Tea bags

[nicknack]

Are there any really good ones?

Any recommendations apart from,"Don't touch with bargepole"?

[little miss mac]

If you're looking for bog standard but decent, I like Waitrose Gold brand. If you want posh, Fortnum & Mason is nice.

I like my tea builders' strength, BTW. If you're looking for a delicate darjeeling I ain't your man 

[nicknack]

Sorry - I should have been a bit more specific. Tea ordinaire is what I'm after - not Earl Grey, China, gunpowder or any other exotic blend.

Sadly not near a Waitrose until term starts again in October.

[Hot Flatus]

I reckon the quality of the tea they use in them is pretty decent these days compared to the floor sweepings 20 or so years ago.

Any of the 'Gold' labels, whether it be Waitrose, sainsburys, Yorkshire seem to be nice.  Twinings Assam is my favorite

[clarion]

Yorkshire tea is good - if you have Yorkshire water.

[border-rider]

I was reading a few weeks ago bout tea-tastings when they first introduced teabags.

The story I read had  a senior taster for Twinings, or someone, at a tasting, saying that they had to use better tea in the bags than loose-leaf to make sure it tasted OK; he recommended that the best way to make tea from bags was to cut them open and empty them into a teapot

[nicknack]

Yorkshire tea is good - if you have Yorkshire water.

Not a lot of that in North Kent. 

[mike]

+1 for Yorkshire tea.  We're in cambridge and it tastes pretty darn good here..

[Valiant]

+2 for Yorkshire builders tea

[Chris N]

+n for Yorkshire.  Tastes good in Derbyshire.

[Pete]

Where's LOTTP when you need him?  He'd soon give this bunch of philistines what-for!  Teabags = 'tea' indeed!     You're not here under another name by any chance, are you LOTTP?

[nicknack]

Never had Yorkshire in bags. Tried it loose. Ok but not brilliant. Perhaps doesn't suit hard water?

[little miss mac]

You can get Yorkshire teabags specifically for hard water areas. Good alternative to Waitrose Gold 

[Mike J]

I've had Yorkshire tea for hard water its good.

If you fancy something different, then Tick Tock Rooibos tea is nice.

[teethgrinder]

Yorkshire for me. I have a pint mug and have to use two of any other tea bag, but one Yorkshire is enough.
Get a water filter too. It makes it taste much better and prolongs the life of your kettles' element.
When I lived with my mum, the water was so hard that we used a tea strainer when we poured our water from the kettle. I kid you not.

[Butterfly]

Get a water filter too. It makes it taste much better and prolongs the life of your kettles' element.
When I lived with my mum, the water was so hard that we used a tea strainer when we poured our water from the kettle. I kid you not.

+1 We used to get through kettles at the rate of one a year or so, even with the filter. (In Faversham) I like Tetleys or Sainsburys red label.  The fair trade ones all seem to be horrible, even though the loose leaf is fine.

[toekneep]

Yorkshire tea and move up north. Sorted. 

[tiermat]

Yet another vote for Yorkshire tea, and of course a piece of Yorkshire Tea Bread (really cake) to go with....

[Charlotte]

I generally buy the fairtrade stuff these days.  Whilst it may taste no better than PG Tips et al., I like the thought that nobody's been exploited in producing it.

If you buy it in the Coop, it's no more expensive than anything else 

[Cudzoziemiec]

I can't recommend any tea bags that you could get! My colleagues all think it's odd that I make tea using leaves (on a good day, more like "grains" otherwise, but no it's not granules) rather than tea bags, although they agree that the flavour from bags is not better and the cost is a lot more (I think you don't have this bag-leaf price differential in Greenandpleasantland).

But tea bags do avoid you swallowing the bits if you don't have a strainer! 

[tiermat]

You need one of these cudzo:

Bodum Assam Clear Teapot 0.5Ltr

[nicknack]

Yorkshire tea and move up north. Sorted. 

Nooooooooooooooooooooo!!!!!!!!!!

(I lived in Nottingham for 12 years - never got used to being that far North - Yorkshire would be, well, unthinkable)

[Ian H]

When I lived with my mum, the water was so hard that we used a tea strainer when we poured our water from the kettle. I kid you not.

Most modern kettles seem to have a filter in the spout — at least the jug types.

But is it really that difficult or expensive to procure a tea strainer?

* I had a great aunt who would make a mug of tea (one of those old-fashioned tall, waisted mugs) by putting in a teaspoon of tea, followed by hot water, followed by milk. Having drunk this she would add another spoon of tea on top of the first, add water, milk, and drink. This she repeated until the mug was half full of tea leaves, at which point she would empty it and start afresh.

[tiermat]

I had a great aunt who would make a mug of tea (one of those old-fashioned tall, waisted mugs) by putting in a teaspoon of tea, followed by hot water, followed by milk. Having drunk this she would add another spoon of tea on top of the first, add water, milk, and drink. This she repeated until the mug was half full of tea leaves, at which point she would empty it and start afresh.

Ahhhhh Barnsley tea, usually thus in a pot then poured out, no good if you are lactose intolerant or just don't have milk in your tea

Black tea is also known as Miner's tea as miners would take flask of black tea down t'pit, apparently the increased pressure down there would turn the milk sour very quickly.

And then of course there is Builders (as previously mentioned) and Standard NATO Issue (strong, white, 2 sugars)

[Mr Larrington]

Yorkshire is the One True Tea.