We work hard at Yorkshire Tea to keep Britain in proper brews and Yorkshire Tea flowing. Because more and more people are getting the taste for a good, strong satisfying cuppa, we often have to put in overtime to fill the 22 million teabags we make every day. You’re a thirsty lot.

There are four Yorkshire Tea production lines at our factory in Harrogate, but we don’t simply call them 1, 2, 3 and 4. Oh no. Each is named after one of our favourite Yorkshire rivers: the Wharfe, Nidd, Swale and Esk. It’s much nicer having names isn’t it?

If you’ve got a box of Yorkshire Tea, you can actually tell which river it flowed down to be bagged and packed. Take a quick look at the back of your box now and you should see a code just before the use by date…. it’s a series of letters and numbers. Found it? Good.

Now it should look something like: 2164 NBO 14:46.

Right, let’s start with the numbers. The ‘2’ indicates the year, in this case, 2012. Next ‘164’ is the 164th day of the year, which was this Wednesday. Don’t worry if yours is older, every box is cellophane-wrapped for freshness to last 18 months and once they’re opened, they probably don’t hang about for long.

The first letter is the river name, which in this case is ‘N’ for Nidd which is the river that is just a mile from us in Harrogate. The others are ‘W’ for Wharfe, ‘S’ for Swale and ‘E’ for Esk.

The second ‘B’ letter tells us which actual machine on Nidd made the tea bags and packed them into the box.

The last letter tells you which blend it is; ‘O’ for orange Yorkshire Tea, ‘H’ for Hard Water and ‘D’ for Decaffeinated – though you can tell that from the front of the box, of course.

Finally, 14:46 is the time this pack was born.

So what? Well, we do this not only so you’ll know which river your proper brews flowed down at our factory, we do it for quality control purposes. So if there’s ever a problem with a single tea bag, we can trace it right back to the day, production line and actual machine your Yorkshire Tea was bagged and packed by. We’re very big on quality control here.

We’ll also let you into another secret. If you happen to be a bit posh and drink our Yorkshire Gold tea bags, then the last letter will be either a ‘W’ or an ‘E’. This is just another thing that makes Yorkshire Gold so special. These letters stand for ‘West’ and ‘East’. Because water is generally harder in the East of the UK compared to the West, we actually blend Yorkshire Gold especially for hard water for customers on the eastern side of the country so wherever you live, you get the best possible brew.

Why not let us know which river your box flowed down by leaving a comment below?