Ty-Phoo tea

Like most Brits, of the older generation certainly, I’m a tea rather than a coffee drinker. Sure, I’ll drink and enjoy a cup of good coffee but if I’m allowed to choose my source of caffeine, I’ll go for a proper cup of decent strength tea every time.

And I don’t mean made by hanging a pansy teabag over the rim of a cup and adding hot water. I mean a proper brew made in a china teapot that’s left to sit awhile after adding the boiling water while you savour the prospect of pouring it into a decent size cup or mug, adding milk and sugar and sitting back and enjoying it. That’s the proper British way.

For the first few years after coming to France I was able to source my tea direct from the UK, either by buying it in bulk and bringing it back with me when I returned from seeing my family, or by having family bring stocks down for me when they visited. That proved to be more problematic however as time progressed and the journeys made in both directions began to diminish in number.

So I had to find an alternative which I did in the form of packs of 80 Ty-Phoo tea bags – specifically referred to here as Ty-Phoo black tea – that I could buy in both Intermarché and the local Carrefour. Until very recently that is when they suddenly disappeared from the shelves in both stores. I think PG Tips may have gone as well but I’ve never been a fan of that particular brand preferring to leave it to the monkeys who were used to advertise 20 or so years ago.

I don’t think there’s any Ty-Phoo tea at all in the Montignac Intermarché although there may be some Earl Grey which is of little interest to me. The local Carrefour certainly still has Ty-Phoo Earl Grey on the shelf but for all I know that may just be because it’s old stock and, like me, proper tea drinkers don’t bother with it 🙂

Forced into a corner, I ended up buying a pack of 100 individual Lipton Yellow tea bags. Now I’m sure that this product has its fair share of fans and devotees but it’s my opinion that it’s aimed at people who don’t really like tea but is there for them when they are absolutely forced into drinking a cup.

That’s why each bag comes with the dreaded length of string to hang it over the side of their cup, so they have an excuse not to have a second, and is packaged in a paper pouch printed with an eco-slogan. Then even though they might not be enjoying the experience they can at least persuade themselves that they’re helping to save the planet while doing precisely the opposite and fishing out the string and its associated cardboard tab after they’ve fallen into their tea because they didn’t tie the string around their cup’s handle.

And the other thing, of course, is that if like me you want to make a decent brew in a teapot that inevitably requires two or more teabags, you have to remove each bag from its twee little pouch and remove its twee little string and tab before adding the bags to the pot. I’ve been doing it in batches of 20 or so at a time but it’s a tedious and boring task that one would prefer to avoid if at all possible.

So even before getting through the pack of Lipton, I began to diligently search on line for a proper alternative and I found it on Amazon.fr in the form of a 2.5kg catering pack of 1100 Ty-Phoo tea bags. The cost of this monster was just under 32€ with free Prime delivery making for a very economic and competitive cost-per-teabag if you’re a big tea drinker like me.

It’s labelled as coming from Ireland although Ty-Phoo is based in the Wirral in north-west England, so no silly, restrictive post-Brexit trade barrier which I suspect is what has caused the disappearance of Ty-Phoo from Intermarché and Carrefour. It’s also described as ‘thé vert’ (green tea) on a little label that’s been attached to the bag it came in, although I’m sure that it isn’t even though I haven’t opened the pack yet as I still have quite a bit of the Lipton to get through first.

In the UK we refer to a good, strong cup or mug of tea as Builders’ Brew. It’s what gives workmen the strength to toil tirelessly through the working day and also enhances the bum cracks of workmen who spend a lot of time bending over and displaying this signal element of their anatomy over the tops of their work and bacon sarnie-stained jeans.

Even more potent, of course, is loose tea to be spooned into the teapot and separated from the steaming potion as it’s poured into the cup or mug using a tea strainer, preferably vintage in years and stained with tannin. Such a brew as well as providing the above-mentioned benefits, also puts hair on your chest so let this be a warning to any unsuspecting lady thinking of adding it to their repertoire of refreshing drinks. I’m thinking of looking for some as this supply of Ty-Phoo approaches its end 😉