Twinings English Breakfast Tea has rested in our tea pantries for well over a decade. A routine tea fan for more than twenty years, we’ve consumed several boxes of this Black Tea in recent years.
They served English breakfast tea now and again at meals at high school, and some friends drank it daily and offered it whenever we’d visit them. This is a decent tea, on the stronger side of medium strength, and as teas go, Twinings English Breakfast Tea is perfect for those seeking a full-bodied tea that packs a caffeine punch.
Its clear, deep orange-red color with little bitterness makes for a gem of a beverage. Twinings, as with most black teas, sweetens right up with stevia or Truvia. The price of this product is about average as compared with other black tea renditions we’ve sampled. Twinings has lots of experience in producing their line of classic black teas, and we plan to review them all presently.
Twinings English Breakfast Tea Benefits, Pros, Advantages, and Features
Long shelf life. This classic English Breakfast Tea keeps for years without noticeable decline in flavor, as the box comes wrapped in virtually airtight cellophane. The best-if-used-by date is roughly three years out from the date I purchased my box. But it will remain fresh for longer without losing much great flavor. The tea bags are individually wrapped in an aroma-tight foil and arranged in a single row within the box. Even when you remove the outer cellophane, no tea smell greats you until you actually tear open one of the teabag envelopes. They took excellent care to seal this breakfast tea quite well.
Requires little sweetener. This blended black tea sweetens up very well when you add stevia. Stevia sweetens without destroying the signature orange pekoe tea flavor.
Black tea flavor hard to mute. Sweeten this tea as much as desired, with virtually any sweetener you want, and it will still taste like a robust, black tea rendition.
Excellent caffeine source. This high quality yet medium-cost tea has considerable caffeine. So it will indeed jolt you awake in the morning, or rescue you from that 4:00 PM late-afternoon work drowsiness. Twinings black tea is a great natural drink for third-shift workers who find it difficult to stay awake once the sun goes down. And of course, it’s a good complimentary beverage to a substantial breakfast like those often prepared in England. Thus its name: English Breakfast Tea.
Notably economical. This is an excellent tasting beverage for hot and cold tea recipes. Each serving (teabag) costs less than twenty cents.
No metal staples. They avoided steel staples to fasten the string and tags to each tea bag. Instead, a knotted construction is employed, in which the teabag itself appears to have been assembled around the knotted end of the string, opposite the tag. Nonetheless, without staples, the strings holds tightly to the bag.
No artificial colors or flavors, and is gluten-free.
Dark and robust appearance and taste. This breakfast tea, when brewed according to the accompanying instructions, comes out very dark. So if you’re a tea drinker who really enjoys a strong creamy taste in your tea, and like to add lots of whole cream or half and half, this English Breakfast Tea will retain its color much better for a given amount of added flavoring.
Attractive and easily identified packaging. The artwork and packaging is brightly colored and thus, easy to spot, and is of great quality.
A wondrous thirst-quenching black tea beverage at any time at all. Though this is called English Breakfast Tea, you need not drink it JUST at breakfast. It’s a fine drink any time throughout the day, so long as you can handle the caffeine.
Twinings English Breakfast Tea Disadvantages, Cons, Problems, and Concerns
May contain too much caffeine for some folks. So we must limit the number of cups of this “go go juice” that we consume each day, in order to steer clear of the caffeine jitters.
Not a good appetite suppressant in our view. Perhaps the higher amount of caffeine within, actually stimulates hunger.
The seals are good, but not perfect. Though we appreciate the provided individual wrapping of the teabags, this paper wrapping is not completely air-tight, because as soon as you open the box, and assuming that the tea inside is fresh, you get a strong smell of tea. So the individual teabags may not stay fresh as long as other brands of tea that utilize either foil or plastic wrappings.
English Breakfast Tea is Addictive. Particularly when we’ve not taken any tea in recent days, we often become “wired” when again consuming it, and can feel sick when climbing stairs or doing any sort of rigorous exercise after drinking it. It can create nausea when we’ve gone without it for several weeks.
Can leave pesky stains behind. Being darker in color than most green teas, especially when you steep it for many minutes, this beverage can stain clothes if you accidentally spill it on yourself. If this happens, rinse it out with clear water right away if the affected clothing can be washed.
Brewing Instructions
Each tea bag makes one cup of English breakfast tea.
By The Cup
- Boil enough fresh water for the number of cups of this tea you wish to brew.
- While waiting for the water to boil, unwrap 1 Twinings teabag for each cup you’re making.
- Put the teabags into each cup.
- When water boils, immediately pour it into the cups.
- Steep for two to five minutes or until it becomes strong enough for your taste.
- Discard the tea bag(s).
- Sweeten tea as desired.
- Enjoy.
By The Pot
- Use hot water to rinse out tea-pot prior to brewing, to warm it.
- Again, determine how many cups of black tea you wish to make.
- Put the desired amount of fresh, filtered water in your kettle or pot.
- Put the kettle on your stove and activate the heat.
- While waiting for the water to boil, removing the wrappings from the desired number of tea bags.
- Remove labels from the teabags, to avoid possible contamination of the tea with ink from the tags.
- When the water achieves a rolling boil, immediately add the teabags into the pot of boiling water.
- Remove pot from heat and turn off the stove.
- Allow teabags to steep in the pot for two to five minutes.
- Remove the teabags from the pot with a straining spoon and discard.
- Pour the tea into cups, sweeten to taste, add milk, lemon, lime, or orange as desired, and enjoy.
For Iced Tea
- Unwrap 4 teabags.
- Remove the tags from them.
- Put these teabags into a tea-pot.
- Then, in a separate container, boil four cups (1 quart) of fresh, filtered water.
- Once the water boils, remove from heat and turn off the heat source.
- Pour this water into the teapot, over top of the tea bags.
- Steep for five minutes.
- Remove and discard the teabags with a straining spoon.
- Add sugar, lemon, orange, and/or lime as desired to the brewed tea.
- Fill desired number of glasses with ice.
- Pour steeped tea into these glasses.
- Enjoy.
Ingredients
Black tea.
Our Rating
This tea drink is simple to prepare, a cinch to flavor, and quite good tasting and smelling. If we didn’t need to moderate our caffeine consumption, we would drink this much more often. So our rating is 95 out of 100. It’s likely to remain on the market for years to come, so fear not about adopting this Twinings tea product as a traditional hot drink at breakfast time, and an iced cold drink at lunch, picnics, and supper.
Where To Buy Twinings English Breakfast Tea
Look for this Twinings tea product in the red and white box with the Twinings trade mark egg-shaped logo logo, at larger grocery stores and tea shops, as well as online at Amazon and eBay. Check the references for a robust list of suppliers and resellers.
References
- English Breakfast Tea Health Benefits
- English Breakfast Tea on Wikipedia
- Where to buy Twinings English Breakfast Tea
- Twinings of London Web Site
Revision History
- 2015-01-12: Tweaked content.
- 2014-12-23: Revised and extended content.
- 2014-12-01: Added whitespace and pictures, adjusted ad placement, and made general content revisions and fixes.
- 2014-09-06: Originally published.