Ringtons

Didn’t time this cuppa, just judged by colour and aroma when it was done. This is such a simple yet tasty tea. Rich, bold, smooth, slightly malty – exactly what an English Breakfast tea should be.

Added a splash of unsweetened soya milk and cut a slice of banana peel cake (a new recipe I tested yesterday).

A no-nonsense cup of tea, but undeniably basic. It filled a hole.

https://www.immortalwordsmith.co.uk/ringtons-english-breakfast-tea-review/

I have received tea bag of this, for me unknown, brand from Izzy. Actually I think one more is hiding in the box from her. Anyway, here I come with tasting note (and thank you!).

I wanted to do short steep, as they suggest 3-5 minutes, but clock was ticking faster so I have four minute steep. The colour is not much pleasing, I have to say. It is dark bold mahagony brown, so I was naturally Very afraid, being the tea incredlibly bitter and not enjoyable.

But it isn’t! It’s quite good and quite cheap/taste wise tea. I mean for 2 pounds getting 25 tea bags, which aren’t awful? Good job! It’s bit higher than Czech standards (well, we can get box of tea for 25 CZK, but it’s awful, I see you Jemča Klub čaj, or Pigi, bleh), but if you want a good cuppa, you must pay more.

This tea is typical English Breakfast; bold, strong, caffeine waking me up, and no fuss with strainers and anything. Not the top-notch anyway, but hey it’s cheap (I know I repeat myself).

80 for tea bag.

I have the looseleaf variety of this blend, purchased from Rington’s with a few other things. I was introduced to this company when they were present during the 2019 Northwest Tea Festival and purchased some of their Northumbrian blend then. I got more of that but felt like trying the Breakfast Blend today.

Very delicious. Very robust and very malty. I see that the teas came from both Assam and Kenyan varieties which makes the strength of the brew make sense, those are both very robust black teas. Added milk and sugar and it’s quite the treat. A tiny bit minerally in the aftertaste. I will enjoy this and likely a second steep.

The looseleaf is still very CTC looking but it lets me control how much I’m brewing much better than the bags. I have some bags of the Gold Blend, which I’ll have to figure out how many bags to my teapot or various mug sizes. Right now using a ~4 cup teapot which measures out to 2 servings in my 22 oz repurposed beer stein/glass tea mug.

Too much hibiscus. I accidentally spelled it ‘hibisuc’ just now and tbh I think that’s a more accurate name for it. Sour, metallic, and no redeeming qualities besides a pretty coloured cup of tea. I tried to latte a tea I didn’t realise had hibisuc in recently and it made some sort of stringy cheese curd at the bottom of my mug. Wtf is that all about?! It took me a while, but I’m officially aboard the hating hibiscus bandwagon.

Anyway. I added maple syrup to the last of this to cancel out the hibisuc (I might be spelling it like that for a while) and it’s fine, but for some reason it tastes like stewed rhubarb rather than strawberries and cream. This is a sipdown I’m totally okay with.

211/399

The hibiscus in this is so sour. It needs like 3 sugars to be drinkable, and that’s saying a lot considering I hardly ever take sugar now and if I do it’s a teeny tiny pinch. It’s metallic too, but not one of the most noticeably metallic hibiscus teas I’ve tried. Once you add sugar and get over how sour it is, the strawberry and cream notes are both present, and it’s decent. Not amazing, but okay. But, I don’t want to be adding heaps of sugar to my teas just to make them go down, so I’m glad I don’t have much of this left. Whittard’s Strawberry and Cream rooibos is much better for a caffeine-free strawberry treat.

I’m not too sure why I wanted to try another cup of this since I obviously disliked it the first time around, but I had it stashed in my work bag and felt it calling to me. Unfortunately, it was a siren’s song. This cup is even more bitter than the last. I’m sure I must be steeping it wrong. The one other review of this tea sings its praises. I have one bag of this left so I will try a shorter steep next time. Unless someone here wants it??

The caffeine is strong with this one! I’m enjoying the flavor but not as much as I thought I might. I’m not sure if the taste is worth the caffeine jitters I’m experiencing right now. Overall, a good strong breakfast tea for those cold and sleepy mornings. It seems reliable and steady enough, but it’s not likely to be a favorite for me.

Varieteas Box (October) – 3/30

I keep forgetting to delve into my Varieteas box, so I still have a huge stash of teabags to work my way through. This one wasn’t a hit with me, though, unfortunately. I do quite like lemon and ginger teas, especially at this time of year, but I just didn’t get a lot of either with this sample. The lemon is slightly stronger than the ginger, but I really don’t get much in the way of either. And as for the ginseng, I don’t pick that up at all! It’s an extremely watery tea and not one I’d drink again.

259/365

Continuing my lemon and ginger success! This one is mostly lemon (peel, balm, verbena), and only 22% ginger, which should technically suit my tastes more than a very ginger heavy blend. Initially, though, it seems to me that this one tastes of a whole lot less than the Bellevue Ginger & Lemon I tried recently. That one almost convinced me that I liked lemon & ginger as a combination after all; this one would not have done so.

It’s softly lemony, with just the slightest hint of ginger, and I’m kind of appreciative of that. I don’t generally want a huge kick of ginger, or at least not ginger root – I’m totally down with ginger_bread_, but that’s a whole different matter. The problem is that it’s totally unobjectionable, which is something I didn’t expect to say about this particular combination of ingredients. I’m used to finding it obnoxious in the extreme, but this interpretation doesn’t inspire any strong feelings at all. It’s just meh.

I can’t tatse the ginseng at all, so that’s removed from the equation. The lemon is barely there, and not really very lemony considering it’s typically a fairly vibrant flavour. The ginger remains firmly in the background, to the extent where you have to think about what it is you’re tasting before it reveals itself (it’s me, ginger).

While I can appreciate subtlety in a tea, this one takes it rather too far. Not a winner, I’m afraid.

The only other tea I drank today while I was finishing my essay. I do really love this tea. It’s strong and malty, but sweet and rich too. Perfect with milk while I don’t want to think about what I’m drinking.

Sipdown 109/395

Cheating again, but I haven’t actually owned these teabags personally in a really long time. I’ve gone through hundreds and hundreds of teabags, but I haven’t bought them for a while now. I always left them in my cupboard because they’re never out of my house for long – my parents or myself usually buy more whenever we’re out. However, since I don’t really drink them any more it’s more my parents’ tea than mine, so I am removing it from my cupboard, though I might still have a cup once or twice a month. Still my favourite plain bagged black tea, and probably always will be. I’ve gotten my boyfriend into drinking these, too.

Had a cup of this with a chocolate muffin from my favourite bakery, diet be damned, while my mam and I watched the last three episodes of How I Met Your Mother, which we started probably close to a year ago, if not more. This is an age for me in TV-time, but my mam is not a seasoned binge-watcher like myself. This tea was a huge comfort as I sobbed and hiccuped my way through the last 2 1/2 episodes.

I’ve had a super busy day today and this was the only tea I managed to get around to drinking. This is exactly the kind of day which I will always keep this tea in my cupboard for. Tasty, caffeinated, and quick to drink. Reliable as always.

This is my Old Reliable, my fail-safe, my Willow Rosenberg of teas. I drink it when I’m in a hurry, or when I can’t find any of my tea-brewing apparatus, or just when I can’t be bothered with the clean-up, and it never lets me down. These teabags have never left my cupboard in the almost three years that I’ve been on Steepster, because they’re always replaced before they run out. The fact that the company brings teas, coffees, biscuits and jams to your own front door does help, but I know I would actively seek these out even if they were less readily available. They’re strong and malty and perfect for breakfast time, and they take milk and sugar really well, though I prefer to drink mine with just a splash of skimmed milk. It would take something mighty special to replace this as the go-to tea in my household.

ETA: I just noticed there’s been a lot of geek references in my notes lately; if you get sick of them, I’m sorry. I’m probably not going to stop.

Kenyan Gold Black is a bagged tea from Ringtons, a UK tea company. At first glance, it looks like a typical bagged black tea.

Read my full review here: http://sororiteasisters.com/2015/09/22/ringtons-kenyan-gold-tea-ringtons-premium-english-teas/

Traditional Black is a bagged tea from Ringtons, a UK tea company. At first glance, it looks like a typical bagged black tea. It’s in a square paper bag, and is about half full with finely shredded leaf. The scent is typical “black tea”. I used one bag for my cup, and gave it 3.5 minutes in boiling water. It brewed up to a fairly dark golden-brown, so I added a splash of milk.

Read my full review here: http://sororiteasisters.com/2015/09/19/traditional-black-tea-ringtons-premium-english-teas-2/

The first thing I have to say about this one is that it really surprised me. I don’t drink a lot of bagged tea at the moment, but it generally seems much of a muchness to me when I do. At least in the UK, the flavour profiles of “breakfast blend” style black teas seem very similar – sweet, malty, strong, and otherwise fairly nondescript. Until now.

Read my full review here: http://sororiteasisters.com/2015/09/17/breakfast-blend-black-tea-ringtons-premium-english-teas/

254/365

More peppermint! It’s becoming a bit of a routine for me to have a mint tea as soon as I arrive at work, ostensibly to help me cool down from my walk in. I never thought it’s something I’d do, but it’s given me the opportunity to reevaluate my thoughts on mint teas both generally and specifically. I guess I have to say I appreciate the heat for that, because I’d not have done so otherwise. I don’t appreciate it for any other reason, though, except that there’s 0% chance of snow. That’s always a bonus. I wish it would rain, though. If it would rain, I’d go outside and stand in it, and I’d never complain about rain again as long as I live. How’s that for a deal?

This one is more along the lines of the peppermint I’m used to. It’s brown and slightly dank tasting, but it does have a kind of high-level sweetness that’s actually really appealing. I don’t know whether that’s always been there, or whether I’m just getting used to it? The problem I have with mint tea generally is that it doesn’t taste much like mint – not like polo mints, or fresh mint from a plant, toothpaste, or mint ice cream. You know, mint. It’s not like that at all. I sometimes wonder whether it’s just me that thinks this; do I have some kind of odd taste deficiency when it comes to mint tea? I don’t think so, somehow, but I suppose it could be.

I like this one better than some plain peppermint teas (I’m still looking at Twinigs), but not as much as peppermint/spearmint blends, which I’ve decided are much more my thing. I’ve always preferred spearmint in general; I used to be the one who wanted all the spearmint polos and softmints on long car journeys. Pure spearmint tea isn’t my thing, though, just like pure peppermint isn’t; I think there’s something about the pairing of the two that creates tea happiness for me.

I do appreciate that I’ve spent a good couple of paragraphs not really getting to the point, but for some reason I find mint teas really hard to describe in flavour terms? It’s not super-minty in the way of minty things (see above), but I’m finding it pleasant and I’d happily drink it again. At least, while it’s this hot.

We can attribute this tasting note to the fact that I think my brain is melting.

Peppermint is a classic herbal if ever there was one. It’s hard to go wrong with something so simple, and it’s a good stomach settler to boot.

Read my full review here: http://sororiteasisters.com/2015/09/13/pure-peppermint-herbal-tea-ringtons-premium-english-teas/

After talking about black tea’s this morning I got a craving for a big mug of this. Sometimes nothing beats a strong and simple black tea. With one sugar and a splash of milk this wonderful tea is perfect to give you a kick in all the right places.

(Being drank while reading The Curious Incident of The Dog in The Night Time by Mark Haddon.)

I only found out about the Ringtons company who deliver tea and coffee to your doorstep a couple of days ago. My mothers friend gets them to deliver to my mother house (as my mother is in all of the time) once a fortnight and I was lucky enough to be over when they knocked on the door. Taking advantage of the tea part I asked what sorts they carried and found that they are all own branded. As soon as he said Connoisseur I was hooked in and bought them to try as an every day tea.

I must say that after trying a lot of everyday tea and disliking a lot of what I have tasted (Tetley’s, Yorkshire, PG Tips etc) I was very impressed with what this tea had to offer. This tea has no bitter after taste, is strong without being ridiculously so and remains fresh in the cup even as cooling. I am used to drinking Twinings every day tea and I must say that this is a competitor when it comes to taste and value.

Over all I would say that I am very happy with this tea and shall continue to buy it in the future to vary my everday drinking tea’s to two brands. I would recommend to anyone that is a fan of fresh and strong tea.