Tea Comparisons

Short answer: if you drink English Breakfast with milk and want a smoother cup you can also enjoy black, try Gold Black Tea. English Breakfast is a blend built to stand up to milk and sugar. Gold Black is one tea from one certified organic farm in Ilam, Nepal: gentle malt, light caramel and honey, with no bitter edge when brewed as directed.

The question I hear most often from Canadian tea drinkers is a simple one: "I drink English Breakfast every morning. What should I try from you?" This is my honest answer. If you would rather taste a few of our teas side by side before you commit to a bag, the Taster Trio lets you pick any three 25g teas and takes $3 off automatically at checkout.

What is actually in a cup of English Breakfast?

English Breakfast is not a place. It is a recipe. It is usually described as a blend of black teas from Assam, Ceylon and Kenya, sometimes with Keemun in more expensive blends, and it is made to go well with milk and sugar. The flavour people expect is full-bodied, robust and rich.

That is a good thing to want at 7 a.m. The trade-off is that a blend is designed to taste the same from box to box, so you rarely know which garden your leaves came from, and it is meant to be softened with milk.

What is Gold Black Tea, and where does it come from?

Gold Black Tea (listed in our shop as Nepal Hills Organic Black Tea) comes from a single farm: Farmers Tea Co. in Malate, Ilam, at 5,500 ft. The farm is certified organic and is run by Dil Kumar Rai with about 150 farming families and young artisans. We buy from them directly, so every bag can be traced to that one hillside.

The leaf is a whole-leaf black tea with golden tips, from young leaves picked in the spring flush. In the cup you get gentle malt, light caramel and a honey sweetness, then a clean finish. It is the tea I hand to coffee drinkers first, because it is smooth enough to drink black.

How do they taste side by side?

Brew both the way you normally would and drink them black first, then with a splash of milk.

• English Breakfast: brisk, strong and full-bodied. Blended to be softened by milk and sugar.
• Gold Black: softer and rounder. Malt and caramel up front, honey in the middle, and a clean finish with no bitter grip on the tongue when you keep to the brewing time below.

With milk, the gap narrows. Gold Black still tastes sweeter and a little lighter, so if you like your morning tea very strong and milky, you may want our bolder option, which I cover further down.

If you are curious why whole-leaf tea tends to taste smoother than broken-leaf tea, I wrote about it in Why Orthodox Tea Tastes Smoother Than CTC.

How should I brew Gold Black so it is not bitter?

In my experience, a bitter cup almost always means too much leaf or too long in the pot. For Gold Black:

• Water at 90 to 95°C, just off the boil
• 2 to 3 g of leaf (about one heaped teaspoon) per 240 ml cup
• Steep 3 to 4 minutes, then take the leaves out

Drink it as it is, add milk if you like, or pour it over ice in summer. If you take your English Breakfast very strong, go to the full 4 minutes and the full 3 g rather than steeping longer.

Which size should an English Breakfast drinker buy?

It depends on how sure you are.

• Just trying it: the 50 g pouch is $20 CAD. At 10 to 12 cups per 25 g, that is roughly three weeks of one cup a day.
• Already a daily black tea drinker: the 180 g bag is $45 CAD and works out cheaper per cup than the 50 g pouch.
• Drinking it every morning, or for two people: the Black Tea Everyday Pack is five 50 g pouches of Gold Black (250 g) for $70 CAD, the best value per gram we offer for this tea.

What if I like my morning tea stronger than this?

Then look at Ruby Black Tea. It comes from Sandakphu Tea Estate, a certified organic farm on the Ilam and Taplejung border at 5,000 to 6,000 ft, and it is our boldest black tea: dark cherry, cocoa and a deep, velvety body. Ruby comes in a 25 g size, so you can put it in a Taster Trio and try it next to two other teas. I compared the two in more detail in Ruby Black vs Gold Black.

My own rule is simple. If you drink your breakfast tea black, or wish you could, start with Gold Black. If you need it strong enough to stand a spoon in, start with Ruby.

Questions people ask before switching

Can I drink Gold Black with milk like English Breakfast?

Yes. It takes milk well, though it is lighter than most breakfast blends, so add less than you usually would and taste before adding more.

How much caffeine is in Gold Black Tea?

Our product page estimates about 40 to 70 mg per 240 ml cup. The real number depends on how much leaf you use and how long you steep it.

How many cups is a 180 g bag?

At 10 to 12 cups per 25 g, a 180 g bag makes roughly 70 to 85 cups, which is two to three months of one cup a day.

Do you ship to the USA as well as Canada?

Yes. We ship across Canada and to the USA from Peterborough, Ontario, tracked by Canada Post or DHL. Shipping is free on orders over $60 CAD in Canada and over $60 USD in the USA; below that, you pay the carrier rate shown at checkout.

— Bhaskar Dahal, founder, Nepal Hills Tea