Stems - How Much is Too Much?

Hi Rick!

That is weird! I thought you post was odd but proof is in the pic. What kind of tea is this? Looks like they’re cherry stems or something?
I’ve never had this.

Typically lower quality teas will have a lot of stems while higher quality teas have little to no stems. But I’ve had teas that contain a lot of stems and still taste very good. So, if you enjoy the tea I wouldn’t worry too much about the stems…unless you’re paying a premium price.

What type of tea is this?

Those stems are huge.

I’ve had greens with that much stem before from a couple suppliers. As I understand it, more stems suggest a lower quality tea (because you’re brewing stems not full leaves) but my philosophy is drink what you enjoy. I wouldn’t worry about it, unless you feel you’re being ripped off in terms of price.

Well, there is Kukicha, a Japanese green (one I often enjoy at that) that is made up of entirely stems and twigs, so they’re not bad by any means. I also had a young pu’er the other day that was rather stemmy. It’s not unusual; as others have said, it’s probably indicative of lower quality, but unless you paid a ton for it expecting some premium grade tea, it’s nothing to be concerned about.

Sometimes a good mix of stems are nice, especially in raw puer. I don’t mind stems in Oolongs either!!

Sorry to leave you all hanging – family crisis that dominated my time. The tea is a blend called Exotic Fruits Green and I actually found it listed on Steepster as well: http://goo.gl/0yrg2 Thanks for your thoughts on the stems. I had settled on the same answer before posting and just wanted to make sure I was in the right frame of mind. Peace!

Stems and twigs of tea are generally low in caffeine but high in L-theanine, especially if harvested from tea plants cultivated for gyuokuro or high-grade sencha. I wouldn’t consider all kukicha (twig tea) to be of inferior quality.

Good tea should not have stems in it. As has been said, stemmy tea can taste ok, but one should recognize that stems are a by-product that is normally used as fertilizer, and not something that one should pay the same price for as ordinary tea. A very stemmy tea also suggests that a good plucking standard is not being followed.

Sometimes tea is stemmy because an importer is buying “crude” tea without processing it. One way of dividing up the labor of making tea that is popular in some countries is to have the farmers process the tea without sorting or grading it, using small factories or doing the work by hand. This crude tea is then (in theory) sold to wholesalers who remove the stems, separate it out into even grades, and re-fire it to prepare it for export, but there is no law that mandates this step.

High-quality pu’er is sometimes quite stemmy, but that is not because the tea is high-quality; it is because the aging conditions and the tea fungus used have turned a low-quality product into a high-quality one, much the same way that a raw whiskey might be turned into a fine one after several years of aging.

Kukicha, the Japanese “tea” made up entirely of roasted tea stems, isn’t bad, but it should not be expensive. It is a by-product of tea, not tea. In Japan tea-production is staggeringly expensive, so even tea waste can’t be left to waste. :)