging.

The tea is primarily CTC with a few flat broken leaves, not very impressive looking. It steeps fast, but is very manageable, I find I get 5 steeps each time.

I’m not great at finding nuances in flavours so I’ll leave that for other reviewers, I’ll just say that it is Irish Breakfast and is quite addictive as it should be.

I should also say that since it is much cheaper than the usual black tea I drink, I am inclined to use a lot more leaf and make it nice and strong.

I think I have to disagree with the other reviews on this page. I found this tea’s taste quite on par with it’s amazing smell. Just like any good tea, it has a flavour that is hard to explain. Teaopia describes it as fruity which is a technical term I don’t like because if it actually tasted like fruit I’d find myself adding sweetener. I was actually about to buy another 50 grams of Milk Oolong instead of this but I’m glad I decided to try this instead, The Milk Oolong wasn’t bad but more of a novelty in comparison. Tea always seems to draw me in with novelties and it doesn’t take long to realize what I actually want to be tasting is buried under the flavour that drew me in.

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This is definitely the finest tea I’ve ever had to date. So I’m treating each leaf as if it was worth it’s weight in gold. It isn’t really that expensive though, cheaper than Red Bull for sure when one sees how much tea just a few grams of leaves will produce. This tea came as a free sample to me for buying a completely different tea and I’m grateful for it. I steeped it 8 times and every steep was fantastic except the last one which I may have over-steeped. The very light color and soft taste of the tea that gets produced may have you wondering if it is actually black tea, tea like this might really need a class of its own.

In order to steep a tea 8 times I actually need to right down my plan on paper or I’ll be hopelessly confused half way through. I firmly believe that every steep after steep 1 needs to be done as soon as possible in order to avoid a moldy taste in the last steeps.

A lot of people are going to review this tea on how it tastes so I think I’ll be a bit different and focus on how it made me feel. It made me feel quite weird actually. Tea is a drug after all, and for some reason the first time I made this tea my face started to feel funny and immediately afterwards I got the feeling of being stoned. My mom had some too and she just could not sleep afterwards. The second time I had the tea, I just got a very mild head-rush and the sense of relaxation and peace. This might be a great tea for meditation since it makes me alert and relaxed at the same time. Ok, maybe I am a little stoned this time, such an interesting tea this is. I’ll probably write more on it later.

It’s hard not to respect this tea given the name “Fine Champagne” and the beautiful, full, puffy leaves that it is made of. Also hard to find any flaw in the taste as well, except that it might be too smooth a drink, I might prefer more of a bite. I’ve noticed a strange chocolaty taste in Taiwan oolongs like this one, and I can’t say I completely like it since it gives the feeling that I’m drinking an extremely weak chai tea.

In conclusion I have to say that this tea is in no way bad, but it is very unremarkable for a tea I respect enough to steep 5 times. Oolong has acquired a huge reputation as a great tea, but something falls short in this tea for me. I guess I’ll rate it the same as I rated the Temple of Heaven Gunpowder tea, for now it gives me the same indifference.

I see the only two ratings on this tea both being 8. And Steepster thinks that averages out to 50!

I just purchased this tea and I am waiting for it to come in the mail. What drew me in was it was on “clearance” and is “age-able”, I plan to give it to someone with more self discipline than myself for Christmas. My question for now is, How does one age this particular tea? Should it be air-tight or open to air? And where would be a good place to store it?

Perhaps this tea needs to be blended with other teas to reach it’s potential in taste. Today I mixed it with some oolong (Teaopia’s Fine Champagne) and it really added strength to the oolong. And the savory-vitamin taste that I noticed before was very hard to notice in this brew. This could also mean that the Assam SF Budla Beta requires a bit colder water to taste it’s best. I steeped it as if it was pure oolong, disregarding that it was half black tea.

No notes yet.

I understand Assam is the world’s largest tea growing region so I definitely shouldn’t judge the entire region based on this specific tea. Being the first purely Assam tea I have ever tried however, it is the taste that I’ll associate with the region for a long time.

I must say I’m not very impressed with this tea. There isn’t really all that much to focus my tastes on and what I find is a weird savory-vitamin like taste. I may actually be interpreting the prized flavor completely wrong. It goes down easy and is quite beautiful looking but there is this haunting taste in the background that I can also smell in the dry leaves, maybe the correct term is “spicy”.

I don’t put milk or any sweetener in my tea so that might also be the problem. I’m also very caffeine insensitive, so I can’t really appreciate a tea with more caffeine than usual (I drink coffee by the litre and it doesn’t affect me much at all). This tea may just be a wrong match for me for several reasons, but I don’t doubt it’s quality. It’s quite amazing when I did a comparison of it with Red Rose which is a dirt cheap tea that my mom and her parents always have on hand. Despite the weird notes (which may grow on me in time) it’s the only quality non-pu-erh black tea I have currently and it will definitely get used up fast.

This type of green tea may not have been fantastic the first time I tried it but it has grown on me quite a bit to the point that I crave it now. Hard to explain why I crave the tea so often other than it is a much higher quality than I’m used to and quality makes a ton of difference in tea, this is not your Tim Hortons green tea.

The tea smells and looks very nice dry, but the taste of it brewed is almost disappointing to me because I can’t think of any interesting flavour that comes to me other than “green tea”. Ok, it may be that the obvious note for this tea is “smoky” and I’m just missing it completely because I’m used to Tarry Lapsang Souchong which is extremely smokey!

The little rolled up leaves are deceptive in their size, so be very careful not to use too many gunpowder pellets because they will expand! I make frequent small adjustments to how I steep this tea. This is how I currently steep it:
-1st steep: 3 min at 60 Celsius
- 2nd steep: 3 min at 65 Celsius
- 3rd steep: 4 min at 75 Celsius
- 4th steep: 6 min at 85 Celsius

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From the chai teas I have tried there are none that seem to taste or smell like celestial seasonings chai blend. This in my opinion is unfortunate because I find I like their blending despite being cheap ingredients which is normal for bagged teas. The taste is mild compared to most chai teas and has less of a cinnamon flavour. Despite most people on the internet claiming that Stash is a way better brand than celestial seasonings due to the quality of ingredients I would still recommend Celestial’s chai over Stash due to the choice of ingredients, not the quality. Also it would seem that the honey vanilla white variety is a better choice than their plain chai since the vanilla and white tea better suites the mild chai blend.

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One thing I may never understand about tea is that smell never seems to equal taste. For example, I was in Teaopia and I smelled some of their Jasmine tea and it hit me like a shot of heroin, or at least similar to what I expect that to feel like. When I smell a quality Jasmine tea that I haven’t had in a while I am instantly in love. But here is the problem, when the tea is actually brewed it’s taste seems to degrade after every sip. Eventually it becomes tiring and almost like a bitter tasting perfume when drank and I realize it will take me at least a year to drink the mere 50 grams which is the minimum that they make you buy.

Point is, plain Sencha probably has the least inspiring scent out of all the teas teaopia has to offer. The dry smell is “meh”, the wet smell is still “meh”, but when I actually taste it I have no problem drinking 4 litres at a time. I actually expected to like the Temple of Heaven Gunpowder more than the Sencha, since it smells very rich dry and it does happen to cost a bit more, but no. While the gunpowder in no way tastes bad, it also seems to taste very flat, boring, and ordinary. Japinesse style is the way to go. Especially if you like a savory brew like genmaicha or tarry lapsang souchong as opposed to a tea that would be good with sugar added. Pu-erh is also terrible with sweetener added, but I guess the person who made the sample pot in the store doesn’t think so.

This might be unusual but I like to tier my steeping time and temperature quite a bit when making this tea. This way the last steep is always the best and the first steep is cold enough to drink right away.
-1st steep: 2 min at 55 Celsius
- 2nd steep: 3 min at 65 Celsius
- 3rd steep: 4 min at 75 Celsius
- 4th steep: 10 min at 85 Celsius