Statistics say that tea is the most consumed beverage in the world, only second to plain water.
A cup of tea can uplift the mood, invigorate the senses, and get you to the other side of each day with the least friction.
Tea is also an amazing way to have one’s dose of morning caffeine, to complement the flavours of your favourite meals, for cleansing your palate in between, to blend the tastes right, and to mask some flavours when needed. This is just what a cup of Breakfast tea does too.
What is Breakfast Tea?
Or rather what is English breakfast tea? The tea blend that was designed through the ages of experience and expertise to band perfectly well together with a full English Breakfast goes by the name of ‘Breakfast tea’.
While a full English breakfast is rich, flavoursome, wholesome, and made to meet a person’s energy and nutritive needs for a good day, the strong balance brought on by a warm cup of Breakfast tea masks the more avowing flavours on the platter when needed and complements the sapid tastes when it can.
The important blend that becomes Breakfast tea is known by many to be a combination of Kenyan and Indian teas – a perfect balance of the trio. Some may even throw in some Darjeeling yearning for more fragrance.
Our century and a half of tea-making has identified though that the rich volcanic soil of the Kenyan Great Rift Valley grows teas in high altitudes with heavy showers, that combine and outdo blended origin combinations, standing alone – the clarity of which has earned Birchall’s range of English Breakfast Teas their Great Taste Awards for ten years in a row now.
High altitude-grown Great Rift Breakfast tea is the pinnacle of black tea traditions kept saintly, unearthly pure, untouched by extra flavourings (natural or otherwise), and unabated by other ingredients.
How does Breakfast tea enhance the breakfast experience and effects?
That is one to be answered along with the questions of “why Breakfast tea works?”, or “why is Breakfast tea important”, which we will.
The clean, earthy fullness of Breakfast tea along with its fragrant notes cuts the grease, literal eggy-ness and meatiness of any hearty full breakfast – proper English, Irish, Scottish, Welsh, Cornish, or Ulster “fry ups”.
Breakfast tea also offers a robust, bright and light biscuity notes that welcome a dash of milk to enrich the experience further.
The brew by itself is smooth when done right, but milk cuts any of the astringence brought on by brewing the tea wrong. But you have nothing to worry about on a fine morning with the specially designed and measured plant-based everyday tea bags of Breakfast tea offered by the award-worthy Birchall. They are free of any oil-based plastic and staple-free as well.
How to brew the perfect cup of Breakfast tea?
Brewing a perfect cuppa always calls for the right temperature and brewing time.
When creating the perfect cup of Birchall Great Rift Breakfast Tea make sure that you are using freshly drawn water and not what you had left in the kettle, or your morning cuppa may taste flat and not uplifting. This is important because when you tap water fresh, it has a lot of oxygen from being unboiled and aerated from the purification process. Because the water came to you flowing fresh, the oxygen will help the Breakfast tea leaves dance well in union with the water molecules to release their goodness, colour, aromas, and strength well.
Breakfast tea also brings a happy piece of news each morning – the temperature for brewing Breakfast tea is easier to achieve than for any other brew. Simply bring the water to a boil at 100°C (or 212 F) for a 100% perfection of brew. The temperature and the oxygen-rich water in harmony open the leaves ready to burst the brightness and flavours.
Ideally, it will take 2 minutes to brew the Breakfast tea. Although you may steep your leaves for as long as 2.5 or 3 minutes depending on how bitter you like it, pulling the bag out too early can leave the aromas and colour un-matured. Two minutes would be perfect.
Once your brew is ready, paint the copper coloured liquid gold with a splash of milk of your choice. Semi-skimmed cow’s milk works the best and we would recommend it.
There you are – your perfect morning cup of tea that changes the game for your breakfast.
What are the benefits of having Breakfast tea?
Breakfast tea offers better blood circulation, the balance of blood pressure, and the overall health of the heart. It gives a boost of antioxidants each morning that detoxes the body also promotes weight loss and slows down your body’s ageing process. If you have a good appetite or sweet tooth, it would be good to know that Breakfast tea can keep dental conditions at bay and control diabetic blood sugar fluctuations. The polyphenols extend the health benefits of Breakfast tea into the arenas of cancer prevention and fighting.
Breakfast Tea and Caffeine
The additional perk of having Breakfast tea instead of coffee is that contains significantly less caffeine. How is lower caffeine levels a good thing? Well although this may sound off-putting to people who absolutely need an uplift of caffeine every morning, hear this out.
Breakfast tea releases caffeine in a far more controlled manner. It would be wrong to say that it releases caffeine at a slower rate, because this may sound like you will get the benefits of caffeine late.
After your morning cuppa, the caffeine and other upsurging phytochemicals will start working at a steadier pace than the ones in coffee. This means that if you have coffee in the morning you get a short-lived spike of ‘boom’. However your perfect cup of Breakfast tea will work just like your nutritious morning meal. While your breakfast is being digested and releasing the nutrients, the tea will impart to your body a steady stream of energy and liveliness. In short, the slow release of caffeine keeps you a hearty person throughout the day.
When can I have Breakfast tea? Can I have Breakfast tea with other meals?
You can drink a cup of Breakfast tea at about any time of the day. Full English breakfast, jam on toast, cereal and fruit in milk, or just a scone; anything goes well with Breakfast tea.
It can even replace the English afternoon tea that blends Indian Assam or Darjeeling tea with Kenyan and Sri Lankan Ceylon tea to give a lighter body. As long as it suits your palate and cravings for rich, robust tea fragrances, nothing can outdo a Breakfast tea.
Since the climb of caffeine is not a very steep one, you can even have it in the evening.
The wonders…
The wonders of tea do not end with just drinking a cup of something with caffeine in the morning. It involves enjoying the right kinds of tea, brewed right, in the right combinations. Time, of course, is the last of constraints as you can savour your favourite cup any time.
So, how are you going to draw the most possibilities out of your Breakfast teacup?
