Irish Breakfast Tea

The only thing worse than Trader Joe’s tea is Trader Joe’s bagels. I mean really, have you tried those awful things? my friends have this story about the bagels.

So back in their old place i guess they used to have a raccoon problem. raccoons would break into the trash all the time and tear all that up. anyway one day i guess some raccoons break into the house and pretty much destroy the kitchen. they get into everything and eat everything they can get their hands on. everything EXCEPT for the Trader Joe’s bagels, which were totally out and they didn’t even touch them. those bagels aren’t even consider food for wild hungry animals!

so yeah the tea is almost as bad as those bagels.

This is the first “plain” Irish Breakfast tea I’ve had (that I can remember) and I have say…I am not fan. It brewed up very dark and looked like coffee, which is neat. Surprisingly it wasn’t bitter at all.

But the flavor….gag me. I love English Breakfast and black teas, but this just didn’t work for me. To me, it smells and tastes like salty yams and garbage. Someone else’s tasting note said “sewage”, ha. I had tried Adagio’s Aries blend, and it had the same yucky taste, which I assumed was from the chai…nope. It must have been from the Irish Breakfast mixed in.

If this is was “malty” tastes like…well, I don’t think I like malt, then.

This is a bagged tea from a grocery store superchain. If you expect perfection or fine estate assam, you’re probably not going to get it here. However, for a strong, tasty punchy breakfast blend that is easy and fast. This is it. I bought it for my tea cupboard at work and it comes in extremely useful every day at 3:00 pm when I’m lagging. I like it with cream and sugar. Its a bit bitter and punchy and while not my favorite tea, it definitely does the job.

I really enjoy this tea and I have tried almost every store brand out there! It is strong and has a good blend…it is not acidic and you can leave the bag in and brew it very strong. I enjoy it as my first cuppa in the morning!

It’s a staple in my tea cupboard… but I can’t say that I enjoy it black. It’s bitter, tannic, and incredibly strong.
But it’s great with milk and sugar. It’s English Breakfast’s stronger, meaner brother. For when you feel like punching Lipton in the arm.

Smells bad, tastes bad. This is my first Irish breakfast tea and I wonder if they are all like this? I love English Breakfast and don’t mind a stronger tea but the sewage aroma is difficult to stomach.

Okay, so sometimes you can’t take the time to brew tea. Sometimes you can’t get out to your favorite tea store of choice. It happens. Sometimes the bills come in and you can’t justify spending $15 or even $8 on your standard favorites. Sometimes you want to give tea to someone who refuses to drink loose tea.

Trader Joe’s Irish Breakfast Tea is a solid well balanced tea that is a little on the bitter side. It tolerates a wide range of brewing times (from 1 – 4 minutes or so) and tolerates very warm to boiling water.

This tea lacks the bright floral notes of, say a Lipton, but compared to other bagged teas the flavor is rich, having earthy and woody tones. Buy a box, throw it in your cupboard, and keep it around for emergencies. It also has a maltiness to it, as described by GREEN TEA TV here on Steepster.

I tend to drink this tea without adornment, but it can be enhanced with a small amount of sweetener and even a small splash of low fat milk. I don’t usually recommend low fat milk specifically, but anything more rich that 2% quickly overwhelms the tea.

It is what it is. Strong, robust, malty, and caffeinated. Cream and sugar round out the flavor. It goes down easy, and is helping me to stay awake this morning. Kept the bags in the teapot, and the tea did not get bitter which is a major plus. Yes flavor is an important factor, however I’m willing to bet loyal drinkers of this tea do so for strength and systematic buzz to keep them going. Happy to be balancing my cupboard with dependable heavy caffeinators. Love the effectiveness of this tea. :)

Cheap and economical, I bought an 80 teabag box for 2 dollars. I have been drinking this tea as my morning tea with some Silk soymilk and my usual breakfast of oat bran and fruit or toast.

2 bags in 2 cups water in a roiling boil, steeped till the liquor is opaque and black. Smells like roses, though its the kind of tea I don’t spend any time appreciating because of the morning rush, and I feel that it doesn’t mind at all. Stout but not amazing, its the kind of tea I can rely on – it won’t surprise me but it won’t disappoint me.

Certainly not overqualified, but definitely under-appreciated, it makes my mornings less complicated by being so simple.

I always have a box of this on my tea shelf. At first I thought it was really bitter and odd, even with honey and milk, but after a couple of times trying it I started to really like it.

I bought a box of this obviously because it was very well priced. I am a coffee drinker so the fact that is strong a little bitter doesn’t bother so much. It is my first experience with an Irish breakfast tea. It’s not fabulous but not terrible either. It’s one that I would keep on hand for variety.

Oh nice, someone made a page for this stuff. I had a box of this last summer and used it all as sweet tea. It was actually pretty good, especially for the price. I mean, it’s not something I would sit and savor… it’s more like fodder for when I want to have something on hand in the fridge. It’s better than the everyday supermarket’s private brand, at least.

Maybe I’m not a tea connoisseur, just an ‘enjoyer’. Because I think this tea is quite good! It has just the right flavor for a good strong waker-upper. Completely fills the bill for me, and at the low price, the bill’s not too high! Brilliant!!!

Tried my first bag as a milk tea today. I ended up putting too much SCM in cause I was using up what I had left. I’m glad this tea is so strong cause it stood up pretty well to my overdose of sugar. I’m gonna hold off rating it until I try it by itself, but at least I know that it’ll serve well as a milk tea base.

Awesome, has great malty notes

This is a good basic breakfast tea that holds up quite well to the milk-dousing that I put most of my tea through. I like it! And you can’t beat the price.

This needs sugar. It’s a strong tea, stronger than the Trader Joe’s English Breakfast which I am a fan of. I find that it’s rather bitter for my taste on it’s own and needs sugar in order for me to enjoy it but it isn’t my favorite. On the plus side it gets me up in the morning.

I bought really cheap tea at Aldi’s – $1.46/100 bags. I wasn’t crazy about it. Reminded me of Salada Tea which I can’t drink. So I decided to move “up” to a Breakfast Tea at Trader Joe’s. It is too strong. If I leave it in the cup for brewing more than 15 seconds, it isn’t worth drinking. I think I’m headed back to Lipton. Think I’ll try another brand of English Breakfast, but for as often as I drink the tea, I didn’t want to pay an arm and leg. Perhaps I should opt for loose tea.

I truly enjoy this tea. It has a sweet aroma (not sure where sewage comes in…maybe li-chan has the wrong tea in mind). Strong flavors, woody and malty. Great for early morning scripture reading or to accompany an evening pipe. I ladle boiling water over a bag and let steep for three minutes, a bit of cream and some sweetener. It is a personal favorite.

It’s not a tea that I savor or drink often, but surprisingly I crave it once in a while. Cream, sugar and some comfy pants.