Lipton Decaffeinated Tea: Half the Taste, Twice the Price

On average I consume anywhere from two to three pots of coffee and tea a day. I have had problems with insomnia for years now and no matter what I try in regards to my diet, sleep routine, medication or natural remedies for sleeplessness, nothing seems to work. I decided to switch to a decaffeinated tea a few weeks ago to try and cut down on the amount of caffeine I consume. I went with the Lipton brand since I have always had good luck with their products but so far I am not the least bit impressed with the flavor or taste of their decaffeinated blend.

My usual brewing method for tea (be it hot or cold) is five tea bags in the carafe of the coffee maker with ten cups of water. This method of brewing has always worked out well for hot or cold tea so I went with the same number of bags for the decaffeinated bags. The brewed tea was a lot lighter in color and had almost no taste to it. I didn’t change anything in regards to how I brewed the tea so I assumed that I would need to either add more tea bags or allow it to steep for a longer period of time. Steeping for a half hour did nothing so the next batch saw seven bags going into the pot. There was a slight improvement to the taste but nothing near what I got from my regular tea bags.

While I like the idea that the tea bags are individually wrapped and contain powerful antioxidants, the process that they use to decaffeinate the tea seems to remove a lot of the flavor too. Lipton does state on the box that these can be used for hot or cold beverage preparation so I was sure that the lack of taste didn’t come from me using the tea bags incorrectly or inappropriately. Even though this says that it is decaffeinated, there are still five milligrams of caffeine per serving. Regular brewed tea has, on average, about 40 milligrams of caffeine per serving. You are getting a lot less caffeine per serving but the word ‘decaffeinated’ can be a little misleading.

I purchased the 72 count box of tea bags at my local grocery store. It was priced at $4.29, more than twice what I pay for the 100 count box of regular tea bags. Needless to say, I was paying twice as much for the decaffeinated bags than the regular ones, getting half the taste and having to use twice as many to get anything even close to my normal brew. At this stage in the game I am going to give up on Lipton’s Decaffeinated Tea Bags and try some other varieties from other companies.

Lipton is one of the many companies owned by Unilever; I contacted them about the lack of taste and they asked me to look at the code stamped into the side of the box to make sure that it was a fresh box. When they determined that it was, they offered me a complete refund of my purchase price or an exchange for one of their other Lipton tea products. Even though I declined, less than a week later I received a letter about how to get the most from tea bags and several boxes of other decaffeinated Lipton tea products.

Reference:

• www.lipton.com