Truth about tea "dust"

Wish I had specific answers for you.

But I've contacted several tea importers in China in my quests for quality tea, and they referred to such particles as "fannings" and "dust," where "fannings" are slightly better (larger pieces of leaf?) than "dust." One vendor was selling the fannings for something like 90 cents per kg and dust for 80 cents per kg.

Considering those prices and comparing them to whole leaf tea, which costs upwards of 10 times as much, that might give you some idea about the quality of the tea dust or fannings.

Additionally, most tea is processed in clean environments, and often using using fully or partially mechanized processes to sort leaves, especially Indian and African teas, which make up the bulk of Lipton bags, I hear. So chances are the dust and/or fannings are sorted out by machine before they hit any floors. :) Even if the dust does hit the floor, it probably does so _after_ the floor has been cleaned, and probably gets swept out every day and packaged up.

Lastly, one of the stores in my Chinatown repackages and sells at a discount the "fannings" that filter to the bottom of their tea shipments. If only I could find the fannings of the $300/lb oolongs in that discount basket...

To have a guy literally sweeping dust off the floor into a bag or something would be too much labor expense. I imagine the dust falls to the lowest conveyor belt and is packaged like the other grades. In my local (chain) grocery stores you can buy "gourmet" (eg Twinings, Stash) tea bags at ~$3.00 for 20. This is a HUGE markup and these companies have vast profit margins, which is why there's a wall of different tea bags in the store but zero loose leaf.

One story my local tea shoppe owner heard at the Las Vegas tea conventions, is that the most desired tea in factories by workers collect on the ventilation filters. It is much smaller than fines. Besides brewing it is used for cooking and a nasal inhalant substitute for tobacco snuff. I like teabags for Asian markets better than Western. I've always discounted any factory floor tea stories. It would be easier putting in more filters than using more brooms. Particulate in the air is an explosive. Tea is an agricultural product. Always boil your water.

Jim

Barky Bark wrote:

I've never seen anyone doing that (that doesn't mean too much though) but I've seen dust being collected at the end of the sieving/selecting process in quite a few factories (China, India, Malaysia).

In the Chowk bazaar here in Darjeeling you can buy fannings and dust that IMO result in a far better tea than some of the lousy - overstored, murky, damp, overtoasted or simply bad - whole leaf grades. Nice for a quick cup on the road, and DIRTcheap. One major drawback might be that it deteoriates pretty quickly.

I'd really like to know where this lady made her observations, if at all.

Karsten / Darjeeling

I looked up her company on the web...looks like they make gourmet teabags with a special design that hold...whole leaf teas. That might be partially why she made such a critical comment Doesn't make it right but it does give a motive.

Melinda

Bingo !

Karsten / Darjeeling

Tea bags account for 90% of the tea brewed in most Western countries. There is not enough "good" leaf tea being processed to have enough dust left over to sweep from the floor to meet the demand for tea bags.

Loose tea is better, as a general rule, but tea bags have their place. You can't beat them for convenience when you need a quick cuppa before you leave for work in the morning, or even while you're at the office. I would much rather drink a cup of tea made from a high-quality tea bag than from mediocre loose-leaf tea.

Here's an interesting article that makes the same point:

I would agree with you that you can't beat bag tea for convenience but this article is definitely slanted towards bags. They didn’t give too much info on the teas that were tasted; one explanation could be that loose teas that they have tasted were on the shelf for several years or were not very good loose teas to begin with.

Oleg

Pat wrote:

I think it's unlikely that the loose tea sat on the shelves for several years for every brand tested. Besides, there is still a reasonable amount of tea sold in the UK, so the stock should be reasonably fresh

-- and loose tea is less finely ground than the tea in bags so it should keep longer.

Many people would not consider these to be "good" loose teas. But the point is that they are in the same quality range as the bagged teas. The test would be meaningless, otherwise.

I use tea bags for my first cup in the morning before I leave for work

-- and also while I am at work. I use loose in the evenings and on weekends when I have more time, unless I am feeling especially lazy. The loose is better, no doubt, but not so much better that I can't enjoy the bagged stuff.

I also fully agree with the article that the use of a teapot is more important than the loose vs. bags issue. Tea bags brewed in a pot always produce a superior brew to a bag brewed in a mug. I never make tea in the mug at home, no matter how lazy I am feeling. I do brew it in the mug at work where I lack proper tea making facilities, but it's always better made in the pot.

It is basically a bunch of B.S. This same comment has been being made for years, and it is just silly. Lipton, who is actually the company who most claim to use "dust" actually cultivates their own leaves... yet they just started to get into the loose tea market. So all these years what were they doing with the "real" leaves? They powder it to be able to make more money. It takes less tea per serving and the tea releases its flavor quicker.

Also, what would explain the very highly prized and costly Matcha tea? It is powdered, so it must be floor sweepings too... but we know that is far from the real story.

I consider myself to be a tea purist and while I really enjoy a high quality tea, I am not on such a high horse that I can't enjoy a cup of Lipton when the mood strikes me. This claim is a bunch of bull, and in no way true. The closest true statement was the one person who replied about a shop selling the "fannings" or "dust" which is just what he stated it is... that is as close as you get to "floor sweepings" and most of that tea would still be better quality than most on the shelf at your grocery store.

Aside from the crummy taste of almost all tea that goes into retail teabags, one of the bigger detriments of dust is that it stains your teeth much more readily than whole-leaf tea does.

(Learned my lesson when PG Tips started selling those pyramid bags, and I tried a bunch of Twinings teabag products at the same time...)

Fortunately, Crest Whitestrips reverses the problem.

--Blair