Does the US get worse tea?

January 31, 2016 9:31 AM

Do tea purveyors give worse tea to the US market (versus, e.g., the UK) or are other factors at play?

When I lived in the UK, I loved drinking PG Tips. When I returned to the US, the local PG Tips seemed a little different. More broadly, there seems to be a broader belief on the Internet (Amazon is filled with reviewers disappointed that they got the US version of PG Tips) that certain (Unilever?) brands like Lipton and PG Tips are different in different countries. On the other hand, it seems like it could just be environmental factors like climate or a general worsening of the brands involved.

What's the real deal? Is the US getting the tea dregs under the same brands? Should I be looking for somewhere that ships UK versions of my favorite tea? Or is this just a tempest in a teapot?

posted by pbh to Food & Drink (35 answers total)

It's not the PG Tips that are different, it's the water you're brewing them in.
posted by DarlingBri at 9:34 AM on January 31, 2016 [9 favorites]

Water is a factor, but it is true that Lipton is blended differently for different markets and I have a suspicion that IF the PG Tips we get in the US isn't manufactured specifically for/in the US, it is the stalest stock that gets shipped to the US for distribution. Because every time I've bought it here, it's been pretty gross, and a Scottish friend backed up my impression.

I get Yorkshire Gold from Amazon and am pretty satisfied with it. I've considered trying an order of Yorkshire Hard Water to compare, though I never had it in the UK and the water where I live now isn't brutally hard.
posted by Lyn Never at 9:48 AM on January 31, 2016 [3 favorites]

Just to rule out the obvious, you're still boiling the water now you're back home, right? At most a few seconds off of being 100 °C. Nothing less will do for black tea. This is the big difference between black tea served in the UK, and in the US, where warm water from a samovar with a tea bag on the side seems common even in hip coffee shops.

That said, I wouldn't be surprised if a box of PG Tips bought in the US has sat in Amazon warehouses on on a sad shelf in the back corner of a Target for too long.

I'm British and I live in the US. I bring over tea, or have visitors bring it. Yorkshire Gold from Amazon US is fine though, in my experience.
posted by caek at 10:11 AM on January 31, 2016 [7 favorites]

So PG Tips is not that great in the world of tea either. It's the same broken leaves to dust that you get on most commercial tea bags. That said, the US version is probably made for the US market and may have a different blend or taste profile. US Twinnings is fine. US Red Rose seems fine the time I bought it.

And as DarlingBri says, water makes a big difference depending how hard/soft/whatever your local water is.
posted by GuyZero at 10:24 AM on January 31, 2016 [2 favorites]

I think it might be blended differently, but also freshness comes into play. For whatever mysterious reason, if you order Barry's tea on Amazon Prime in the US, they will ship it straight from the Barry's factory in Ireland, with its own little customs form and all. I am delighted by this and the tea must be fresher than the dusty box in the "import" isle at the grocery store.
posted by chocotaco at 10:28 AM on January 31, 2016 [6 favorites]

Lipton Yellow Label is weak sauce here in Sweden, I use three bags in a cup when I have to. I had a decent cup at the airport once and when I looked at the bag again it was marked "export". I bring tea from Ireland for lack of a decent bag tea here.
posted by Iteki at 10:30 AM on January 31, 2016 [1 favorite]

Anecdata but I noticed UK tea being much better too, even just the average priced stuff stuff, and my aunt came back from India with generic tea bags and yet the quality was so much better. So my impression was always that UK and India gets the full leaves and we North Americans get the broken up stale tea leaf dust in our tea bags.
posted by St. Peepsburg at 10:33 AM on January 31, 2016 [1 favorite]

Best answer: I mostly agree with DarlingBri but given that many of the answers so far here are just speculation, I'll go ahead and test this empirically.

I live in the UK but am in the US this week. I'll try and pick up a box of PG Tips here and take it back. Then, using the same water, environment, etc. do a blind taste test with my wife who is an avid tea drinker.
posted by vacapinta at 10:33 AM on January 31, 2016 [123 favorites]

I live in the UK but am in the US this week. I'll try and pick up a box of PG Tips here and take it back. Then, using the same water, environment, etc. do a blind taste test with my wife who is an avid tea drinker.

Very excited for the results of this. Do keep us informed!
posted by crazy with stars at 10:34 AM on January 31, 2016 [2 favorites]

I have been drinking Bee and Flower jasmine for 45 years. I noticed both a green and a blue can at the Asian market. They didn't know the difference and just went with the green can for inventory. At home I noticed it is not as good as the blue. Busting out my magnifying glass, I readnthat the green can is their #2 tea and the Blue can is the product. So I told the old guy about it and showed him how the blue is the best Jasmine they sell, and the green is third or fourth in quality to others on his shelves.
posted by Oyéah at 10:38 AM on January 31, 2016 [1 favorite]

From subjective experience: Lipton in the US is just terrible and the exemplar of 'how America fails at tea'. PG Tips, Yorkshire Tea and Tetley's British Blend (in bags) are pretty much the same as their UK equivalent -- and Barry's to its Irish equivalent -- but they're still bagged dust-grade functional tea for people who drink six cups of tea a day. Given that their primary market is expat Brits and Britophiles, they can't get away with selling obviously lower-grade tea. However, the turnover rate on the shelves of US supermarkets is much longer than you'll see in the UK, which I'm sure has some impact.

The CTC loose-leaf tea you'll find in various ethnic grocery stores serving tea-drinking cultures (eastern European, south Asian, Middle Eastern, east African, etc.) is often higher quality 'builders' tea' at a lower price tag than the British imports.
posted by holgate at 10:53 AM on January 31, 2016 [2 favorites]

Data point: Barry's Tea is made in Ireland. The boxes exported to the US so you can all pay $8.50 for a box is the exact same tea that is sold here. When I bring a box home to my mother (because I pay the equivalent of $3.50 for it here) it tastes different in her house than it does in mine because it is not being brewed with Irish water.

Data point: Those of you saying that UK brands are made with whole leaves and boxes exported to the US are made with floor sweepings are mad as brushes. Tea in supermarket-grade bagged and boxed tea is made from fannings and is already floor sweepings. Whole leaf tea is high-grade tea and is sold as loose leaf tea to be brewed in a pot with an infuser. (Or just thrown in the pot without an infuser, if you rock it old school Irish granny style.)
posted by DarlingBri at 11:02 AM on January 31, 2016 [4 favorites]

Response by poster: These answers are great! I am especially curious about:

1. empirical evidence like vacapinta's blind taste test and hal_c_on's photographs and
2. good US available alternatives in the same style (I've had some random loose leaf English breakfast teas but not been wowed by them).

The alternative explanations are also interesting: we have mildly hard water here (but not anything that would produce limescale or anything) and I expect that supermarket and/or Amazon turnover would be much lower, so those both seem plausible to me.
posted by pbh at 11:09 AM on January 31, 2016

Can confirm the difference in PG Tips between US & NZ. In fact, did not know I even liked black until the first time I visited NZ.

For black tea in the US, we buy an Indian brand from the Indian market. It's here on Amazon. It's called Mumtaz, which the husband says is Arabic for "excellent." We certainly like it!
posted by jbenben at 11:11 AM on January 31, 2016 [1 favorite]

I have no cite, but I'm pretty sure someone told me or I researched that PG Tips, specifically, is different for different markets. This is certainly true for other food products, and I may be conflating things when it comes to the tea issue. The idea, if I'm not making this up, is that Americans don't know any better and the lowest quality is sold to us.
posted by jbenben at 11:16 AM on January 31, 2016 [1 favorite]

I have a special affinity to Lipton Orange Pekoe, but it does taste remarkably different in the UK. I think it's a stereotype of American sensitivity to spices, which calls into why American versions of international foods are blander in comparison. I would not be surprised to find that tea for the American market is roasted longer than tea for Europe or Asia.
posted by parmanparman at 12:41 PM on January 31, 2016

No, the lowest quality PG Tips is sold to Canada. The PG Tips I had in Colorado was a revelation.
posted by maudlin at 12:45 PM on January 31, 2016 [2 favorites]

I have a friend who works in the tea industry in India and she said that yes, the stuff imported to the US definitely isn't the best quality, mainly because (unlike with other tea-drinking markets) by and large Americans don't have enough exposure to tea to be able to tell the good stuff.
posted by Tamanna at 1:44 PM on January 31, 2016 [2 favorites]

I can confirm that Tetley's (like PG Tips, but better) sells both a standard and a "British" blend in the US. The British blend is standard in Canada and the UK, but is described as being stronger than the standard American blend (which I can confirm is true). It also sells at a (slight) premium.

Also: the British blend comes in the familiar round teabags, while the American one comes in those strange triangular bags with the tag on them.
posted by jb at 1:54 PM on January 31, 2016 [1 favorite]

The reason given for the difference is that Americans generally prefer weaker tea; the British blend is presumably for those who don't, and expats like me.
posted by jb at 1:55 PM on January 31, 2016

You can get UK produced PG Tips in the US. Here's one place.

I'm a fan of the tea from the Australian company Madura, which is available in the US. (Memail me if you want me to send you a couple of bags to try out.)
posted by gudrun at 2:24 PM on January 31, 2016 [1 favorite]

This is me. I could not make a decent cup of tea at my old place. Tea that tasted great overseas just fell flat. Even Twinings tasted better at other peoples houses in other states. So it was either the water or my Victorian-era water pipes. Or the milk. I just discovered that a hotel I stay out which has wonderful tea and friends laughed when I said it was Lipton Yellow Label, turns out the milk was either evaporated in the tin or long life, not fresh.

At my new place, same water source but newer pipes and I discovered that the nearby supermarket sells Yorkshire Gold so my tea drinking experience has improved immensely. I think I'll try it out with evaporated milk next.
posted by TWinbrook8 at 5:40 PM on January 31, 2016

This may explain why I prefer Yorkshire Tea to PG Tips. According to Amazon it is a product of the U.K.
posted by O9scar at 7:37 PM on January 31, 2016 [1 favorite]

I did this taste test not long ago! I had PG Tips sold here in the US, as well as from a box that was shipped over from England. There is a very clear difference. The US version took much longer to steep to the same strength (3-4 min in stead of 1-2) and tasted far more astringent because of that. It was also less flavorful. It's not the quantity of tea in the bags, though, the UK version is not twice as full. I doubt that the US one was just stale...it also seemed like a quality/grade issue.
posted by ananci at 8:03 PM on January 31, 2016 [3 favorites]

In my experience it has to do with the fact that the US isn't a tea drinking culture.

There aren't a lot of brands of (black, English-style) tea available in the US. Until recently it was basically only Lipton. Now there are 4-5 widely available brands (I'd say Twinings, Tazo/whatever Starbucks sells, Tetley, PG Tips, and Red Rose). You definitely don't see the selection that Britain has. I've never seen Yorkshire Gold in an American store.

The British imported teas that are available in the US are, from what I gather, the Budweiser or McDonald's of British teas. But since America isn't a tea culture, most Americans really don't know whether these imported brands are any good or not. It's sort of like a decade or so ago when Stella Artois beer hit the states and it was The Hotness for a couple years before more interesting European beers started to hit the US market and everyone realized Stella is boring garbage.

The more obscure British-style black teas are only sold in import stores in major cities, and as such probably sit on the shelves and get old.

FWIW (as an American who knows the right way to brew British style tea), I actually don't find a huge difference in an American cup brewed with Twinings English Breakfast or something similarly easy to find/high turnover and stuff like Barry's or Yorkshire Gold brought over from the UK by a friend. I think freshness plays a HUGE role, as well as sort of a placebo effect from "prestige" British brands that might not actually be all that special.
posted by Sara C. at 10:50 PM on January 31, 2016

Yes, I can vouch for the fact that the box of Tetley I bought here in Canada were terrible tasting (compared to tea in Malaysia). At the time, I thought I had just bought a dud (it tasted like there was bitter mold on it or something), and from then on have always stuck to herbal teas and green tea. However, this thread makes me think otherwise...
posted by kinoeye at 10:57 PM on January 31, 2016

Anecdata from my (American, but way Anglophile tea-drinking wife) is that the US versions are definitely weaker and less tasty than UK market tea bags. I have to stock up for her every time I go back to the UK.

That's for making at home, though, with tea bags matched to the relative hardness of the water as well. But tea bought over US counters is invariably awful because it's made with water that's off the boil. That makes a big difference too.
posted by DangerIsMyMiddleName at 11:38 PM on January 31, 2016

I'm glad Vacapinta is giving you an experimental answer to your question about PG Tips. By way of an additional data point, I did the similar experiment with a different tea -- specifically, Rishi jasmine pearls.

I took a tin of of it with me on my recent travels, and I found that it tasted fantastic when I brewed it in Santa Monica, CA, and mediocre when I brewed it in Rancho Mirage, CA. Then when I brought it back to London, it tasted very good, although not quite as good as in Santa Monica.

In each case, I was trying to brew it at the same temperature and for the same length of time, although I wasn't using the same thermometer to calibrate brew temperature, so there may have been some variation there as well.

I did a little googling, and the average water hardness in Santa Monica is 123 ppm, whereas in my part of London it's 237ppm.

All I could find regarding hardness in Rancho Mirage is that it's in a wide area where the hardness ranges from 17ppm to 350ppm. It's tempting to assume that it is on the high end of that, because that would let us draw a neat graph of water hardness vs tea quality -- but I don't have the evidence to do that, and of course, there are a lot of other minerals and/or chemicals in the water that might be affecting the taste.
posted by yankeefog at 1:50 AM on February 1, 2016 [3 favorites]

Should I be looking for somewhere that ships UK versions of my favorite tea?

Try digging around at ratetea.com?

I was going to handwave about buying a Brita, but filtration systems work or don't work, depending.
posted by sebastienbailard at 2:13 AM on February 1, 2016

I just buy my tea looseleaf in the US. There is an expat in Chicago who opened a tea store ( Todd and Holland) which I am no way affiliated with except it changed my tea drinking life.

I really think the US sells crap tea because the market here really doesn't care. I didn't care until my 20s when I discovered tea.

Lipton is it for most Americans.

Poor souls.
posted by AlexiaSky at 7:53 AM on February 1, 2016 [2 favorites]

In the U.S., try looking for "iced tea" varieties of bagged tea. They're blended to brew strong because proper southern iced tea is meant to be mixed with ice, which brings the tea down to a dilution level Americans are used to. Lauzanne tea, mostly sold in the American southeast, is the go-to, but Lipton's also has an iced tea version that ought to be more broadly available. Since iced tea is usually meant to be served highly sweetened, the blends might be sharper or harsher than you'd like. But experimenting will be cheap.

Sam Smith's is based in Portland, OR and makes a variety of teas which are some of the best I've ever had, much better than many loose leaf varieties that haven't come from specialty shops. They're spendy, though; expect to find them at $0.80-1.00 per bag prices, although one bag is usually good for a whole pot.
posted by ardgedee at 10:14 AM on February 1, 2016 [1 favorite]

In the U.S., try looking for "iced tea" varieties of bagged tea. They're blended to brew strong because proper southern iced tea is meant to be mixed with ice, which brings the tea down to a dilution level Americans are used to.

Hmm. The grade of tea for iced tea (especially southern-style "sun tea", brewed at ambient summer temperature) is really low -- tear open a bag and take a look -- and makes a terrible cup of hot tea by the standards of British tea drinkers. There's no depth to it at all. I've always assumed that Lipton is so bad because it's mostly used for iced tea.
posted by holgate at 10:36 AM on February 1, 2016 [1 favorite]

"Sun tea" is not the same thing as southern ice tea, which is brewed with preheated water, sugared, and then served (while hot) over ice.
posted by ardgedee at 2:24 AM on February 2, 2016 [1 favorite]

It's only been in the last 3 or 4 years that the US has gotten different PG Tips. You can thank Unilever North America for the switch to shittier tea in this country, because they took over production and distribution in 2011. You can also see how much Unilever cares about it's U.S. tea drinkers by this nonsense quote from their website: "Harvested from the finest tips of tea plants grown in Ceyton in Kenya." (they mean Ceylon, and Ceylon is not in Kenya, nor anywhere on the same continent). They also own Lipton's Tea, and buy from tea companies with human rights abuses (as does Twinings and Yorkshire Gold). And PG Tips has recently reduced the amount of tea in UK bags but not changed the price.

Tl;dr: cheap tea is cheap. Everyone is being taken advantage of.
posted by oneirodynia at 10:48 AM on February 8, 2016 [1 favorite]

Hey, vacapinta, any results yet from your taste test?
posted by klausness at 11:58 AM on March 25, 2016 [3 favorites]