Carrington Tea English Breakfast Tea certainly rivals corresponding products from Twinings, Bigelow, Celestial Seasonings, et al.
The Carrington Tea flavor is top grade, even if the packaging fails to adequately protect tea freshness once opened. As with the other Carrington Tea offerings, this black tea product features a rather thin, not-so-rigid paper box. Inside is a white plastic pouch that holds the teabags, which cannot be conveniently re-sealed once opened. Plus, you need scissors to neatly gain ingress initially, by cutting off its heat-sealed top. The teabags include neither strings nor tags, are not individually wrapped, and are stuck together in pairs. This requires separating them when you want a single tea serving. To avoid burning your fingers, you really should use a strainer spoon when removing them from the teacup, as there’s no tag dangling at mug-side to grab.
In fact, our only real gripes with Carrington Tea products in general, is the shoddy packaging, though admittedly, it does reduce the amount of resulting waste, headed for landfills. But, once you get past the chintzy box and bag, and start brewing and enjoying this beverage, you’ll soon forget any difficulties you had with accessing the black tea deliciousness initially.
On the positive side, Carrington Tea English Breakfast Tea exhibits a pleasing, peppy black tea flavor, and we especially like its dark red-orange luster with only small amounts of bitterness when we forget to take out the teabag at the right time.
It’s hard to disguise the English breakfast tea tongue-prints of this pleasing morning tea, as that signature black tea essence is particularly strong herein. You can sweeten with honey, stevia, aspartame, saccharin, or, heaven forbid, white sugar, and the result will almost always be highly palatable. If this English breakfast tea was a boom box, it would play, certainly, at top volume, and sound like boom-boom, and most high in fidelity. The tea inside is by no means chintzy.
Brewing Instructions
Each teabag makes one cup of the expected muscular tasting English breakfast tea.
By The Cup
- Boil enough fresh water for the number of cups of this black tea you wish to brew.
- While waiting for the water start rumbling, put 1 Carrington teabag into each cup you’re brewing.
- When the water boils, immediately pour it into each cup.
- Steep for three to five minutes, according to taste.
- Remove and discard the tea bag(s).
- Sweeten tea as desired. You might also try added half and half, milk, orange, lemon, or lime as tea condiments.
By The Pot
- Use hot water to rinse out tea-pot prior to brewing, to warm it.
- Again, determine how many cups of this premium black tea you desire.
- Put the required amount of fresh, filtered water in your kettle or pot.
- Put the pot on your stove and turn the heat to high.
- Remove tags from teabags, to avoid possible leaching of ink from the tags into the tea.
- When the water reaches a rolling boil, immediately add the tea bags to it.
- Remove kettle from heat and turn off the stove.
- Allow bags to steep in the pot for three or four minutes. Steep to taste here.
- Then, remove the teabags from the pot with a straining spoon and discard.
- Pour the tea into cups, sweeten to taste, and add milk, lemon, lime, or orange as desired.
Iced English Breakfast Tea
- Take three teabags for a two-glass yield.
- Put teabags into a teapot.
- Then, in a separate heat-safe container, boil two cups of fresh, filtered water.
- Once the water boils, remove from heat and turn off the heat source.
- Pour this water into the teapot, on top of the teabags.
- Steep for seven to ten minutes.
- Remove the tea bags with a straining spoon and discard.
- Add sugar, lemon, orange, and/or lime as desired.
- Fill two glasses with ice.
- Pour steeped and seasoned tea into them.
Benefits, Features, Pros, and Advantages
Keeps fresh for years. Carrington Tea black tea stays fresh for a year or more with an appropriately sized bag clip.
Premium quality black tea. This tea’s flavor is high in quality and closely resembles other top-of-the-line teas tasted.
Jolts you awake. Caffeine levels here probably match those found in the other brands tested. This puts it on par with typical English black teas, which feature somewhat concentrated caffeine levels on average.
Encourages healthy weight. This drink can promote weight loss as can most other caffeine-intact tea brands, due to its thermogenic characteristics. It revs the body’s basal metabolism.
Good for you. Offers numerous health benefits. The many antioxidants and flavonoids in this beverage are said to fire up the immune system, slow the aging process, and promote a healthy facial glow in those who consume it regularly.
Valuable stay-awake tool for 3rd trick and shift workers. Effectively staves off nighttime tiredness for third-shift employees.
All natural, gluten free, sugar free, and absent are any artificial colors, flavors, and preservatives.
Green wrappings. Environmentally friendlier packaging. Bags contain no strings or tags. This is definitely good on the one hand, but can make this product a bit harder to use without creating messes and burning the fingers. See below for more on this.
Disadvantages, Cons, Problems, and Concerns
Each teabag not sealed airtight. Teabags not individually wrapped for freshness.
Harder to find. Can be difficult to find at local stores.
Shorter shelf life. Does not stay fresh as long as other black teas tested.
Can stain teeth, carpets, and clothes if spilled, due to its rather dark consistency.
Contains significant caffeine. Can make you feel buzzed and wired, and keep you awake at night if consumed with reckless abandon during the day.
Can be addictive therefore. We experience withdrawal symptoms (namely, the dreaded caffeine headache) if, once a routine of drinking this has begun, we abruptly stop drinking it. So, it’s best to slowly wean yourself out of drinking this habitually, if giving it up is your intention. If not, then keep drinking it every day.
May make you hungrier. The caffeine herein, though it can promote weight loss, can also intensify hunger pangs. But generally when dieting, and that knee-weakening hunger bursts in on you, you can duck away from that nasty intrusion by drinking a glass of this dark tea. It works especially for appetite suppression when you drop in a little cream or half and half, and only use all-natural, zero-calorie sweeteners like stevia.
Ingredients
“One hundred percent natural, quality black tea leaves,” to quote what’s written on the box.
Our Rating
This English breakfast tea has spectacular taste, even if the packaging seems skimpy and wimpy, and by no means blimpy. So we’d recommend Carrington breakfast tea to anyone looking for a taste that manifests among the best black tea experiences available. We’d rate this product at 94 out of 100.
Where To Find Carrington Tea English Breakfast Tea
Look for this Carrington product in the yellow and purple box with white lettering and a teapot and cup pictured on the top at Walmart or other larger grocery stores as well as at online resellers such as Amazon. See below for a large list of online vendors.
References
- Carrington Tea Official Web Site
- English Breakfast Tea on Wikipedia
- Where to buy Carrington Tea English Breakfast Tea
Revision History
- 2014-12-04: Added whitespace for faster reading, extended the content, and adjusted ad placement.
- 2014-09-04: Added picture.