Proper tea 01 March, 2010

I am a habitual tea drinker. When I don't have classes or work and am home all day I go through about 3 Bodum French presses tea, usually green tea. When I am at work I probably go through a little bit less because I usually have to pack in my own bags of tea. Luckily, my current internship has a pantry full of Twinng's more popular teas: Green, Earl Grey, Lemon, Mint, and Black. No Oolong or Darjeeling so I usually bring those with me.

While I love having access to an ample (free) tea supply,  I rarely buy boxes of premade tea bags anymore despite always carrying two or three bags of tea with me incase I'm in a pinch. Yes, I use to buy Twinings, Tazo, and Celestial Seasonings, but as my years of tea drinking have grown--I started drinking Green tea in middle school--I've become more demanding of my cups of tea.


Industrial bags of tea are very weak in flavor. Real green tea should taste like grass, sort of, which is why I make my own tea bags. When you buy boxes of premade tea bags you are buying a ground up version of tea leaves. The rights pic is proper loose leaf and beside it on the left is are bags of ground up tea.

One special on the History Channel claimed that the tea in corporate tea bags is filter tea leaves through perpetually smaller mesh screens. The dust that makes it to the bottom of the screen gauntlet winds up in your bag. The smaller the tea surface the less you need to make tea flavored water.

Tea leaves shouldn't be a powder, unless it is matcha, but a tight ball that blossoms as it soaks. Quite beautiful to watch while it steeps in a glass pot.

I'm starting to live with the fact that rolling your own tea bags will never look as cool as rolling your own cigarettes, but,  I imagine, both are a better version of the respective product. There is also the "I made that myself" satisfaction.

It is really simple:
1) Purchase empty tea bags, here are some on Amazon. I pick mine up at Puerto Rico Importing Co.
2) And fill with your favorite variety of tea.
3) Done.

I'll work on a cost analysis and see if it is cheaper, depends on what type of tea you use, but really this is more about the quality and I am willing to pay a nickel or two more a cup for that.