If big companies use 'the best tea' in their tea bags, ...is it true?

I would say for most brands what is in the teabag is the same for loose if they sell it that way. This is certain for British brands. Also for most Indian brands. So a companies 'best' is sold both bag and loose. You can get a 'best' with a proprietary blend and a price point attractive to consumers.

Jim

SN wrote:

My feeling is that most of it is fannings - the stuff literally at the bottom of the barrel. Whether that is quality tea or not is another story. I've had some green tea bags from China that were, obviously, swill. I've had a couple of high-end tea bags (Repoblic of Tea, comes to mind) that is not bad, at all. Twinings doesn't seem to falter too seriously with a Prince Edward or English Breakfast; just not "my cup of tea". But, then, there is all that flavoured stuff and Red Rose and Lipton and Salada - ugh! Subjective again here.

The quality of tea coming from the SAME tea garden can vary HUGELY depending on location, timing, type of leaves etc.

Different tea gardens again can produce vastly different quality teas.

Different quality goes to make different products...

loose tea (different grades, kinds) teabags instant tea tea extract

Julian

Agree to Julian ^^

In tea countries such as China, Taiwan, and Japan, they all have grading systems of teas. For the idea of real "best tea leaf", I bet the big brands won't use it for mass consuming. The champion Oolong tea in Taiwan will cost you thousands for 1kg.

I'm a tea importer, I know what grades of teas I'm purchasing, and which location, which tea garden I'm purchasing from. But I seldom see this kind of information listed on the package of big tea brands.. Actually this was why I started the business. I'm Taiwanese and grew up drinking tea. After moving to Canada, I used to buy teas from the internet, but was frustrating to find the really tea aromas in my memory.

Yes, highly subjective and not so accurate.

Fannings are commonly used in teabags as it is the high surface area to volume ratio of a small grade that gives the fast brewing charcteristic that many tea drinkers require from a teabag - and in the UK like in the USA over 90% of tea is consumed via a teabag. Countries that major on teas for the teabag market produce all their teas as small grades - thus East Africa produces BOP1, PF, PD and D1 grades and these range from 1.5 mm particle diameter down to 0.2 mm. Fannings and Dusts are NOT qualitywise "at the bottom of the barrel", they are NOT "factory floor sweepings" (would that a factory floor could produce the 300,000 tonnes a year of Fannings and Dust grades that Kenya exports!) These small grades in many factories, in Kenya and Rwanda for instance, are superb - and for their purpose - impossible to improve upon.

Teabag quality is as good as the tea you put into it - and the quality reflects the customers' taste. If teabag customers, in the main, want a cheap, bland but consistent brew, then that is what they choose (which is their right!) - it does not reflect badly on Lipton for providing it, nor on teabags for containing it. I can readily admit as a teaman of 30 years experience, and one surrounded daily by 160 loose teas from 19 different countries, that during the day I drink gallons of tea brewed from teabags filled with small "chopped up stuff" - CTC Fannings and Dusts blended from some of the best tea gardens in Africa and Assam - Taylors of Harrogate's "Yorkshire Gold"

- which possibly is the acme of British tea quality. Taylors certainly uses the very best teas in their Yorkshire Gold teabags, I know many of the garden origins they use, and some of these are past or present clients of mine so I know firsthand the skill of the producers and the tea quality before it enters the blend.

Yes, there are some bad teabags - but equally there are many bad loose teas.

Nigel at Teacraft

i had tried one wuyi oolong teabags which was very good. the leaves were chopped but still it was good, apparently the tea was made to supply to 6 stars hotel in China. but it didnt last for many brews compared to loose leaf.

Generally, chinese and indian tea gradings are different. Indian teas has better grading while chinese is quite hard to tell..

Thanks, Nigel. I always thought fannings were the least acceptable. Good to know. Shen

I don't necessarily agree with Nigel. Once you've crushed, torn, ripped, shredded, smashed, sliced, diced, and minced a tea leaf into a billion bits only slightly larger than grains of dust, I have a feeling that its quality -- no matter how high it started -- has been severely degraded. By deformation/destruction of the cell structures, chemical reactions with air, whatever. But degraded nonetheless.

There might be "high" and "low" quality fannings, but IMHO they're all FAR lower than less-processed leaves/buds.

On Oct 11, 10:30 am, "Slint Flig" snipped-for-privacy@zossngo.com wrote

Any disagreement is due to our using the word "quality" in very different ways. Yours to mean "of superior grade" or "degree of excellence". Mine in the sense of "the totality of features and characteristics of a tea that bear on its ability to satisfy stated or implied needs. Not to be mistaken for "degree of excellence" or "fitness for use" which meet only part of the definition. [ISO8402]. (1995-11-10)".

Of course if I take a Kenyan bush and make its tips into an orthodox tea (as we did in Kenya in 2003) it can make an excellent HIGH quality USA acceptable loose tea (stylish leaf, mellow, complex flavors) however that same tea will not work well in a UK teabag - for that specific use that very same tea is a LOW quality tea - it does not have "the ability to satisfy the stated or implied needs" of a UK teabag (i.e. to be finely divided, quick brewing, colory and astringent). Here we have high and low quality in the same tea at the same time - so who is right?

I have run CTC Dusts through my hands from a vibro sorter in Kenya that were of such amazingly good quality ("products and services that meet or exceed customers' expectations") that hairs stood up on my neck. But I recognize that these same Dust teas are seen as trash in the US market. Doesn't make you wrong - if they are not what you want that's fair enough - but just recognize that there is no universal agreement on what high quality means, nor can quality be measured on an two dimensional absolute scale.

Nigel at Teacraft

I am drinking some pre-breakfast Assam fannings tea which is EXACTLY what I want at this time. A little later in the day I'll want something with more leaf- flavor- nuance in it. Toci

REPLY

The tea in teabags, unless you are buying from someone like Harney and Sons, is tea dust or fannings, which brew up quickly. This is the leftovers [generally] from the manufacture of high quality tea. Some are good, some are not. Most really avid tea drinkers prefer whole leaf teas, but everyone needs to decide for themselves what they like.

Well, part of the issue is that taking a high quality tea, chopping it finely, and putting it into a bag where it is held in pretty tightly, does not produce as good a cup of tea as taking the same leaves and putting them into a basket or large infuser where they are held loosely and have good flow around them.

But that has nothing really to do with the quality of the material itself. And note that some small infusers are as bad as bags in terms of open flow.

--scott

Leftovers? Look, I generally avoid teabags, and I don't drink a lot of CTC tea, but the idea that CTC and the tiny bits that go into teabags are the byproducts of manufacturing "good" tea is a myth. Factories that produce these teas are *designed* to produce them.

Maybe this newsgroup needs not just an FAQ list, but also an FRF (frequently repeated fallacies.) This one might come in as #3, behind:

/Lew

yes that is a great idea to add to the FAQ