English Teatime - Decaffeinated

I grew up in a house where Lipton is consumed more than any other beverage. My family thought I was a bit of a tea snob, what with my hoity-toity fancy pants Bigelow teas and all. Nowadays, with the large amount of loose teas in my possession, they just think I am a psycho tea weirdo. They might be correct. The mail lady was getting suspicious at all my packages from faraway lands until my wife explained it to her. Now she agrees with my family. Such is the life of an enthusiast.

One thing I know is I am not a tea snob as I really enjoyed this little gem last night. It is inexpensive bagged tea. Snobs don’t do inexpensive or bagged. It is also decaffeinated. I thought this was very fragrant. It smells like tea. While there is not a lot of depth, it tasted nice and took sweetener well. There are times when that is all I need.

So, I went to a birthday party for one of my friends and ended up walking outside a lot in the freezing cold. If you are not aware, it’s been snowing and sleeting and raining in New York City, and everything is pretty frigid.

So I got in the door, shivering and shaking, and immediately wanted a cup of tea. So I pretty much grabbed the first bag I laid my hands on that was decaf, that just so happened to be Bigelow’s English Teatime.

Honestly, this is one of those cases where you can barely pick out anything about the flavor or texture or experience of the tea. I really just wanted a hot, fast beverage, one that would warm me up on this very cold night, and English Teatime Decaf delivered in that way. It’s not the best blend by far, but it has a tea taste (and a fairly decent one at that, for a bag, and when I mean decent, I mean better than Liptons [which I guess is low-balling it a bit]), and that’s all that I wanted from this tea. So for the moment, it succeeded.

Memorable? No. Functional? Yes.

I believe this was the tea I had this morning.
I wasn’t overly impressed with this one. It was very bland to me. I added milk and sugar, but it still didn’t seem to make it overly nice. I was expecting a lot more flavour as the Metropolitan Tea Company’s loose-leaf version has been so full of flavour and it has an almost slight floral taste to it. This tea though, and I don’t know if it’s the brand or the fact it was a bagged tea, but either way, didn’t have very much to say for itself at all.
Definitely wouldn’t get this one again, but it was something to start my day off with if nothing else… and it was decaf so that’s good.

I thought I would try this iced since I have a whole box of it. I actually like this better than most other decaf black teas I’ve tried, which is surprising given the price. I steeped this up with a bit of dried lemon peel, but then decided to add some fresh lemon juice along with the ice. It’s pretty good this way.

I filled out an online job application for a job I really want but am not remotely qualified for. I guess I might as well apply but I don’t think there’s a good chance that anyone reads these things once they’ve been uploaded to a database somewhere. sigh

I was never a big fan of this tea but it seems to have gotten worse. I’ve recently realized that the tea falls out of the teabag within seconds of steeping it (I’ve been seeing this for a couple of weeks now). Either the boxes I’ve been drinking were defects or Bigelow has changed something in the bag manufacturing that renders it nearly useless

A decent black tea, as far as bag teas go. Good with soy milk.

Even the smallest quantities of caffeine make me feel like my eyes are popping out of my skull, so I was pleased that this had no such effect. This had a pretty classic black tea taste. Nothing complicated. Just tea.