Has anyone tried PG Tips in either loose leaf or teabag? I heard it is one of the most popular brand in U.K.
Of course, it's not a premium tea, but I'm curious about everyone's opinion about it. For example, how is it compared to another well-known brand like Twinings? (Obviously, it has to be better than Lipton to be No. 1 brand in U.K...)
Feb 2nd, '09, 11:10
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Space Samurai
Different people, different palates I guess... I was raised on PG tips (literally, used to drink it very cool and weak from about the age of 3!) Apparently the first real words I ever strung together were "Tup [cup] of tea"Space Samurai wrote:vice versa for me.Jack_teachat wrote:As far as commonly availiable uk bagged tea goes, it is ok, but I would choose Yorkshire tea from Taylor's of Harrogate over it any day!
Then when I was about 13 my mum starting buying Yorkshire Tea, never looked back. Well until I joined this forum anyway!
Jack
Feb 2nd, '09, 12:32
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silvermage2000
Variable quality for both teas blends.
I've bought both on and off for couple decades. Used to be that both were highly dependable in their quality as everyday/breakfast teas.
Last 4-5 years, however, the quality has slid in both; last couple of times that I purchased these teas, they sucked. Neither were close to their expiration date.
PG Tips has almost no real body and is easily overcome by the addition of milk and sugar, and yet without them, it's hard to drink period, unless you're hardcore or have damaged your palate (smoking, highly acidic foods, etc).
Taylors of Harrowgate Yorkshire series (Red, Gold, etc) used to be considered a premium grocery store tea because you could find it in teabags and looseleaf tins. I found that it's easy to overbrew and can be bitter, but it has more balanced flavor and body than PG Tips. Tastes much better in the loose leaf form than in teabags.
When you see a company mixing 20 teas together for a 'signature blend', it smacks of being a tad deceitful, where many low quality teas are mixed and the company relies on mediocre general quality to mask subpar/uneven quality of a subset of the component teas.
As local demand for quality teas has risen with economic wealth of the tea producing regions, so has the tendency for REALLY crappy teas to be passed off as quality product by overseas distributors and large commercial tea manufacturers in the West.
My gut feeling is that grocery store teas taste worse now than ever before because 'just in time delivery' means that the teas will be warehoused like nonperishable stock and sold by retailers without regard to freshness/quality.
The decade-long revitalization of the coffee retail market and the offerings in the supermarkets are a stellar example of this issue.
Take my local Safeway store. They now carry not one, but three distributor lines of freshly roasted coffees sold in bulk bins. Each line has 12-20 single estate or blended coffees in whole bean form, and they take up about a third of one side of a long isle.
The teas and tisanes are all boxed teabags, take up a bit over 5 feet of shelf space on one side of an isle. They are nearly all flavored with a major emphasis on health qualities in the packaging, with the exceptions being the low grade fannings (Red Rose, Twinings, Lipton) that sat in large boxes on the very bottom shelf.
Nary a loose leaf tea in sight. Of the boxes that had an expiration date, it was typically 6 months off. Some top shelf teas had sat so long the boxes had faded from the fluorescent lighting. I couldn't find a difference in green and black tea bag box expiration dates.
The pre-ground/canned coffees were, inexplicably, on the other side of the teas on the same isle, occupying about twice the shelf space of the teas. Each was dated and these are, without exception, vacuumed packed in large cans.
So I don't think the grocery stores are very concerned about either tea quality or packaging appropriateness (shelf life maintenance).
From discussions with management, it's obvious that the large coffee and tea grocery store distributors aren't paying for much shelf space and so they are immune to consumer demand for better tea.
You get what you get because the majority of the consumer are women with very little exposure to the 'real thing', happy to have a dozen or more highly doctored (flavored) green and black teas made with the very lowest grade commercial teas that make them feel sophisticated next to their Coke- and Pepsi-swilling friends.
It's really pitiful that PG Tips and Taylors of Harrowgate and their ilk are a GIANT step up from the typical crap sold here as bagged tea. You can't buy them locally - they are sourced online or found in specialty shops (imports/teas & coffees).
Last 4-5 years, however, the quality has slid in both; last couple of times that I purchased these teas, they sucked. Neither were close to their expiration date.
PG Tips has almost no real body and is easily overcome by the addition of milk and sugar, and yet without them, it's hard to drink period, unless you're hardcore or have damaged your palate (smoking, highly acidic foods, etc).
Taylors of Harrowgate Yorkshire series (Red, Gold, etc) used to be considered a premium grocery store tea because you could find it in teabags and looseleaf tins. I found that it's easy to overbrew and can be bitter, but it has more balanced flavor and body than PG Tips. Tastes much better in the loose leaf form than in teabags.
When you see a company mixing 20 teas together for a 'signature blend', it smacks of being a tad deceitful, where many low quality teas are mixed and the company relies on mediocre general quality to mask subpar/uneven quality of a subset of the component teas.
As local demand for quality teas has risen with economic wealth of the tea producing regions, so has the tendency for REALLY crappy teas to be passed off as quality product by overseas distributors and large commercial tea manufacturers in the West.
My gut feeling is that grocery store teas taste worse now than ever before because 'just in time delivery' means that the teas will be warehoused like nonperishable stock and sold by retailers without regard to freshness/quality.
The decade-long revitalization of the coffee retail market and the offerings in the supermarkets are a stellar example of this issue.
Take my local Safeway store. They now carry not one, but three distributor lines of freshly roasted coffees sold in bulk bins. Each line has 12-20 single estate or blended coffees in whole bean form, and they take up about a third of one side of a long isle.
The teas and tisanes are all boxed teabags, take up a bit over 5 feet of shelf space on one side of an isle. They are nearly all flavored with a major emphasis on health qualities in the packaging, with the exceptions being the low grade fannings (Red Rose, Twinings, Lipton) that sat in large boxes on the very bottom shelf.
Nary a loose leaf tea in sight. Of the boxes that had an expiration date, it was typically 6 months off. Some top shelf teas had sat so long the boxes had faded from the fluorescent lighting. I couldn't find a difference in green and black tea bag box expiration dates.
The pre-ground/canned coffees were, inexplicably, on the other side of the teas on the same isle, occupying about twice the shelf space of the teas. Each was dated and these are, without exception, vacuumed packed in large cans.
So I don't think the grocery stores are very concerned about either tea quality or packaging appropriateness (shelf life maintenance).
From discussions with management, it's obvious that the large coffee and tea grocery store distributors aren't paying for much shelf space and so they are immune to consumer demand for better tea.
You get what you get because the majority of the consumer are women with very little exposure to the 'real thing', happy to have a dozen or more highly doctored (flavored) green and black teas made with the very lowest grade commercial teas that make them feel sophisticated next to their Coke- and Pepsi-swilling friends.
It's really pitiful that PG Tips and Taylors of Harrowgate and their ilk are a GIANT step up from the typical crap sold here as bagged tea. You can't buy them locally - they are sourced online or found in specialty shops (imports/teas & coffees).
Re: Variable quality for both teas blends.
In Texas, there is a large number of Fiesta store, where they have lots of selections of international foods which includes British stuffs, which has some Twinings Loose Leaf as well as PG Tips Teabags and Loose Leaf. I'm going to definitely try PG Tips to see how it is a step up from other major brands.Intuit wrote:I've bought both on and off for couple decades. Used to be that both were highly dependable in their quality as everyday/breakfast teas.
Last 4-5 years, however, the quality has slid in both; last couple of times that I purchased these teas, they sucked. Neither were close to their expiration date.
PG Tips has almost no real body and is easily overcome by the addition of milk and sugar, and yet without them, it's hard to drink period, unless you're hardcore or have damaged your palate (smoking, highly acidic foods, etc).
Taylors of Harrowgate Yorkshire series (Red, Gold, etc) used to be considered a premium grocery store tea because you could find it in teabags and looseleaf tins. I found that it's easy to overbrew and can be bitter, but it has more balanced flavor and body than PG Tips. Tastes much better in the loose leaf form than in teabags.
When you see a company mixing 20 teas together for a 'signature blend', it smacks of being a tad deceitful, where many low quality teas are mixed and the company relies on mediocre general quality to mask subpar/uneven quality of a subset of the component teas.
As local demand for quality teas has risen with economic wealth of the tea producing regions, so has the tendency for REALLY crappy teas to be passed off as quality product by overseas distributors and large commercial tea manufacturers in the West.
My gut feeling is that grocery store teas taste worse now than ever before because 'just in time delivery' means that the teas will be warehoused like nonperishable stock and sold by retailers without regard to freshness/quality.
The decade-long revitalization of the coffee retail market and the offerings in the supermarkets are a stellar example of this issue.
Take my local Safeway store. They now carry not one, but three distributor lines of freshly roasted coffees sold in bulk bins. Each line has 12-20 single estate or blended coffees in whole bean form, and they take up about a third of one side of a long isle.
The teas and tisanes are all boxed teabags, take up a bit over 5 feet of shelf space on one side of an isle. They are nearly all flavored with a major emphasis on health qualities in the packaging, with the exceptions being the low grade fannings (Red Rose, Twinings, Lipton) that sat in large boxes on the very bottom shelf.
Nary a loose leaf tea in sight. Of the boxes that had an expiration date, it was typically 6 months off. Some top shelf teas had sat so long the boxes had faded from the fluorescent lighting. I couldn't find a difference in green and black tea bag box expiration dates.
The pre-ground/canned coffees were, inexplicably, on the other side of the teas on the same isle, occupying about twice the shelf space of the teas. Each was dated and these are, without exception, vacuumed packed in large cans.
So I don't think the grocery stores are very concerned about either tea quality or packaging appropriateness (shelf life maintenance).
From discussions with management, it's obvious that the large coffee and tea grocery store distributors aren't paying for much shelf space and so they are immune to consumer demand for better tea.
You get what you get because the majority of the consumer are women with very little exposure to the 'real thing', happy to have a dozen or more highly doctored (flavored) green and black teas made with the very lowest grade commercial teas that make them feel sophisticated next to their Coke- and Pepsi-swilling friends.
It's really pitiful that PG Tips and Taylors of Harrowgate and their ilk are a GIANT step up from the typical crap sold here as bagged tea. You can't buy them locally - they are sourced online or found in specialty shops (imports/teas & coffees).
Feb 2nd, '09, 14:50
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silverneedles
"In Texas, there are a large number of Fiesta stores that have a selection of lots of international foods that includes British items like Twinings Loose Leaf "
The loose tea is very finely divided tea (very fine leaf/fannings). However, it's very popular where it's available, so it may be worth a try.
SN and I agree: take a pass on the PG.
The loose tea is very finely divided tea (very fine leaf/fannings). However, it's very popular where it's available, so it may be worth a try.
SN and I agree: take a pass on the PG.
Feb 2nd, '09, 17:17
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Space Samurai