Yawn – Ya Brews Mashin
Ya Brews Mashin is a Yorkshire-inspired tea from Yawn, a tea and coffee merchant based in the Peak district, a good 70 miles from Yorkshire. Its name roughly translates to “Your tea is currently infusing” in Southern, and is impossible to say without affecting a cod-Yorkshire accent that’s offensive to anyone north of Woking, probably.
This tea isn’t brewed in Yorkshire. It obviously isn’t grown there. (It’s grown in “India / Kenya / China”, according to the website. Basically, all the main places they grow tea.) So, what makes this tea especially Yorkshirey?
You already know the answer to that one. It is, of course, a dark, robust, extra-strength no-messing-about brew compared to the presumably namby-pamby English Breakfast blends favoured further South.
Why do Northerners apparently favour a stronger brew? It can’t be the water, surely. Every mile I move further away from the south-east of England affords me nicer water than the so-hard-you-could-smash-it-with-a-hammer water I get at home. I bet it’s lovely and soft in Yorkshire. Any Yorkshirewoman’s bottle of shampoo probably lasts months longer than mine does. If anything, people in London should favour the strongest, most densely flavoured teas if only to mask the copious amounts of limescale that come free with every kettleful of tap water.
Is it a machismo thing? Do Yorkshire folk like to have everything stronger than average? Are their curries hotter, their mustard mustardier, and their salt-and-vinegar crisps saltier and more vinegary?
I’m not sure how accurate the southerners-as-softies stereotype is. I’m soft as butter, obviously, but I don’t want to speak for other Southerners’ tea preferences. While Ya Brews Mashin might be too strong for my tastes, Danny Dyer, for example, might really like it.
Yawn Brew have a whole range of region-specific tea blends, including London, Steel City and Scottish Breakfast blends. They also have a bunch of the sort of whimsical tea-and-other-stuffs that we like here at Tea Fancier Towers. Chocolate Cake! Gingerbread! Ice Cream Earl Grey! Now, we’re talking.
I came into possession of this tea through fortuitous happenstance, and while it’s nice enough and I’m happy to drink it, there is a world of Yawn blends out there that would cater far better to my specific set of tea requirements. Yawn may have underwhelmed me with Ya Brews Mashin, but you know, this could well be the beginning of a beautiful friendship.
Today’s book pairing is My Turn to Make the Tea by Monica Dickens.
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