I never add anything other than water to tea, no matter what type of tea. I especially cannot stand sweet tea.

My Mom used to give me milky tea in my baby bottle when I was a toddler. Growing up it has always been Red Rose Orange Pekoe tea, orange pekoe is a type of black tea not an orange flavour. I prefer a stronger tea now so my every day tea is Red Rose Canadian Breakfast tea -3 tea bags in the tea pot. I also like a cup of Twinnings Lemon Ginger or Honey bush Mandarin Orange every once in a while, I also have some blends of David's Teas. Flavoured teas I drink clear - no sugar or milk and only a few drops of milk in my black tea. I took the picture a few years ago. My choice of tea pot is my Pyrex tea pot. The other little fancy tea pot my sister gave me and I broke it. The bone china tea set I inherited along with matching plates and more cups and saucers. I also have a large collection of tea cups and saucers.

My everyday, before 4 pm (when I stop drinking anything with caffeine) is Earl Grey or English or Irish Breakfast. Usually clear, but sometimes for a "treat" I have a little sugar and a bit of milk. Totally different drink to me. In the evening I like Stash Licorice Spice, which tastes a bit sweet to me or Peppermint Tea. Ginger Tea for upset stomach or when I need warming up.

I'm a Tetley gal, with milk and sugar. I don't like herbal, flavoured teas at all.

I love tea. My favorites are black teas, such as Earl Gray, but I enjoy green, white and herbal teas as well. I generally drink black tea with half and half and sometimes sugar, and the rest plain.

The only tea I cannot stand is rooibos. I've tried it several times but it always tastes exactly like cough syrup to me and it's awful.

My favorite teas right now come from Harney and Sons. Their Victorian London Fog is amazing, with black tea flavored with bergamot, lavender and vanilla. I also like their Paris and Cinnamon Spice flavors.

I was never a tea drinker until about five years ago. Now, I can't imagine not having a cup or two of tea in the morning. My daily go to is spiced chai (sometimes w/creamer) and my favorite is Harney & Sons Paris (plain), which I order online. It smells fantastic!

www.harney.com/products/copy-of-paris-classic-tin-of-20-sachets?variant=13482393927751

Red Rose tea...

Does anyone remember the little figurines that used to come in Red Rose tea?

I used to have a bunch of them....

They were Wade Ceramic figurines. I have them going way back to the 1950s. Red Rose used to have little cards too of birds, animals or cars and you put them in a little story album. I wish they would bring back the figurines

For awhile this was my favorite but Walmart found out and quit carrying it. It seems every time I find something I love, they quit selling it. :)

https://www.amazon.com/Bigelow-Pomegranate-Tea-Caffeine-Free-Individual/dp/B000GG1OAI

I just re-remembered it, searched for it and see the price is fair again so... I'll add it to my cart and think about it. My tastes change though.

The difficulty with Red Rose tea is unless it has changed this past year there is a Canadian version and a US version. I occasionally found the Canadian version at a local thrift store until it closed. Pardon the expression but the US version sucked.

I like green tea, ice cold and unsweetened. I make a pitcher of it once a week or so and sip on it.

I like sweet tea too, but certainly not enough to make it myself and all the restaurants do not make it sweet enough for me, so I just don't drink it.

Don't like hot tea. If I am gonna drink something hot, its gonna be cocoa.

The first tea I ever remember is Bigelow's Constant Comment. My mom always had that. I also like their Lemon Lift - I make hot toddies with it!

I'm primarily an espresso drinker and dedicated to that morning art but I do like tea later in the afternoon and evening and usually drink decaf.

I like various blacks, some herbals, some chai but all must be sweet, hot and a little milky. Lately I've liked celestials country peach passion tea a lot. In the summer I make Luzianne iced tea and that's a staple.

For a while I got into specialty teas from gourmet tea places and brewing and teapots and all the accoutrements but now I don't care and a tea bag is fine.

Bumblebeez - the older I get the less I want to fuss and I no longer buy loose tea. I also like teabags because they're easy to travel with - I always put an assortment in a ziplock baggie along with packets of sugar and sticks of honey when I go to stay anywhere.

I love tea, and yes, each kind is drunk in its own way. I like English Breakfast with sugar and a tiny drop of milk. Early Grey I like plain. My favorite tea brand is Tea Pigs. Their tea comes in triangular bags without any plastic. Their packaging is minimal and plastic free as well and their tea is delicious.

https://teapigs.com/

I also like Mariage Frère. Their teas are loose, and quite expensive in light of the quantities of tea I drink ;-)

As for not caring for Lapsang Sousong, I believe that is the tea Earl Grey is trying to ape with the addition of bergamot. I can't find the source of this thought right now. But I do remember reading the addition of bergamot was meant to try to approximate the flavor of a much more expensive tea.

HG, I think know the little ceramic figurines you mean from the Canadian tea. I thought it was Salada, for some reason.

PS I find raw sugar, less refined sugar, preferable to plain white sugar in my tea.

PPS I also like various Chinese teas my children have brought home from trips, plus those fun floral teas that are pretty, but not especially tasty.

I love teas.... preferrably blacks.; straight, no sugar or cream. I too like Harney's English Breakfast and also Paris. Constant Comment is always on my shelf. But lately I've been buying my teas from Smith Teamaker (smithtea.com). It is a company out of Portland, OR. I think I have every one of their black teas on my shelf.

I don't care much for herbal teas, expecially if they have even the smallest amount of Chamomile. I grow mint mostly to use in a hot infusion. And, a leafy twig or two of Lemon Verbena is lovely in a pitcher of black Ice tea.

Since Lapsang Souchong is a smoked tea and Earl Grey is not I have a hard problem with the idea that adding a citrus tasting bergamot to tea would be anyone's idea of imitating the other.

maifleur - I had a whole box of Lapsang Souchong and knew after my first sip I wasn't going to drink it so I did some searching and found recipes that people used it for when they wanted to add a smoke flavor. It was a long time ago, and I can't remember what they were exactly. But I never pursued them.

I drink black tea the most and never with milk. I do not like even the smell of coffee. I love iced tea and drink it year round. I want it sweet but not the sickening sweet. I would rather drink it with out sweetener than to have it overly sweet. I don't buy Red Rose any more, but used to. Have a little collection of the Wade Figurines.

Sue

I grew up drinking iced tea in the summer, never sweetened. As as adult I continued that for decades until the time came in the past decade that it really tasted like nothing but colored water, so why was I wasting my time with it? I just quit making pitchers of tea everyday.

Then, I started buying a better quality tea than those tea bags and those large tea bags that are sold in the grocery store. Those things are horrible!

I found a loose tea on Amazon that I like and it makes all the difference in the world for a glass of iced tea. It is not the fact that it is loose that makes it better. It is better because it is a different kind of tea. But, what got me to looking at loose tea is the fact that, the last time I bought tea in bags, I had to peel it out of no less that four layers of packaging! All those layers of packaging and there you are with less than a tablespoon of actual tea!

Like so many other things, I have chosen better quality over quantitiy. Instead of having a drink on hand most all day on a summer day, I will choose to have just a couple of glasses during the day. This tea is real tea, not the colored drivel that is in those large tea bags that is packaged for making iced tea. The difference is amazing.

I don't drink hot tea very often, but when I do.............I prefer something like an English breakfast tea or some such.

Some people make sweet tea so darned sweet that it is nauseating. I have seen them pour cups of sugar into a pitcher of tea. Who needs that?

I am in the camp of those who prefer to have nothing sweet, or added, to tea or coffee. I also have a healthy disdain for flavored coffee. I prefer it all pure and simple and honestly just what it is.

Actually, I don't drink anything sweet, at all.

Never could find the pleasure in hot tea, but I dearly love the full, and rounded taste of a good cup of black coffee.

All of those sweet drinks add to the obesity and diabetes problems that are plaguing our population. Plus, it is my opinion that it turns tea or coffee into just another sweet drink. When all is sweet, it just becomes a medium for the sugar. For many of those things you could be drinking anything because all you taste is the sweet.

I do realize that others feel differently about it.

One cup of strong coffee in the morning and then Earl Grey if I want something hot. I never cared for sugar or milk in my tea. Growing up, we drank a lot of iced tea made with Lipton Tea Bags. Sun tea made with them was also a favorite.

Here is a tea expert who explains the relationship between Lapsang Souchong and Earl Grey.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CRuA_YTRFYU

At about 8 minutes into the vid, the narrator explains that as LS became popular in the UK people thought it might have been flavored with Chinese mandarins. Of course this was not true. Earl Grey set out to find the secret of LS, added bergamot to black tea and while it was not an accurate representation, but it turned out to be a big hit.

I have bladder infection again. I haven't had it in years, I have some corn silk tea in the cupboard that I will be drinking in a little bit. I have used it before so I know it helps.

I was a double latte in the morning person until I saw a naturopath who (strongly) recommended quitting coffee. Now I have a big mug of yerba mate sweetened with a little local honey in the mornings. I don't drink it out of the traditional gourd, but I did buy a couple of bombillas (straw/strainers). Much easier than dealing with a tea ball.

American Red Rose tea definitely tastes different that Canadian Red Rose tea. When I go stay with family in the US I bring my own tea. At one time coffee tasted better from the USA and hot tea didn't taste good at all.

We mostly drink half-caff coffee in the mornings. In the afternoons I often have a cup of tea and depending on the time, it is often decaf. My current favorites are Chamomile caffeine-free (Celestial seasonings) and Harney & Sons Green Tea with coconut, ginger and vanilla.

A few years ago my DD and I had some wonderful tea at Animal Kingdom at Disney World of all places. It was commercially available at a tea shop off-property, I think at Disney Springs, and I bought some to take home. I cannot recall the brand, but it was a wonderful, exotic blended tea.

edited to add that even though I am southern, I quit using sugar in my iced tea or any beverage back in my youth. I can’t stand sweet tea, coffee or any cola drinks. Only on a few occasions will I add a bit of cream to coffee.

Seagrass one of the most common uses of smoked teas in cooking is to paste or soak meats in a tea made of it or simply make a strong tea and paint it onto the skin of chickens and other poultry. I try to keep my tea in metal containers with tight lids. Extends the shelf life. I may just baste the chicken I am having for Thanksgiving.

Thank you all. I'm learning so much from everyone's responses and making notes of some new teas to try. I used to be able to drink coffee but over the past several years it has bothered my stomach and I also get jittery and don't feel well with the caffeine. Most of the teas I drink have less or none, except the Scottish Breakfast tea - but that doesn't bother me like coffee.

I prefer loose teas because of the amount of plastic in regular tea bags. I don't think it's good to steep them in near-boiling water. I avoid heated plastic as much as I can.

I do use some tea bags but only brands with safe bags. Sadly, there aren't many.

Chi - I've never seen plastic teabags.

Seagrass, it's not the bags themselves, but the sealant used on them as most contain polypropylene.

We like double strength black coffee and strong black teas, preferably loose-leaf. Occasionally Spouse will have either one "English style" - cream and sugar added, in lieu of dessert.

We adore Lapsang Souchong but most aren't smoky enough for us. Lately we've been doing a blend of 1/3 Turkish black and 2/3 Lapsang.

The Turkish is the Akbar brand. It comes in teabags but if you buy it loose-leaf it's sold in 1-lb rubber-sealed tins. The tins are reusable - very handy!

The Lapsang loose-leaf is from Llasa Karnak Herb Co. in Berkeley, CA.

We go through an 8-cup coffee thermos in less than 2 days and the same in brewed tea every day.

==============

For those who like the ease of teabags but want higher quality, we can recommend two brands we became familiar with during our travels:

Mighty Leaf Tea was bought by Peet's Coffee in 2014. They specialize in herbal, white, and green teas. Their teabag is commercially compostable (NOT for backyard composting). Organic and very high quality teas.

This is one of the only two bagged teas we buy (the other was the old Tazo brand Awake tea, which was replaced by their English Breakfast Awake tea which we don't find as good).

The Numi is the "old style Earl Grey" tea. If you are a long-time Earl Grey drinker you may have noticed the style has changed to become ever more "flowery" and perfumed. Almost all of this style of essence is artificial chemicals.

This Earl Grey is precisely what it should be - fine black tea, lightly accented with a hint of true citrus peel.

My spouse loathes Earl Grey normally. This is the only one he will drink.

Teas have as many varieties as coffee, depending on location and breed etc. Not the same as adding flavoring. Most US tea I think is orange pekoe or some type of pekoe blend. It's not anything to do with oranges so not sure how it got that name. But the type of tea leaf also influences the tea along with the processing. Leaves have a fuller less bitter taste than bits and bobs or cut up tea, which is what you often find hidden in a tea bag. I've tried the Ceylon, Lapsang Souchong and Jasmine and I guess I just don't like them, particularly the smokey LS. Grew up with orange pekoe and assam and those are the kinds I like. Hold up good to cream, IMHO, and that's how I like my tea, either straight up, or with cream. I can take it with sugar but it's not my favorite. Most flavored teas start with an orange pekoe processed base . . .

I too have noticed a general decline in Earl Grey. And it's counterpart, Lady Grey. I grew up drinking the Bigelow EG and I seem to no longer care for it. Not sure if it is the tea or my tastebuds or a little of both.

You can really taste the difference between a whole leaf tea and what comes in tea bags. Some are worse than others. I drink Tetley and Red Rose and occasionally Lipton for cheap. Lipton whole leaf or some type of whole leaf Assam when I can get it. I can no longer afford the specialty leaf teas. Not that big of a deal, grew up on Lipton and didn't suffer.

I've been a tea drinker since I was five years old. Black tea, please: when younger, always with lemon and sweetener, but now just plain. Red Rose or PG Tips. When in England I loved the tea with milk at the bed & breakfasts. I do like English Breakfast and Irish Breakfast, but I can't name a specific brand because it has been too long since I bought a more expensive brand. Very rarely in winter I will have a cup of Constant Comment, or Ginger Lemon, but as a rule I dislike flavored and herbal teas. One big exception was in Israel: we stopped at an Aroma Coffee bar on a chilly day down in the Negev, and the Ginger/Honey/Turmeric tea was amazingly good.

A lot to think about from all of your responses. I'm learning a lot!

I had never heard of Lady Grey tea until I read all the comments. Today, a lady came through my til and she had two boxes of it. I asked her about the tea and she said she was an avid Earl Grey drinker until she tried Lady Grey and has never looked back. She also said it’s hard to find. I’ll have to give it a try.

I had some Lady Grey. I liked it, probably more than Earl Grey. I think I got it in an assortment because I can't find the order.

But here it is on Walmart(dot)com: https://www.walmart.com/ip/Twinings-of-London-Earl-Grey-Black-Tea-Bags-50-Ct-3-53-oz/15539571?selected=true

Oops, wrong link, that's Earl grey. :)

Here it is. Six boxes of twenty and seems very overpriced:

https://www.walmart.com/ip/Twinings-of-London-Lady-Grey-Tea-Bags-1-41-oz-Pack-of-6/31222473

Yeah, better price on Amazon:

https://smile.amazon.com/Twinings-London-Lady-Black-Count/dp/B000F4F94S/

seagrass, some teas are packaged in nylon bags now days. Even those cellulose tea bags are bleached with chemicals.

There just seems to be something wrong with just about everything, doesn't it?

My guess would be that you can extend that concern to some of the coffee filters as well.

Better to brew your tea in a vessel and strain it or use a tea ball.

We quit using coffee filters and found a method that involves a strong brew and a press pot. It was not so much a concern about the filters as it was just finding a way to make coffee that suited us. I was not real worried about the filters.

I prefer loose tea because, for one reason, it allows you to control how strong you want it. With a tea bag all you can do is to use two instead of one or to use less water to make it stronger. It is much the same with those little Keurig coffee pods. What an environmental nightmare those things are! Now I have seen them for tea, too. Like we need more of that, right? What an expensive way to buy tea! or coffee!

Tea Pigs's tea bags are plastic free:

What are the tea temples made from?

You’ll be very pleased to hear that our tea temples have NEVER contained plastic. The temples and the string attached are made from cornstarch, a natural carbohydrate extracted from corn. The label on the end of the string is made from simple, old-fashioned paper. Even the ink on the label is vegetable-based, and everything is sealed with heat – so no glue! As a result, our tea temples are fully biodegradable.

https://teapigs.com/blogs/news/is-there-plastic-in-our-tea-and-packaging-teapigs

wednesday morning - I agree about the Keurig. Since it's just the two of us here the majority of the time we make coffee each on our own. I have an old Melitta pour over cone and buy unbleached filters - but I rarely make coffee. My mother knows how to use it when she visits, and so does our house-sitter when she stays with our dogs.

DH finally settled on an Aeropress, which does use small round filters. We have a coffee maker that will brew and hold coffee in quantity for a morning of coffee-drinking but we don't have houseguests but once in a blue moon.

After drinking a lot of good loose leaved tea, I really got spoiled. I can taste the "paper" in some of the poorer brands. Also, depending on the brand, they disguise a lot of crap leaves inside those bags . . .

Lady Grey is milder in taste than Earl Grey. Not sure why . . . I have a lot left over from my late mother. Would be glad to send it out to someone who would like it and drink it. Sadly, even though it is about my favorite thing in the world, I can't drink much tea anymore due to chronic bladder problems . . .

I don't know about English Breakfast, but Irish breakfast tea is heavy on the Assam tea, which has the malty taste that I love. I think the Ceylon is more citrusy/bitter . . . but that's just my tastebuds. Darjeeling is another more "bright" flavored tea. Orange pekoe or other various "pekoe" blends refer to the cut and processing of the tea, not the flavor or variety. The orange pekoe is a middle of the road quality, one that I grew up with so is a fairly reasonable way to drink tea on an everyday basis, IMHO. Perhaps not the "company tea" but how often does one have tea connoisseurs as company? In my pre-pandemic life, it was actually a thing for me every once and a while. Not sure about the future, my tea loving family members are dying out . . .

As some of you may be aware, my dream is to somehow be able to make a living running a tea house, if only a "pop up" business or by catering . . . now sadly is not the time but certainly time to try out products . . .

pinkmountain, if you ever make it out to Sonoma County, CA, we can heartily recommend a lovely little tea bar/spa/cafe called The Taste of Tea:

The Taste of Tea: Art and Science

The owner's father does the cooking so it's the very rare chance to have Japanese home cooking, not the typical restaurant stuff. Spouse and I had a lovely light dinner and did a hot tea tasting of two different teas to accompany our multi-course meal.

It was such a pleasure to have not only high-quality loose-leaf tea (which is actually not that rare here in the San Francisco Bay Area) but also tea that was properly brewed - each tea having the optimal water temp and brewing time to bring out its individual best.

This is what I wrote about the teas from our Jan 2020 visit (which feels like a MILLION years ago, lol!):

".....We
chose two teas from the extensive list. Our young waitress Kendahl
was well-trained and knowledgeable. As it wasn't busy, she was able
to spend the time discussing the teas with us and pouring them into
the serving pot. Fine teas deserve the care taken to not oversteep
them. Although Taste of Tea sells their teas on-line, only the most
popular ones are listed. Both teas we tried are available at the
store, or by on-line request.

Taste
of Tea uses an egg timer with 2-minutes, 3-minutes, and 5-minutes
mini-hourglasses to set the appropriate steeping time. Each order
brings two small glass teapots: one to brew, one to pour. The leaves
are brewed the precise time, then the tea is poured into the second
teapot so that the leaves are not left floating in the water to
oversteep. Tea is poured into cups from the second teapot. The
teacups are exquisite to hold; we both loved them (available on Amazon).

Ti
Kwan Yin, aka Iron Buddha or Iron Goddess. This
was the first tea we chose. We love black tea, and this is one of
Carlos' favorites. The style of it has changed over the years (see
https://www.silkroadteas.com/iron-goddess-tieguanyin/
for a short summary and tasting notes). Traditionally it was more
heavily roasted (oxidized). Now it is roasted more lightly, becoming
more like a green tea. This was medium-bodied, which gives more
floral notes. It goes very well with food.

Hōjicha, roasted green tea. The
current fashion for tea is to the lighter side. As we're black tea
lovers – our tea at home looks like most people's coffee, being a
1:2 blend of Turkish black and smoked Lapsang Souchong – we get
frustrated when the only restaurant choices are wimpy cheapo teabags of Earl
Grey, Mint, or Chamomile. Restaurants that serve good bulk tea, made
properly, are sadly rare. We discovered Hojicha-style green teas when
we dined at Ramen Gaijin/Sebastopol on our last trip to Sonoma
County. We found it very similar to a good black tea, so when we see
it on a menu, we order it. This was bolder and richer in flavor than
the Ti Kwan Yin, with a darker reddish-brown color.

We
had never done a tea tasting with food before, and enjoyed it very
much. We both agreed the Ti Kwan Yin went better with the
foods at Taste of Tea, which have a more delicate, subtle flavor
profile than, say, Ramen Gaijin or Sake 107/Petaluma. But we both
really enjoyed the Houjicha, which Spouse called "a
drinking tea". "

So ironic Seagrass that you had to give up coffee for the same reason I had to give up tea. I can't understand why the acid in coffee doesn't bother me but the acid in tea does . . . they are different compounds slightly, and tannins, which are in wine too, are some of my worst irritants. Dang it! I love red wine and tea! Never have been a coffee fan . . . .

Do you drink tea made in a cup or mug or do you use a teapot? I won't drink tea made in a mug because I don't think it steeps properly. I drink tea made in a teapot. Unless I go to a tea house or to a place that serves high tea I don't drink tea at a restaurant. Although if I am out and my friends stop at Tim Horton's for coffee which is not often I will get their steeped tea which is good but not a fan of drinking it out of a carboard cup. I do not like Tim Horton's coffee so I will have the tea.

I make tea with teabags in a mug. A very large mug. I have several teapots, though. Maybe I'll get one out. But then I'll need a teapot cozy! See what you've done, Cherryfizz? :o)

Over 1,500 listings for teapot cozies on Etsy...that rabbit hole will keep me entertained for awhile...

I hate cleaning teapots. Invariably I nick the spout . . . the best tea infuser I have is one like the one in the link below. it works fab in a mug. The key is that the leaves can flow around freely in the water, the "agony of the leaves" as tea weirdos call it . . . ;)

https://www.stashtea.com/products/extra-fine-tea-infuser-with-porcelain-caddy?gclid=Cj0KCQiAkuP9BRCkARIsAKGLE8VmVOXvEfM5XNYEiw6Ec77uIG3jApkTlS4xQqXAjyFW6ibOAeszEmoaAimlEALw_wcB

I drink coffee and tea, depending on my mood. I like my tea plain, no sweeteners or additives, and I drink my coffee black too. I roast my own coffee beans, grind them daily and make coffee with a Chemex, but I've been known to drink a cup from the Keurig in a pinch, like when I'm visiting one of my daughters.

I usually use loose tea, one of my favorites is Twining's Irish Breakfast. Right now, though, I have a couple of loose teas from Burman Coffee that I ordered when I ordered coffee beans, a Grand Keemun Black and an Indian Black with Acai Berries. I've tried the first and it's good, I haven't tried the second one yet.

I do not care for green tea, white tea, rooibos tea. I also don't like the smoky lapsang or the bergamot flavored Earl Gray. I do like jasmine and some of the fruity/citrus herbal teas.

And, although I usually drink loose tea, I've been known to stick a mug of water in the microwave and drop in a Constant Comment tea bag.

Annie

I like both coffee and tea. Right now I have a cup of Peet's Major Dickenson sweetened with a little sugar and International Delight Hershey Caramel. Oh boy, that makes it taste so smooth.

I like iced tea unsweetened but hot tea I like a little sugar or honey in it. I used to love Constant Comment back in the '70's but I bought some recently and it seems to be a shadow of it's former self. Weak and barely any orange flavoring at all. :(

My current favorite for hot tea is this cinnamon hibiscus made by a local woman I know. It is just outstanding. Her company name is Good Earth, Good Eating.