Keep Calm And Carry On Beverage Company Ltd.

I love Ceylon black teas. Yes, I’m easily impressed, but it’s hard to understand how such a bold tea can also be so smooth. This was given to me today as a gift from a coworker, and I wasted no time trying it out. I had never heard of this London company before, but this tea is almost as good as the Ceylon black tea from their neighbor, my beloved Ahmad.

Recently had another go at preparing this tea – it seems that the magic brew is 1 bag into 16oz for 1min (and not much over) at 200F. It’s still not a good tea, but at those specs it becomes something I’m willing to throw in a thermos and take to class with me.

I still haven’t found any friends to offload it on, so this’ll be my default way of drinking it for a while.

Got this tea as a present…mostly because of the tin, I’m sure. Sadly, said tin has no guidelines whatsoever on how to prepare the stuff, so I wound up having to wing it.

I’m not usually a big fan of teabags, but on a whim I decided to drop one in my standard tea mug and give it a go…it brewed up really richly to a dark chestnut colour that – oddly enough – reminded me of the Lipton tea bags I used to have as a child.

The first attempt at brewing was 212F for 3min and the resultant tea was nigh-undrinkable – overly rich and tannin heavy and generally unpleasant. I gave it another attempt at 200F for 2min and it came out a little better…but for the life of me I can’t decide if the issue is the temperature or the time.

In any case, this particular cup reminded me of childhood tea…in some slightly unsavoury ways. It’s thick and silky feeling in the mouth, but lacks complexity and instead just kinda kicks you in the teeth with a generic “tea” flavour (about as delightful as the sweet teas you get at McDonald’s).

So although I have a whole tin of the stuff I think I’ll figure out a way to foist it off on some of my less-wary tea drinking friends…it’s not like they really have tastebuds, anyway.

For my first time using tea, this was great! Really enjoyed the citrus taste, adding just a teaspoon of honey, local, and a slice of lemon it tasted great!

Totally bought this for this tin.

This is a royal blue tin with red writing on it that says keep calm and carry on. It has a bit of history of the “keep calm” on the back which essentially says that during WWII the British Government created a bunch of posters that said “Keep calm and carry on” in order to help keep peace among citizens. But the posters were never used, and years later someone found one and resurrected the saying. So I thought that was pretty neat.

What’s not pretty neat is that I can find no information on this tea anywhere on the expanse of the internet. All I can find is that is it “afternoon blend” but what is in an afternoon blend?

The tea bag looks and smells like a crushed up Ceylon blend. The brewed tea is the colour of a Celyon tea, really reminds me of Red Rose. The smell of the brewed tea, smells of Ceylon but there is something else creamy in it. Not too sharp, maybe something like vanilla.

The brewed tea tastes like Ceylon (big surprise here – haha). But it is not harsh or astringent like I find a lot of Ceylon teas. There is definitely something creamy in there. Not necessarily vanilla, but kind of feels like that. It is much more mellow that I expected – maybe that is the afternoon part.

Definitely surprised at this tea. I anticipated it to be just a really cheap bagged tea (and therefore taste like a really cheap bagged tea), but it tastes pretty good. Maybe I will drink this in the afternoons :)

I cold-steeped three bags at a time in my 1L iced tea pitcher, and left the bags in the liquid in the fridge (I know, I know…). Lots of flavour and quite tasty (not at all bitter) done that way; as a hot tea, it was completely nondescript. It’s okay – not bad, not great, absolutely nothing special. I really appreciate that it’s all Ceylon tea.

I won’t lie, I also bought this whole set (red/white/blue) for the tins, as I’ve got a few bags of loose English Breakfast and Earl Grey that need homes. My favourite of the three tins is the afternoon blend.

I bought this on a terrible whim at Winners. I remember they had fancy french teas but I forgot to look, and was already in the check-out line. And so I was determined that IF I saw tea I would buy it because it would be awesome.

But it wasn’t awesome French tea. It was silly Keep Calm tea. And bagged.

But it was $4 and it tastes ok. Now I have a silly tin.

This tin didn’t have the Afternoon Blend in it like the label said. It was a Marshalls purchase and this one had earl grey in it instead. Based on the earl grey and english breakfast teas from the other tins, I don’t really think I’m missing out on much. I just want to blow through these teas so I can store other – better quality – teas in these tins.

Very bland, but not terrible. The packaging makes you buy it for the cute tins, but it’s not something I’d repurchase – unless of course they made new tins.

Very simple tea in pretty packaging. I’m not gonna lie, I bought this for the packaging. It’s a very cheap, weak earl grey, but it’s drinkable.