English Breakfast

Sipdown (122)!

I just realized that all in all I had a pretty great, and unintentional, sipdown Saturday!

This review is for Mosaic Tea & Coffee Company…

… Who generously sent me this sample to review so they could determine whether or not to pursue Compassion Tea Company as a supplier!

For this review, you get the added ‘bonus’ of not just my opinion but my roommate Shauna’s since I split the large pot of this that I made today with her as well. I would definitely call myself a more experience/invested tea drinker and she’s certainly a casual/novice tea drinker so you get the ‘best of both worlds’ (not to sound arrogant) this time!

Personally, when I’m drinking English Breakfast I’m looking for a few different things: the first of which is a strong, brisk flavour that kind of slaps you in the face. This IS a breakfast tea after all and you really do need something to jump start your day. Secondly, I like an English Breakfast with a strong malty flavour. To me that’s kind of a signature note in English Breakfast. And third, it has to be able to take milk or cream well because while that’s not something I personally always add to my tea it’s something that MOST do (if not sugar/honey as well). So just going through those criteria point by point…

1. This tea definitely had a strong very full bodied and brisk flavour overall. It wasn’t the smoothest base which is definitely something I observed from Compassion’s Earl Grey as well but I would argue that in an English Breakfast that’s not necessarily the most important thing because you really do want something BOLD and any over the top astringency CAN be ‘corrected’ with milk/creamer anyway. Shauna, as well, observed that this was quite strong. I think she may have made the all too common mistake of calling astringency bitterness though, because she said this was bitter and I definitely got lots of astringency but NOT bitterness. Those two things are NOT the same, but it IS something often and easily confused by people…

2. Yes to the malt! In addition to a sort of baked bread type of note, the primary flavour I noticed was DEFINITELY malt. Which is what I feel it SHOULD be.

3. Ok, so I didn’t actually add any milk to my tea because I don’t have any milk right now. However, Shauna had milk (we don’t share groceries, and while she offered to lend me some I know better than to fall in that rabbit hole and lose out on some of my own groceries in the future) and she added some to HER cups. So really, I can only convey her thoughts on this tea with milk added. And basically, that boils down to the fact she absolutely enjoyed this better with milk added in. Just judging from the plain cups I had, I can see why: this tea is full bodied enough that it could easily take milk well and I think it probably really softened the astringency she was feeling.

Overall; I have mixed opinions of this company’s offerings just judging on the three teas I sampled for Mosaic Tea & Coffee: I REALLY enjoyed my session with the Ti Kuan Yin I had today but both my pot of Earl Grey and my English Breakfast today left a little to be desired and were kind of just run of the mill. I don’t know if the trend there is the black base but I have a slight gut feeling that it MIGHT be. That said, neither of the two tasted bad per say and I do believe both the black blends are also available in sachet form and if that’s something that Mosaic pursues I think it’ll probably open them up a lot more towards casual tea drinkers who like the idea of not just drinking tea but doing good by drinking tea.

And on that note, you DO have to take into account the good that Compassion does. Literally 100% of their profits go towards offering medical aid AND education to the less fortunate in Africa and that’s a pretty damn compelling reason to want to support from Compassion Tea and use them as a supplier…

Regardless, I hope I’ve been a help to Mosaic Tea & Coffee in reviewing these teas for them and helping them to pick out a supplier. If you haven’t checked them out already you really should do so because what they’re doing in providing on the job training for adults with disabilities is really quite phenomenal and I had a fantastic time drinking tea on their behalf. I think most people here on Steepster can really get behind what they’re doing.

http://mosaictea.com/