Do You Believe Most Tea Sold In Bags, "Tea Bags" Are Worthless?
In my opinion, drink what you like how you like it.
There are a few teas I actually prefer bagged over their loose leaf varieties. There are others I wouldn’t consider any way other than loose in my infuser basket.
How you brew and drink tea is totally up to you. That said, it doesn’t hurt to expand your horizons and try out some nice quality loose leaf. I ordered my infuser basket about 2 years ago for less than $10 and it’s let me try so many different things easily .
“There are a few teas I actually prefer bagged over their loose leaf varieties.”
Why? In what possible way could the same tea be BETTER in a confining teabag than lose in the brewing vessel? Please explain.
One is Stash’s Orange Spice. The recipe is totally different between bags and loose leaf. I threw the loose leaf away out of disgust.
The other is a Coconut Chai. I forget the brand name. I tried the bagged and really liked it so I bought the loose leaf. The loose leaf was disgusting and I also threw it away.
In both cases it was an overpowering presence of clove which I despised.
Drink what you like how you like it. Life is too short to get snooty about things.
Ah, so you’re not actually making the claim that teabags can be a superior brewing-method then? That is sensible because I don’t think that is an objectively defensible position.
Can’t generalize like that because some great tea can come in tea bags and some extremely crappy tea can come in loose form. Like some have said, just try whatever you like and go with what’s good to you :)
Yes there are some good teas in bags, but in America most supermarket brand tea bags are lower quality. The biggest supermarket brand here is Lipton. I have drank it but it can’t be compared to good loose leaf. Specialty markets and Asian markets are sometimes an exception selling a selection of better tea but what is available in my local supermarket does not inspire me. In America many of the same supermarkets will carry a selection of gourmet coffee as this is still more popular than tea here.
For sure, I wouldn’t even bother with the ones in the US supermarkets (I live in the US haha). Some of the Asian markets are slightly better but not by much with the exception of Mitsuwa but even then it’s only a little better. Better than nothing I guess.
Speaking of coffee, Whole Foods actually does a really good job of stocking decent coffee.
There is an Asian market near me with a huge selection of Chinese teas, mostly loose leaf. The problem is only about one third of these teas are really good enough to be worth drinking and the people at the store don’t speak enough English to tell me which ones are any good. One that was surprisingly good was called Temple of Heaven Green Tea or something along those lines.
I think it’s convenient to brew tea bag, but loose tea or whole leaf tea tastes better.
For herbals and rooibos teas I actually prefer tea bags. It prevents certain ingredients from gumming up my infuser basket (chamomile and some rooibos) and I tend to just leave the bag in the mug and sip away (there isn’t the same concern with oversteeping when there’s no actual tea leaves in the bag).
People around the world drink tea bags every day. If you like the tea, don’t worry about what people think.
I have a selection of both bagged and loose leaf. I drink a lot of tea at work and the I can just feel the money draining out of my pocket if I were to drink only my loose leaf. So I have bagged tea that I like and tastes good without the sticker shock. I’ll try any tea in any form and stock up on what’s good. I like Harney and Sons bagged tea but also drink some generic supermarket tea.
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