Irish Breakfast Tea

Tea type
Black Tea
Ingredients
Black Tea
Flavors
Malt, Tea, Thick, Biting, Spicy, Tannic, Drying, Astringent, Bitter, Vegetal, Floral, Lemon, Nutty, Pleasantly Sour, Wet Earth
Sold in
Loose Leaf, Tea Bag
Caffeine
High
Certification
Not available
Edit tea info Last updated by Cameron B.
Average preparation
200 °F / 93 °C 4 min, 45 sec 2 g 12 oz / 353 ml

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77 Tasting Notes View all

  • “I usually drink this bagged tea only in decaf, but today called for caf, so I yoinked a bag from my hubby’s stash. (I don’t know how he brews it for 5 min – after 3 it was looking plenty dark...” Read full tasting note
    75
  • “I’m not gung-ho on bagged teas generally, but I was looking for a cheap, decent black tea mainly to try for cold brewing. I had this about 7.5 years ago, and I thought it was O.K. I decided to have...” Read full tasting note
    77
  • “I have KeenTeaThyme to thank for sending me a bag of this. Thank you! Twinings is a company (or shall I say “are companies”?) that confuse me. It seems like there are two different companies: ...” Read full tasting note
    67
  • “I’m sure I have had this at some point in history. I can’t find any notes I’ve ever written about it. It is one of the half dozen Twinings teas that have always been on the local grocer’s shelves....” Read full tasting note
    76

From Twinings

The Irish really love their tea and are amongst the most frequent drinkers of tea around the world. In celebration of this tea drinking tradition, Twinings blended a special Irish Breakfast Blend. This tea is best taken with milk and sweetened to taste to bring out the best flavor.

This blend combines teas carefully selected from four distinct regions to give it added body, flavour and strength. The bold taste originates from teas grown in the tropical climate of Assam and the rich, amber color from teas grown in the fertile terra rossa soil of Kenya. The hardiness from these regions is complemented by the softer and more subtle teas from Indonesia and China to yield a full-bodied tea with a smooth finish.

-Dec. 2015

Ingredients: Fine black tea expertly selected from Kenya, Indonesia, Assam and China.

Brewing Instructions:

HOT TEA: Pour freshly boiled water over tea bag and allow brewing for 4 minutes depending on your desired strength. Enjoy sweetened or plain –the choice is yours.

REFRESHING ICED TEA: To make 1 Quart of Iced Tea, use 4 tea bags, brew as suggested above using 4 cups of water. Allow to cool then serve over ice.

LOOSE TEA: Use 1 teaspoon of loose tea in a strainer per cup (6-8oz). If making tea in a teapot and an infuser is not used, pour through a strainer. Brew 3 minutes or to desired taste.

K-Cup®: Using a Keurig® Brewer, press the 6-oz. or 8 oz. brew button for optimal flavour. Add cream, milk, and sweetener or enjoy as is.

About Twinings View company

Company description not available.

77 Tasting Notes

75
2977 tasting notes

I usually drink this bagged tea only in decaf, but today called for caf, so I yoinked a bag from my hubby’s stash. (I don’t know how he brews it for 5 min – after 3 it was looking plenty dark enough for me! Then again, he’s a coffee drinker and I am not.)

It was very good with raw sugar and a splash of milk. It definitely has that “chewy,” malty that makes it almost a meal in and of iteself. Very good with outmeal raisin cookies too, btw.

Preparation
Boiling 3 min, 30 sec
Caitlin

my mom is an ex-coffee drinker and she brews this for 10 minutes!

Janefan

Eeek! I bet it turns out about as black as, well, black coffee!

mpierce87

I’m also an ex-coffee drinker and I usually brew this for at least 12-15 minutes. Of course I add milk and sugar because otherwise it is a quite bitter.

Porcelain-mug

I brew until I get the color I like which is pretty dark. But certainly not 5 minutes. It would be too bitter for me. I only add sugar, not an add-milk-to-tea enthusiast.

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77
111 tasting notes

I’m not gung-ho on bagged teas generally, but I was looking for a cheap, decent black tea mainly to try for cold brewing. I had this about 7.5 years ago, and I thought it was O.K. I decided to have a hot cup, and so I did.

Most bagged teas aren’t very aromatic, but I did smell a nice black tea aroma from the box, which stated “Best Used By 2015”. It did smell quite fresh. The cup was a deep brown with a decent aroma too! After cooling, the taste was full and flavorful, but not astringent or bitter. The Ceylon tea seemed to smooth out the more robust Assam character-very nicely I must say. Keep in mind I did carefully watch my steep time and temperature.

Overall, this tea is better than I remember it, and satisfying enough when I need a relatively smooth, hearty cup quickly. A dash of milk could even enhance the flavor if the mood strikes me, and it sometimes does. :)) I will try cold brewing this and posting a review in a couple days.

Cupped: Saturday, June 30, 2012. Reviewed: Sunday, July 1, 2012.

Preparation
195 °F / 90 °C 3 min, 45 sec
gmathis

Twinings and Bigelow are both pretty reliable bagged standbys.

ScottTeaMan

Bigelow is not near as flavorful IMO. :))

ashmanra

I like Twinings Lady Grey a lot, and their Irish Breakfast is good, even the decaf one. I want to try Prince of Wales. I had my first Bigelow teas at Duke and they were so forgiving, not bad at all even being made in a waiting room with no timer or temp control. And Charleston Plantation hasn’t disappointed me yet, and they are owned by Bigelow.

K S

Last ones I bought, the Twinings were 2g bags but the Bigelow were only 1.6g. That may explain why you see Bigelow as not as flavorful. We can buy the main Twinings in loose locally but none of the Bigelows can be found loose around here. I loved the flavor of Bigelow EG.

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67
4843 tasting notes

I have KeenTeaThyme to thank for sending me a bag of this. Thank you!

Twinings is a company (or shall I say “are companies”?) that confuse me. It seems like there are two different companies: Twinings and Twinings of London. There are two different websites and they appear to have different teas. This has confused me for several years now.

Anyway… this is from Twinings of London. Since the package in the picture and the packaging of the teabag that KeenTeaThyme sent me appear similar, I’m going to forge ahead with the belief that I’m putting this tasting note in the right place.

This is really not so bad for a bagged tea. I’d certainly prefer loose leaf as I’ve said many times, but, given its limitations as a bagged tea, this one stands up to those challenges pretty well. It is a good, strongly flavored tea. Rich and hints of malt. Sweet caramel-y undertones. And I’m not getting a strong bitterness from it, and I even steeped it for a full 3 minutes which I don’t normally do except that it is a bagged tea and because I have to pour the boiling water into a teacup to steep it (I guess I don’t have to brew it this way, but, it seems the most convenient method of brewing a bagged tea), and the temperature drops when being poured into a teacup even if it’s been warmed (which it hadn’t been), I decided to go for the 3 minutes.

Gah… I feel like I’m babbling. So, I’m going to stop now. This is really quite a decent tasting tea. Not the best I’ve had when it comes to Irish Breakfast blends, but, I didn’t expect it to be since it is a bagged tea. But it is drinkable.

LiberTEAS

Now that I’m halfway through the cup, I can also taste the paper of the teabag. And it makes this much less enjoyable.

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76
1719 tasting notes

I’m sure I have had this at some point in history. I can’t find any notes I’ve ever written about it. It is one of the half dozen Twinings teas that have always been on the local grocer’s shelves. Thanks to Brett I will finally get to write a note on this. I read all the notes listed under the loose leaf and bagged versions of this. Normally I consider that cheating. Today I consider it good reading material while sipping tea. The comments were often of the punch in the face, kick in the butt, variety. Then there was the wow this is malty comments. Apparently my experience was less exciting.

I left the bag in the cup the whole time. After having tried the Harney and Sons Irish breakfast, this one seems closer to Prince of Wales – Not in taste rather in intensity of the cup. It does have some light malty notes. It is a bit astringent (drying) but not bitter even with the bag staying in it. I enjoyed the cup while sipping but don’t really crave a repeat. Not bad it just didn’t move me.

ashmanra

In Ireland this is labeled simply “Assam”.

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93
639 tasting notes

Hmm, I taste something funky going on.

Lacking a good night’s sleep, I reached for this upon arriving at work with my eyelids still crusted shut. I don’t know if it’s just because I bought my first Brita water filter after returning from a vacation to find the kitchen flooded with dirty water and knowing I can’t possibly make myself drink water straight from that faucet again.

Or maybe it’s because my mind is considering the possibility that perhaps milk marked for expiration today shouldn’t go into my tea, especially since it’s the same milk that was in my fridge when the power went out for 24 hours. Thank you, Hurricane Irene.

Regardless, there’s definitely something funky going on here. I’m not at home, so the Brita water filter would have no effect on this straight-from-the-boiling-hot-water-tap water. And I haven’t even poured the milk of questionable integrity into it yet either. Yet still, funk. What could it be?

I added a little Truvia and it just made the funk more pronounced! Perhaps I need to re-roll this morning. I’m blaming the water quality at my work. What could be in this water to make my Irish Breakfast Tea have an aftertaste like cheese??? I’ll be back…

Preparation
Boiling 4 min, 0 sec
CHAroma

Today is just a day of weirdness. After a failed cup of Twining’s English Breakfast too, I’m switching to coffee. I bought a cup of Organic Serena Blend from the coffee cart lady. It claims to be a Starbucks blend, so I went to look it up online (because it’s delicious & I must have more of it!). I come to find it’s been discontinued. And yet, here it is in my cup with its beautiful, floral and citrus notes of awesomeness. Hmm…I’m stumped. I guess I’ll just bring some bottled water in tomorrow to make my tea. What a weird day. First cheesy aftertaste water and now coffee that no longer exists. O_oo_O

sierra

Do you think it might have been the Truvia? I feel like that always makes my tea taste funky, no matter the type of tea.

CHAroma

No, I absolutely love Truvia and think it tastes exactly like sugar. It was definitely the hot water tap in my office. Other people noticed it tastes funny too. I did end up bringing in bottled water, made the tea the same way, and it tasted perfectly normal. Just goes to show that the quality of the water does affect the taste of the tea. :)

sierra

Really? Every time I try to put Truvia in tea or coffee, I think it tastes…dirty? I don’t know how to describe it. And I know what you mean about water quality. Mine at work is awful, too.

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100
23 tasting notes

Whew! What a strong black tea you are!!

This tea is above and beyond one of my favorites. It tastes to me what BPAL’s Mad Hatter cologne smells like. So very a merry unbirthday, to you Twinings. Twinkle twinkle…little bat….

Preparation
Boiling 4 min, 45 sec
Dylan Oxford

I had to go look up Black Pheonix Alchemy Lab. Quite an interesting line of scents that they have.

Amber

The first one I ever got was in a blind trade, and I ended up getting Cthulhu in Love, which smelled exactly like seaweed, salt water, and cordial cherries. NOT the best combination, but they are true to their word, that’s for sure. Check out there Imps Ears, its much more affordable than buying the whole bottles if you dont know what you like yet. The Mad Tea Party collection goes in and out through the year…every year. They always tease. :D

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69
1908 tasting notes

8:30 am class this morning and I needed something with a bit of a kick – so a robust Assam seemed like a good idea. It’s definitely stronger and has more body than Twining’s English Breakfast and I can taste a bit of that characteristic malty Assam flavour. The tea maybe isn’t as flavourful as I might like, but at this hour I’m not inclined to be too picky.

Preparation
Boiling 5 min, 30 sec
gmathis

This one is a great go-to when you just don’t want to THINK.

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90
141 tasting notes

This tea is growing on me – nice, full, satisfying flavor, even with my cold, and no bitterness, even though I oversteeped it. Twinings teas generally seem very forgiving.

Preparation
200 °F / 93 °C 6 min, 0 sec

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267 tasting notes

Not really sure why I am taking the time to review this, as it’s the kind of tea most people know whether they like or not. Honestly, I’d never buy it either, but someone left a box in my house and I’ve been having a bag daily before I turn to a loose-leaf black tea I like better.

So, now that my snobbery is out of the way, it’s actually not a bad black tea. I have been alternating between drinking it black, and with a touch of vanilla soy milk. This is a good mid-afternoon tea for me (evidence, it’s 2:45PM). I usually start to drag after lunch, and if I want to get a bit of work done in the early afternoon, a cup of black tea definitely helps.

Sometime in late June I became infatuated with plain black tea. I’m normally a bit of a gimmicky-flavored tea drinker, but it suddenly became my favorite thing to drink after I was served it with shortbread cookies one day, and left to drink it slowly on a comfortable sofa.

I’m also Irish-American, so, um, maybe I’m genetically biased towards this tea. Going to try an English breakfast tea next to see if I can tell the difference.

Anyway, I’m careful not to steep this one too long. At 3 minutes it’s a bit peppery, almost like a very lightly scented earl grey.

Preparation
Boiling 3 min, 0 sec

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865 tasting notes

My mom was trying to be nice… she really was. Before she left for her 2 week business trip she decided to make me some lemonade. I’m not a real big lemonade drinker, but it’s good w/ matcha and in Arnold Palmers… except that she made Crystal Light and not real lemonade w/ stevia which is how I drink it. I can feel my teeth rotting just thinking about it. Oh well. I decided to first try to salvage this by making an Arnold Palmer.

2 bags steeped in 1 cup water just below boiling
1 cup Crystal Light
1 tsp lemon juice

Not as teeth rottingly sweet as I expected. Pretty good.

Preparation
205 °F / 96 °C 5 min, 0 sec

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