I was not impressed with my first sip. My first impression was that it was kind of bland. I think I was expecting something else though. Most bottles of iced tea are overly sweet; at least the brands that I’ve had are. This one was not overly sweet and I should have known that from the “Lightly Sweetened” label at the top of the bottle. I mistook the lack of teeth-rotting sugary sweetness for a lack of flavor, but that isn’t the case. The tea is actually not bad. It is not the best quality tea but it definitely tastes like real tea. The more I drink it, the more I enjoy it. It is just sweet enough and there is no artificial flavor aftertaste. In fact, the aftertaste is that of tea and maybe a little bit of honey.

I wouldn’t suggest you run out to buy this but I would pick it up over the other iced tea options. After looking at the Snapple site, I noticed they have iced Earl Grey and Orange Pekoe as well. I’ll have to try them and report back. If you’ve tried them, I’m curious to know what you think.

*Image from Snapple.com

I think I’m drawn to the idea of butter tea because of my memories of my great grandmother who used to drink her tea along with Nabisco’s Royal Lunch Milk Crackers spread with butter. I will never forget the creamy taste of the tea with the oil slick of butter floating on the top after dunking the crackers. This was mandatory according to grammy. She wouldn’t agree with the idea of cutting out the middle man though. The buttery tea was a byproduct of dunking, you didn’t purposely put the butter in the tea.

Well, if you’re interested in making butter tea you might have trouble following traditional recipes since they call for yak butter. This version is updated to allow for local ingredients and modern “mixing” methods. Traditionally, the concoction is made in a churn but since I’ve retired my churn along with my cotton gin, a cocktail shaker will have to do.

Make a regular cup of unflavored black tea and put it in a mixer or a container with a tight fitting cover. (Please be careful when shaking hot beverages)
include a small pinch of salt, a teaspoon of butter, and some milk. Shake the tea, salt, butter and milk in the shaker for 15 seconds. This emulsifies the butter so that it doesn’t rise to the top of the tea and cause the butter slick I described above.

I’m very curious to hear what others think of this tea. There is no way to capture the true Tibetan Butter Tea flavor so I’m sure purists will find issue with the above recipe. However, if you have suggestions on how to improve on it, I would love to hear them. 

PG Tips was originally marketed as “Pre-Gest-Tea” in the 1930s and the grocers abbreviated the name to PG. The word tips in the name comes from the fact that the company only uses the top two leaves and a bud of the plant. The tea is packaged in pyramid shaped bags, allowing more room for the brewing tea to move around. The results after three-four minutes of steeping, a teaspoon of sugar and a splash of milk was excellent. The tea tasted great and wasn’t a bit bitter, acidic or distracting in any way, which is all I ask of a plain black tea. It sounds simple but it is very hard to find.   

I don’t think that PG Tips is available for sale in US grocery stores but it is available online from several sites, including Amazon and The English Tea Store.

There is no shortage of tea suppliers these days. A simple search online will result in dozens of online stores dedicated to all things tea. One of those online stores was introduced to me by a coworker via a coupon for $5 off my purchase. What a perfect way to get my attention. I figured I would visit the site, pick something interesting and pay very little for it. Adagio.com is a great site that offers a wide variety of teas and accessories for somewhat reasonable prices and allows Adagio tea drinkers to comment on the teas and rate them. The $5 coupon was a nice touch but I ended up spending a whole lot more than I expected. Shipping is free over a certain amount, thankfully.

I enjoy the site and reading the reviews but the more I read them the more I realized that, unless the review had some sort of taste description, they couldn’t possibly help me at all. The reviewers that said, this tea is great or what a wonderful flavor and things of that nature are pretty much useless. It was the reviewers that said the English Breakfast is unlike any English Breakfast tea you’ve ever had and it has a very strong smokey flavor. It was those reviews that made this feature worth it. Unless you know an individual’s taste in tea is the same as yours, a recommendation can be way off target. Knowing the English Breakfast tea was very smokey made me decide not to order that tea. I don’t enjoy smokey flavors in my tea. I’ve tried Lapsang Souchong, which is a smoked tea, and I decided that smoked flavor was not something I would look for in a tea.

If you do use the site, be sure to look for the taste descriptions from the reviewers. They helped me pick out a number of teas, including the Irish Breakfast, Ceylon, Assam, Grapefruit, golden needle, and Yunnan jig. My unsuspecting mother-in-law ordered the English Breakfast with the $5 coupon I sent her. The smokey flavor description was spot on. I tried some from the batch she received and it didn’t resemble anything I’ve ever tasted in an English Breakfast. The smokey flavor was very strong but there were also undertones of chocolate which I thought was pretty interesting. It’s not my cup of tea but it might be yours.

Give Adagio.com a shot. They offer small samples of many of their teas. It’s a great way to discover different flavors without committing yourself to a large batch.