Dominant Industry Earl Grey Tea
Ink Review #35
*Please note that the scan is the accurate representation of this color.
Overview
The color/properties:
Dominant Industry Earl Grey Tea is a vibrant reddish orange. It exhibits some light shading, but it shows with a softer gradient and less tone variation than expected. There’s still enough shading to give this ink some character, but it has a creamier appearance, rather than a hard and crisp cut between lighter and darker tones.
Ink Splat
Droplets
Performance on paper:
Earl Grey Tea had good performance on paper. I didn’t get any bleed-through or feathering, and dry times were just slightly above average: the finer nibs dried faster than usual, but the larger nibs stuck around the 20-second mark. Unfortunately, water resistance was poor and anything left over would most likely be difficult to read.
Water resistance
Chromatography
Performance in the pen:
Overall, Earl Grey Tea had excellent performance. The ink had a medium but consistent and well-lubricated wetness across all of the test nibs. I didn’t experience any hard starts, skips, or stops during my writing tests. Cleaning took slightly longer than usual, but nothing was needed outside of a few soaks and flushes.
Value/cost per ml:
As of writing, the price of Dominant Industry Earl Grey Tea is $17 for a 25ml bottle from US retailers, placing it at $0.68 cents per ml.
The bottle/packaging:
Earl Grey Tea comes in a standard Dominant Industry bottle, packed in a kraft paper box and tied in a drawstring dust bag. The design is simple but has an elegant appearance, and overall the bottle and packaging feel well-made.
The usability is unfortunately where this bottle fails. The bottle is more stable than you’d initially expect because of the pear shape making it more bottom-heavy, but the opening is small and makes filling the pen a somewhat uncomfortable experience. Dominant Industry does supply you with a pipette, but it’s small and inconsequential unless you’re filling an eyedropper.
Score: 57/70
Price per ml: 4.5/10
Performance in a pen: 10/10
Performance on paper: 10/10
Color saturation: 5.5/10
Sheening: 0/10
Shading: 3/10
Dry time: 8/10
Water resistance: 1/10
Ease of cleaning: 7.5/10
Bottle form: 5/5
Bottle function: 2.5/5
*Only 70 of the 100 available points are required for an outstanding score.My personal thoughts…
I was overjoyed when I spotted this ink at the DC Pen Show. Could it be? Was there finally a tea-themed ink that looked like Earl Grey? I’m happier about this than I should willingly admit, but Dominant Industry Earl Grey Tea does, in fact, look like Earl Grey tea. What more can you really ask for here? We did it, lads.
And I even got to brew a cup of tea
More images/info:
Tools and materials used in the writing samples:
A TWSBI Diamond 580 AL with 7 nib units including a Needlepoint grind, EF, F, M, B, 1.1mm stub, and an Architect grind. All nibs are tuned to perform at the same medium wetness.
A Rhodia No16 A5 DotPad
A Leuchtturm1917 A5 Notebook
A 68gsm A5 Tomoe River Notebook
A Maruman Mnemosyne A5 Spiral Notebook
A Kokuyo Campus A5 Notebook
Other tea-themed inks:
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