Celestial Seasonings Keurig Tea Double Feature

My wife and I bought my parents a Keurig coffee machine for Christmas last year, and that thing is awesome.  You put one of the little K-cups in, press the button, and within seconds, fairly high quality coffee is shooting out.  I don't know exactly how they work; I assume high pressure water like an espresso machine, but Keurig's website is not exactly forthcoming.  It tastes too good to be instant coffee, and magic coffee elves seems probably a bit too far fetched.

We also have two of these machines in our breakroom at work, since a highly caffeinated employee is a productive one.  We have quite a large selection of K-cups, including English Breakfast tea and generic green tea from Celestial Seasonings.  Now, Celestial Seasonings, available in every grocery store I've ever been in, actually makes some nice herbal teas.  Their Sleepytime blend, with spearmint and chamomile, may not actually induce sleep, but is a pretty pleasant and relaxing cup.  I don't exactly hold their tea in high esteem though, and I had doubts at the very concept of tea in K-cups.  I mean, you can quick-brew coffee pretty effectively by raising the water pressure and forcing it through the grounds...as I noted above, this is how espresso machines work, and I'm pretty sure this is the principal at work in the Keurig, too, but I can't really see how this would work with tea.  Tea requires a long steep for the cup to fully brew, unless the tea K-cups are simply packets of instant tea (a strong possibility, as we'll see).  Why try something I strongly suspect will be terrible?  I get bored at work...

So, prep couldn't be easier.  Take K-Cup, place into Keurig machine, select cup size, and press button.  Within seconds, "tea" begins pouring out.  I can't help but be reminded of the scene in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, when Arthur Dent tries to get the food replicator to produce a cup of tea, and ends up with a cup of brown liquid, "almost, but not entirely unlike a cup of tea."

Up first, English Breakfast tea!  The liquid comes out a normal reddish brown color, but smells rather off.  Sort of faintly tea-like, like a cup that had been in the same cupboard as proper tea for a few weeks.  After letting it cool for a few minutes and adding a splash of milk and sugar, I took my first, bold sip.  This is quite possibly the worst tea I've ever had.  It's weak, very nearly tasteless, and what taste is there is unpleasant...bitter, but not in nice "cup of tea" way, more like in a bad "scary and unnatural chemical" way.  Is this just instant tea?  Survey says "probably"...in fact, I sort of hope so, since I'd feel bad if real tea tasted this abysmal.  Score:  F

Because I sacrifice my own safety and taste buds in the name of tea writing and science (and I get bored at work) I went ahead and tried the K-cup green tea as well.  The label shouts "blended with white tea for smoothness!" and I'm trying to imagine hand picked and sun dried white tea being ground up and put in this K-cup.  I guess white tea has dust leftover from sorting too.  Surprisingly, though, the green tea isn't quite as bad as the English Breakfast.  While it's nowhere near a good cup of green tea, it at least tastes somewhat like the stuff.  There are really no nuances of flavor, but I'd say it's no worse a cup than the generic green teabags you might find in the grocery store.  Still, I'd only make a cup of this if all other options were exhausted and I really wanted a cup of tea.  Score:  D-

Harney and Sons English Breakfast

I've encountered teas from Harney and Sons from time to time, and always thought to myself, "What a nice, proper English tea company."  Harney and Sons it turns out is based just over the border in New York, and is about as English as, well, apple pie.  They are however, a great company, with a lot of blends, both traditional and rather innovative, by the looks of it.  I've only had a few of their blends thus far:  the Queen Catherine, and the subject of today's review, their English Breakfast.  Now, a while back, in a discussion of breakfast teas, I noted that while today most English Breakfast teas heavily feature Assam, there are some "fancy" blends that are composed solely of Keemun, a Chinese black tea, often known for a wine or fruit taste.  As it turns out, English Breakfast  blended from Keemun teas is in fact much more traditional, and probably dates from before Indian teas were featured so heavily in Britain.  Harney and Sons English Breakfast is just such a blend, giving me the opportunity to try something both traditional and new to me.

The tea itself is high quality loose leaf tea.  I'm always impressed with Chinese black teas, and this is no exception.  Though they tend to be a bit less forgiving than Indian teas, I find Chinese black teas to have some really unique and clean flavors.  I made a single cup of this over the weekend, using the old tea ball:  a rounded teaspoon's worth of English Breakfast in the tea ball, freshly boiling water, steep for about 4 minutes, add a splash of milk, and ready to go.  As a breakfast blend, I suspect this would play well enough with sugar, but I don't find it necessary myself.

As I've noted somewhere before, the Keemun I've had had a strong, unique taste, reminiscent of a dry red wine or roasted fruit.  What then, would a breakfast tea made up solely of Keemun taste like?  Surprisingly, a lot like most other English Breakfast blends I've had, with a sort of crisp, biscuit-like note to the flavor, suggestive maybe of buttered toast.  I will say this has a far cleaner, more refined flavor profile than cheaper blends that I've had in the past.  There's no muddiness here, just a clean, fairly bright mouthfeel, with the faintest hint of smoke that lingers through a moderate and pleasant finish.  There's only some mild astringency, but nothing to pucker the mouth or dry out the tongue.  I don't know that I'd make this a goto for my morning mug anytime soon, but it's definitely a great tea, worthy of the occasional cup.  It also goes to show, I have an awful lot to discover about Keemun...reviews to come someday.  Score:  90 (A-)