Should you brew a cuppa in the microwave??
I don’t make my tea in the microwave. That was a joke, and I felt I needed to say so immediately. My actual routine was much less controversial, with a kettle, a tea bag and a little milk. The bigger question for me was whether anything could beat my regular Yorkshire Tea.
When I shared this tea tasting in April 2022, I’d been living in the UK for six years and was gradually warming up to tea. I still considered myself a coffee person, especially in the morning, but a cup of tea felt comforting in the wet, dark winter months. That didn’t mean I’d suddenly become a tea expert.
My family did not grow up boiling the kettle
Back home in Ontario, asking for tea tended to bring another question about what kind I wanted. Chai, green, herbal, fruity or mint? Here, it felt as though I could just ask for tea and get tea. There were tea-loving families in Canada, of course, but mine wasn’t one of them.
My mom didn’t drink tea, and we hadn’t had a reason to use a kettle at home. On my last visit, which I thought was in 2020, I actually bought her one. That made the everyday British habit of boiling the kettle a bit new to me. I could still understand the comfort of a cup, though, and the joke that a bad day can be met with “let’s have a cup of tea”.
Regular Yorkshire was still my favourite
I’d previously tasted supermarket teas, and Yorkshire was my favourite from that test. I’d also tried the hard-water version and Yorkshire Gold, but honestly didn’t notice a difference. My usual choice was the regular red-label Yorkshire, and I always kept a box on hand even though I didn’t drink a lot of tea.
That was partly about visitors. I wanted to be able to offer someone a cup of tea, and we tended to have milk and sugar around already. The people I knew typically used tea bags, which I found convenient and easy. I knew some people swore by loose leaf, but I didn’t agree that bagged tea was an abomination.
For my own cup, I usually let the tea steep for about three minutes, sometimes four, setting a timer on my phone or watch. After removing the bag, I added a little milk and no sugar. Too much milk made it so pale that I felt I was drinking warm milk, which wasn’t what I’d asked for. Made my way, it tasted pretty good.
Lancashire and Welsh Brew came close
A supporter had sent me Lancashire Tea to try, so I had something new to compare with my favourite. It was very close. My first impression was that it tasted a little sweeter, but I didn’t really know enough about tea to be certain about that. It was hard to distinguish the two, and the Lancashire was still very nice.
Welsh Brew was another gift, and something I hadn’t seen in the shops down here in Kent. It seemed to have a different mouthfeel, although that was a gut reaction I couldn’t explain especially well. I liked it, but not as much as Lancashire, which I didn’t like quite as much as Yorkshire. Maybe my heart was just set on Yorkshire. I bet a blind taste test would have left me with no idea which was which.
The biscuit was arguably the best bit
I may not have considered myself much of a sweet-tooth person, but I loved a chocolate biscuit. I’d bought milk-chocolate Hobnobs for this, because plain Hobnobs were already delicious and I wanted some chocolate. They had the plain biscuit side and the chocolate side, a bit like the chocolate-digestive idea.
I went back to my Yorkshire Tea to dunk one. Crumbs got everywhere, and I didn’t want to leave the biscuit in too long because it could fall apart. That was a good dunk, and a delicious biscuit. I also remembered taking what I thought were the classic Hobnobs home for my mom to try, and she loved them.
Lancashire and Welsh Brew hadn’t knocked Yorkshire off its place as my favourite, but I was very happy to have tried something new. I still wouldn’t call myself a tea person. There was time, though, and I was definitely warming up to it.
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