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We are still living in Covid times but lockdown easement has been continuing apace for these past few months. From the middle of May, Premier Inns once again flung open the doors of their compact, purple, nationally standardised bedrooms. I love a Premier Inn. This may have something to do with the fact that my boyfriend and I don’t live together and what with elderly parents and grown up children and stuff in our day to day living arrangements, we don’t stay the night at one another’s houses. Premier Inns are a handy bolthole where we can spend time together while appreciating a Premier Inn Hypnos® mattress, a big wall-mounted telly and a teeny tiny tea and coffee station. I’ve really missed it during lockdown.
Up until recently, Premier Inn’s in-bedroom teabag of choice was Twinings Everyday tea which I heartily approved of. But in 2020 – as they did in so many other ways – things changed.
Premier Inn now provides PG Tips teabags in its rooms instead. Originally I thought – in my couple of Premier Inn visits between first and second lockdown – that this might be a temporary anomaly. But sadly, no. It looks like PG Tips are here to stay.
This is a great pity, because PG Tips is, in fact, horrible.
On the bright side, this gives me the opportunity to review the nation’s favourite teabag for this here blog. It’s not like I was ever going to spend actual money on the stuff. I originally told myself that I was going to go into my PG Tips drinking experience with an open mind. But no, that’s clearly not going to happen. I am 47 years old. That means I’ve been drinking occasional cups of PG Tips for the last 40 years or so. Its ubiquitous nature means it’s frequently found in office kitchens, mother and toddler groups, AA meetings and other people’s houses. I already know I don’t like it.
This, however, is the first time that I’ve properly taken the time to figure out why.
A cup of PG Tips tastes simultaneously both too strong and too weak. It’s too strong because the bitter tannin taste gives it the flavour of tea that has been steeped half to death. If you allow the tea bag to infuse for more than 30 seconds then clumps of tea dust rise to the surface giving it an unnervingly mottled appearance. You can mitigate this by not allowing any steeping time at all and just bashing the tea bag about a bit with a spoon before adding the milk. And really, you might as well. Because bitter stewy taste aside, no matter how long you brew it for, the actual Camelia sinensis taste of this tea is always going to be underdeveloped.
It lacks the depth of flavour of other non PG Tips cups of tea. The quintessential tea taste that makes tea drinking such a joy simply isn’t there. It’s like eating carob instead of proper chocolate. It doesn’t have the oomph.
So why does PG Tips taste so bad? What makes cheap tea tastes cheap?
One of the factors that distinguishes quality teas from cheap teas is the size of the leaves. You’ll have heard me enthuse before about blends which unfold themselves into proper leaf-shaped leaves after steeping.
There are numerous tea leaf classifications which range from the likes of Tippy Golden Flowery Orange Pekoe at the top, down to ‘fannings’ and ‘dust’ at the bottom. Fannings are small crumbs of tea plant and dust is, well, dust. (‘Dust’ isn’t just a pejorative term that we tea snobs like to bandy about, it’s an actual tea classification that makes up the content of a lot of the off-the-shelf, low-end teas.)
The means in which the tea is processed important too. Your really pricey teas will have been laboriously plucked by hand, rolled out and oxidised over several days. Cheap tea employs the Cut Tear Curl (CTC) method, which is a mechanical process designed to get the leaves from from tea plants to teabag as quickly as possible. (There is a whole gradient of tea preparation process between the two.)
This isn’t the whole story though. It would be easy to say that CTC teas are bad and handpicked teas are good, but the CTC method is the world’s most common method of producing tea. It’s safe to say that many of the teas that I have enthusiastically reviewed on this website have been made that way.
I opened up three different tea bags – PG Tips, Twinings Everyday and Teapigs Everyday Brew in order to compare them. And while the Teapigs tea on the right, with its tiny rolled needles of dried tea leaves, is clearly in a different class, there is to the naked eye, no discernible difference between PG Tips (left) and Twinings Everyday, (middle). And yet Twinings tastes good and PG Tips doesn’t. Why is that?
I’m not denying that PG Tips tastes like it does because that’s how it’s intended to taste. Much like a McDonald’s hamburger, a cup of PG Tips should always taste the same regardless of where in the world you buy it, and the year in which it was manufactured. Like with fine wines, the taste of quality single-estate teas will vary from year to year depending on growing conditions and weather. Not so mass-market tea blends. Tea blenders will use different combinations and quantities of numerous teas in order to maintain a consistent taste.
So PG Tips flavour is exactly the flavour its blenders were after. Of course, this comes with the limitations of keeping one’s price point to under 2p per tea bag. This is going to necessitate a fairly relaxed “Yeah, this will do” attitude when it comes to tea quality.
The location in which your tea is grown is all important. The term ‘terroir‘ is used by wine connoisseurs and fancy tea folk when referring to an estate’s natural environment, soil, topography and climate. Some bits of the world – Darjeeling being the obvious example – are known for their ideal tea growing conditions. Tea is also grown in other places where the terroir fits firmly into the ‘it’ll do’ category. There are a whole swathes of South America and Africa given over to tea plantations whose focus is primarily economy and scale rather than flavour.
Cheap tea tastes cheap because it has to be cheap to make. That’s going to involve cutting corners and making compromises that other, more expensive, tea producers choose not to make.
All of this, I realise, is an extremely long winded version of a review which could have simply said “PG Tips: Not a fan”.
It’s also a lament about Premier Inn‘s new tea purchasing policy. I understand why they have made the decision to switch from Twinings to PG Tips. PG Tips is cheaper and it’s more popular. It is the Number One brand in the UK.
But, you know, in doing so I feel that they have put the wishes of the many ahead of the wishes of me personally, Em the Tea Fancier. And obviously, I think that was the wrong call.
I have used PG tips tea bags most of my life since You’ve changed the square bag they do not taste the same can you please tell me why
The new tea which you are using really isn’t nice, I have used pg tips for years and although I do understand everyone is out to save a few pence here and there it shouldn’t be at the expense of the excellent taste and the excellent reputation you have. I have read many comments and also listened to many friends who are in agreement that your new tea bag just isn’t up to standard and we are all looking for an alternative unless you are using your original tea in any of your other tea bags and I would willingly buy those. I think on this occasion you have dropped a boo boo and are going to loose a lot of custom. Many would gladly pay a little more for your original excellent cuppa I for one won’t be wasting my money on anymore of your tea bags while you continue to use this horrible foul tasting tea.
You do know I’m not PG Tips, right?
My last order of PG Tips is horribly disappointing. I usually purchase double 240 packages, or 480 bags at a time. The latest bags I’ve received taste nowhere near the way they used to taste. I’ve wasted time and money. One article I read said this was a new “improved” blend for faster steeping times. I think it’s just cost lowering at the expense of taste.
Hate to see this usually robust smooth tea take such a palative fail with it’s now tannin bitterness.
As a serious tea drinker as a kid in the early 60s all the way through im shocked at the change in taste, in quick summary the bio pyramid tea bags are producing that taste happy shopper achieved in early 80s with 500 in a bag deal , it needs fixing before you loose to many customers
I’ve been drinking PG Tips for as long as I can remember and tea is my drink, because I don’t like coffee. I was disappointed to find the boxes have reduced from 240 to 210 and I got a bit of a shock, when I opened the box and the teabag was square. I like to taste my tea, I don’t want it drowning in milk, but I don’t have the patience to wait 3 minutes for it to brew. I really like the new tea. The colour and flavour comes out quickly, so no waiting necessary and it’s a nice, flavoursome brew. You can keep your Twinings dishwater thank you very much, give me a proper brew.
When I’m forced to drink Twinings at a friends house it is such a disappointment. How did it get to be so popular one wonders!
I love PG Tips. I buy the 480 count boxes and run through about 8 bags daily.
I’m wondering about pesticides in this brand. I’ve read articles that condemn many popular brands. Tips is not mentioned.
Anyone know?