A cup of tea is the answer to everything in our house. Bad day at work? Stick the kettle on. Good day at work? Celebratory cuppa. Just got engaged? Forget the champagne, let’s have a cuppa. Roof leaking water into the attic in the middle of a cost of living crisis? Set cups up - we’ll have a brew while we ring an emergency roofer.
Just to let you know - all of the above are genuine situations that have happened in our tea-obsessed household in the last eight weeks.
Exclusively, we drink Yorkshire Tea, and I’ve fiercely defended why the Harrogate-based brew bags are the best on more than one occasion here on the Manchester Evening News. Doing so once earned me a giant sack of tea bags, a mini Yorkshire Tea truck and travel mug, which I treasure with some of my most prized possessions.
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But, as we all know, times are tough and money is tight. Now, you wouldn’t catch me putting PG Tips or Tetley in my shopping trolly no matter how hard up I was for cash. I’d sooner go without, and it’s not unusual for me to refuse a brew at someone’s house if they have naff tea bags.
But, the fastest and often easiest way to save money is to swap branded items for supermarket own brand during the weekly shop. So, this week, I’ve set out on a mission to see if any of the supermarket own-brand tea bags measure up to my beloved Yorkshire tea.
I purchased standard red label tea bags at Aldi, Sainsbury’s, Morrisons, M&S, Tesco, Lidl and Asda in the smallest pack size available in store to compare them on price, quality and flavour to Yorkshire Tea - and only one could potentially convince me to make the switch.
Here’s how the experiment went...
Buying the teabags
My search for the best supermarket cuppa spanned seven supermarkets in three different towns, across two separate counties, driving a little over 25 miles to gather each box. It must be said that in each store, the teabags were easy to locate, and often situated on the bottom shelf, below the brands. It’s a common tactic used by supermarkets, with experts recommending you ‘crouch’ to find the best prices.
In one of the stores - Asda - I thought I was going to have to commit to a whopping huge box of red label bags, but with about as much grace as a baby elephant, I got onto my hands and knees and managed to locate a box of 80 at the back of the bottom shelf, saving a bit of cash.
I was able to get the smallest box at Sainsbury’s - a tiny box of 40 that would easily be done in at our house of three in 72 hours, less if we invited guests round.
I was able to get boxes of 80 at Asda, M&S, Morrisons and Tesco, but only boxes of 160 at Lidl and Aldi.
Tesco’s tea bags only come in boxes of 80, priced at £1, and locked in at that ‘everyday price’. Meanwhile, Aldi’s only come in boxes of 160, at £1.39 a pack. Lidl’s own brand - also only coming in boxes of 160 - are priced at 99p.
Sainsbury’s are available in boxes of 40, 80, 160 and 240, priced between 70p and £2.90. Morrisons offer packs of 80 or 240 for £1.29 or £2.65 respectively, with M&S coming in at £1.20 for 80 or £2.25 for 160. Finally, Asda costs a nice round pound for 80 bags, with 240 costing £2.50.
With so many different sizes available, I thought it easiest to work out the prices of boxes of 160 by doubling the price of 80, if that was the only size available.
By my calculations that makes the price of 160 teabags as follows:
Lidl - 99p
Aldi - £1.39
Sainsbury’s - £2
Asda - £2 for two boxes of 80
Tesco - £2 for two boxes of 80
M&S - £2.25
Morrisons - £2.58 for two boxes of 80
By comparison, the average price of 160 Yorkshire Tea teabags costs between £4 and £5, depending on where you buy them.
Comparing the boxes and bags
I lined the little red boxes up on my kitchen side and for me, two of the labels really stood out as aesthetically pleasing and not obviously ‘cheap’. I really enjoyed the designs of Sainsbury’s and M&S’s boxes, with Marks and Spencer’s being particularly British looking, looking like something from a Monopoly board.
The cheapest looking box, in my opinion, was Asda’s, closely followed by Aldi. Lidl appears to have tried to replicate some of the higher end brands like Twinings in their design, but I can’t say I was best pleased with the Knitesbridge ‘one cup’ tea bags packaging.
Tearing open the boxes, five out of seven were ‘foiled for freshness’, which was all bar Aldi and Sainsbury’s - though at the speed in which they’re consumed at home, I don’t think it would have made a difference.
One thing that was the same in every bag was the shape, with every supermarket opting for a round design. Though some of the meshes differed in size, some finer than others, but crucially, none wide enough to leave bits floating in your mug.
Making the brew
I filled and boiled the kettle twice in a military style operation, determined for each tea bag to brew for the same amount of time in the cup for a fair test. I went so far as to only use my collection of Emma Bridgewater mugs, too, to ensure consistency in the heat loss and overall feel of the brew. I’m a big believer that a good cuppa starts with the right mug, and being a Stokie, any with a Potteries backstamp is an obvious favourite.
I allowed each tea bag to brew for three minutes before adding a splash of milk and removing the teabag with a light squeeze. In this action alone, I noticed that Sainsbury’s bags were quite bulbous, while Lidl’s was most at risk of splitting, being quite flimsy and not very full.
I went on to taste test each brew without sugar for the original flavour, before adding one small teaspoon, which is how I’d usually drink it.
Verdict on the cuppas
One by one, I made my way down the line of teas, each varying in shade despite adding the same amount of milk. Cups from Tesco and Sainsbury’s were particularly sludgy looking, with Asda and M&S coming in paler.
Ranking lowest for me was Tesco. While describing itself as ‘full bodied’, it didn’t differ much from drinking regular hot water, with little flavour or mouthfeel. It didn’t have that richness or thickness I crave from a good cuppa, and therefore filled me with disappointment.
Morrisons, slightly lighter in colour, had a better taste, but was still extremely weak, while Sainsbury’s had the complete opposite problem and was too strong, with a bitter aftertaste as a result of the tannins.
Moving further down the line, Lidl’s teabags and the serious risk of bag breakage gave me far too much anxiety to commit to it as an everyday brew, with Aldi seemingly ticking all of the boxes on colour, flavour and strength. In fact, I was almost ready to crown Aldi my winner, sitting down to finish the mug while I watched an episode of Lingo when I realised that it had a bit of an unpleasant aftertaste - the kind that lingers at the back of your throat long after drinking.
Asda’s cuppa was okay. Average. Inoffensive. It was a mild tea with no bitter aftertaste, and would be pretty easy to drink.
But for me, the winner had to be M&S with a well balanced brew that, as the label suggests, you could drink every day. All day, every day, as it goes, without getting that tacky feeling in your mouth that can often come with cheap tea.
Priced at £2.25 for 160, that makes every cup just around 1.5p - which is still cheaper than Yorkshire. And while M&S’s teabags weren’t quite up to my usual standards of Yorkshire, I would consider buying them to save money, drinking their everyday tea bags in the week and swapping to my favourite big-name brand at the weekend for a treat.
Anyway, with that settled once and for all, I’m off to pop the kettle on.
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