If you own a Keurig and you’re only using it for coffee, you’re missing out. There’s a wide array of Keurig tea pods on the market and we tasted a bunch of them to find the best K Cup tea you can sip. Is steeping tea hard? No. But I don’t know a single modern lady who can resist saving a whole three minutes by popping a pod in the ol’ Keurig.
Full disclosure: I do not own a Keurig (we used the office Keurig for this taste test). I think they are wasteful and I don’t think that K Cup coffee tastes very good when I occasionally make it at work. But I have some good news: As of 2020, K Cups are recyclable (although, there are caveats), and K Cup tea actually tastes really, really good. I love that you can have ready-to-sip tea in a few seconds flat (well, make sure to blow on it first).
Obviously, not all tea pods for Keurig taste good. Some of the tea we brewed was bitter. Some of it was weak. Some of it tasted oddly like chlorinated water, even though I don’t think our water was the problem given that other pods didn’t taste like chlorine. Anyway, there are a lot of options to sift through, so we did our best to order a good sampling of hot tea K Cups—including chai tea K Cups and green tea K Cups—to find out which are worth your K Cup cash. Here’s the tea on the best Keurig tea pods we found in our taste test. (And thank you to our intern Madison for making all of these!)
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- Happy Belly Chai Latte
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I did not expect to like these Amazon brand chai tea K Cups. Like, how is it a latte? Is there milk in the cup? (The answer is yes, there is dried milk in the cup, as well as coconut oil.) To be honest, I’m not totally sure I do like these Keurig tea pods, but I think they’re compelling enough to recommend. The “latte” emerges from the machine with a pleasantly creamy consistency. The chai flavor is very powerful but very sweet—it’s like all of the sweet components of the chai spice blend are amped up, perhaps by the temperature of the water. I was so mesmerized by these Keurig tea pods that I drank a whole cup, but in the future I would definitely add some almond milk or oat milk to make a more convincing latte and to cut the sweetness just a little. These are the best tea K Cups if you need to break your Starbucks chai latte habit.
Credit: Merc / Amazon
- Bigelow Earl Grey
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When I think Earl Grey tea I think bergamot. It’s a tea blend that’s known for having a zesty, citrusy flavor, and sadly that was lacking from the Keurig tea pods we tried. Bigelow came the closest to approximating the flavor of good Earl Grey tea that was steeped from a bag or tea ball. Incidentally, Bigelow didn’t make our ranking of the best Earl Grey tea in a tea bag, but they do make good Earl Grey tea K Cups. I definitely wish there was more bergamot in the mix, but it’s a good cup of tea—flavorful, soothing, and not bitter.
Credit: Merc / Amazon
- Happy Belly English Breakfast
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Speaking of bitter, a lot of the English and Irish breakfast tea K Cups we tried produced super bitter tea. If you don’t add milk to your tea, a lot of those teas would be really unpleasant to sip. Amazon’s Happy Belly makes the list again with Keurig tea pods that make a perfectly palatable cup of English breakfast tea. It’s a roasty flavor that doesn’t leave any sourness on your tongue. If you do add milk to your tea and want something with more tannins and oomph, try Twinings English breakfast tea K Cups. But if you want English breakfast tea that’s ready to drink on its own or with just a cube of sugar, Happy Belly’s hot tea K Cups are damn good (and easy to stock up on if you have Amazon Prime).
Credit: Merc / Amazon
- Twinings Probiotics+ Lemon & Ginger
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Of all the Keurig tea pods we tried, Twinings Probiotics+ Lemon & Ginger was my personal favorite. The tea is so bright, zesty, and spicy—you get that really good ginger burn as you sip. It even tickled my nose a little. The strength of the tea is pretty much perfect. I’m currently drinking my way through a box of lackluster lemon ginger tea bags, and these genuinely made me wish I had a Keurig at home. Oh, and I don’t know from probiotics, but I suppose the bacillus coagulans in these is a nice little bonus if gut health is a concern.
Credit: Merc / Amazon
- Tazo Zen Green Tea
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Green tea has a mild flavor, and it tended to get lost when we brewed green tea K Cups. Like, if you’re making green tea with a tea bag, you can steep it a little longer to make sure you get that strength and earthiness—you can’t really do that with K Cups. What makes this one of the best tea K Cups is that there’s other stuff going on. Tazo Zen green tea also contains spearmint and lemongrass, and those flavors are very, very pleasant. They’re prominent and bold without being overwhelming. The spearmint stands out the most, but it tastes so good with the flavor of the green tea. If you’re a green tea lover, buy these hot tea K cups asap.
Credit: Merc / Amazon
- Tejava Black Tea
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Tejava Black Tea K Cups aren’t the most exciting Keurig tea pods on this list, but they’re the most essential ones. If you are looking for a flavorful, reliable, sure-to-please-everyone cup of black tea, Tejava makes the gold standard tea pods for Keurig. The flavor is a little floral and a little grassy. Overall, this tea is very, very fresh tasting. We absolutely love Tejava’s bottled iced tea, and this hot black tea has all the same great qualities. These are the best tea K Cups—no milk, no honey, no sugar needed.
Credit: Merc / Amazon
Best Oddball
Best Earl Grey
Best English Breakfast
Best Herbal
Best Green Tea
Best of the Best
Other products we tried: Twinings English Breakfast, Twinings Lemon Ginger, Twinings Pure Chamomile, Twinings Pure Peppermint, Celestial Seasonings English Breakfast Tea, Bigelow English Breakfast, Twinings Decaf English Breakfast, Tazo Awake English Breakfast, Twinings Irish Breakfast, Bigelow Green Tea, Celestial Seasonings Green Tea, Twinings Green Tea, Twinings Earl Grey
Thoughts? Questions? Complete disagreement? Leave a comment!