I saw a Reddit post a few days ago from someone complaining that Twinings had added little mint candies to this tea and, if you’re looking closely at the leaf in the tea bags, I can see where the confusion would maybe be coming from because there are super tiny white balls mixed with the peppermint. This is not candy, though. It’s actually encapsulated flavoring. Basically, a solid version of flavouring that “melts” into your tea as its steeped. Much less common than the liquid flavouring that’s usually added in tea production which then coats all the ingredients.
There are pros/cons to both types. Encapsulated flavouring is much less aromatic, so the dry leaf aroma of a blend could be significantly less impactful if this type is used. That can be a big deal for physical tea shops where customers might be smelling the tea out of tins before purchasing it. However, since this blend comes only in prepackaged boxes that seems like less of a concern. One of the pros to encapsulated flavouring is that it tastes much longer for any sort of flavour loss to happen due to aging. If I had to make a guess, I think that might have been why Twinings made the change? Regardless, to the best of my knowledge there has always been the same flavours in this blend and it’s just the format of them that has been updated.
Anyway, after reading through that thread I decided to pull this out and make myself a mug. It’s just so wickedly smooth and creamy/buttery with such a crisp, cooling peppermint. I love this blend a lot!
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Interesting! But for a tea intended to be sold as loose-leaf, I would be apprehensive about the potential for settling-out of the capsules, producing inconsistent flavoring.
Very interesting to learn about encapsulated flavors, I had not heard of them before! I’ll have to keep an eye out to try them in a blend sometime. It doesn’t look like they are available to purchase in the private market yet, or I might be tempted to pick some up!
I guess that’s what the little white spheres are in Whittard’s Rose tea.
Okay, I found the rose tea… and have been reading everyone’s reviews. I’e never encountered these tiny spheres, myself, in any tea product.
http://steepster.com/teas/whittard-of-chelsea/87187-tea-discoveries-english-rose-teabags .
@ashmanra: “doll house potting soil” Ha!!
@gmathis: doesn’t everyone tear open their teabags to get a better look? !!!
I suspect Whittard couldn’t fit all their ingredients into a teabag without them rupturing (and was unwilling to use pyramid sachets). So they tried the encapsulated flavoring, and encountered problems with stratification when portioning. So they ground-down the solids to make everything closer in size, by which time they’d ended up with a very different product. Or maybe Roswell_Strange has further insights as an actual expert. But that’s a good lesson for folks sharing a TTB, to tumble the tin/pouch before withdrawing a sample, to ensure even mixing and representative sampling!
Yes, the Whittards blend uses encapsulated flavouring! But I highly doubt the cut size for the teabags has anything to do with not being able to “fit” all the ingredients into the bags – the way you go about formulating teabags is just typically much more different than loose leaf teas (based on presumed customer use cases). Smaller cut size = predicability/consistency in dosing out the saxheta during manufacturing, which is done by weight, and more surface area for the tea to steep which makes for a faster and stronger infusion, generally.
Also, yes, to TeaEarleGreyHot’s point – one of the disadvantages to encapsulated flavouring in loose leaf tea blends is that it does settle. To be fair, this happens to a lot of ingredients with smaller particle size and greater density, but it is one of the factors of why encapsulated flavouring is just less common in LLT.
**dosing out the sachets
Awesome insights, Ros, thanks!!
Speaking of how components in a blend may segregate in their bag, I today happened across this short youtube video that explains stratification (sometimes called “the brazil nut effect”) perfectly!
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=DOilqjKEhqo
This has been very educational!
Interesting! But for a tea intended to be sold as loose-leaf, I would be apprehensive about the potential for settling-out of the capsules, producing inconsistent flavoring.
Very interesting to learn about encapsulated flavors, I had not heard of them before! I’ll have to keep an eye out to try them in a blend sometime. It doesn’t look like they are available to purchase in the private market yet, or I might be tempted to pick some up!
I guess that’s what the little white spheres are in Whittard’s Rose tea.
Okay, I found the rose tea… and have been reading everyone’s reviews. I’e never encountered these tiny spheres, myself, in any tea product.
http://steepster.com/teas/whittard-of-chelsea/87187-tea-discoveries-english-rose-teabags .
@ashmanra: “doll house potting soil” Ha!!
@gmathis: doesn’t everyone tear open their teabags to get a better look? !!!
I suspect Whittard couldn’t fit all their ingredients into a teabag without them rupturing (and was unwilling to use pyramid sachets). So they tried the encapsulated flavoring, and encountered problems with stratification when portioning. So they ground-down the solids to make everything closer in size, by which time they’d ended up with a very different product. Or maybe Roswell_Strange has further insights as an actual expert. But that’s a good lesson for folks sharing a TTB, to tumble the tin/pouch before withdrawing a sample, to ensure even mixing and representative sampling!
Yes, the Whittards blend uses encapsulated flavouring! But I highly doubt the cut size for the teabags has anything to do with not being able to “fit” all the ingredients into the bags – the way you go about formulating teabags is just typically much more different than loose leaf teas (based on presumed customer use cases). Smaller cut size = predicability/consistency in dosing out the saxheta during manufacturing, which is done by weight, and more surface area for the tea to steep which makes for a faster and stronger infusion, generally.
Also, yes, to TeaEarleGreyHot’s point – one of the disadvantages to encapsulated flavouring in loose leaf tea blends is that it does settle. To be fair, this happens to a lot of ingredients with smaller particle size and greater density, but it is one of the factors of why encapsulated flavouring is just less common in LLT.
**dosing out the sachets
Awesome insights, Ros, thanks!!
Speaking of how components in a blend may segregate in their bag, I today happened across this short youtube video that explains stratification (sometimes called “the brazil nut effect”) perfectly!
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=DOilqjKEhqo
This has been very educational!