To be fair, bagged tea exists because there are lots of buyers who only want quick refreshing non-coffee caffeine, and don't care for taste that much. Or sometimes they just want a background for those 100 g. of sugar you mentioned. Tea dust is a perfect match for this market, because it releases everything it holds to water immediately, while whole leaves may require some patience, and proper procedure.
FWIW, I'm personally fond of tea dust for cold brew, too. This summer I've been very much enjoying gyokuro dust steeped overnight in the fridge as my morning beverage. Not only is it less expensive than the whole leaf stuff (essentially free vs. some of the most expensive tea I own), but I think that works better with that brewing method, too.
Probably the main reason I don't use Lipton instead of the good stuff when I'm making cold brew is that I dislike all the packaging waste. Between the brewing method and the serving temperature, I don't necessarily find the taste alone to be enough better to justify the higher price.
Gyokuro is supposed to be high grade tea leaves grown in the shade, which are then ground into powder. (This is basically how matcha is made.)
By contrast, the tea dust that Lipton uses is the leftovers when all the higher-grade roasted whole leaves have been taken out, and it's quite literally the worst/cheapest grade:
where do you get your gyokuro from? the last time I had it was literally almost a decade ago and I absolutely loved it but I haven't been able to really find it except for expensive online retailers that strike me more as vanity brands than anything. but if you know of any good sources, id love to check them out
I get it from a local tea place that specializes in chinese and japanese teas. It looks like the price I'm paying is a bit higher than what I'm seeing from a cursory look on the Internet. No idea how the quality compares.
I've been using Lipton for this purpose and don't like all the packaging either. What do you use to contain the dust while you brew overnight? I make mine in a pitcher that lasts a few days.
I use a travel mug with a strainer cup that fits snugly inside. In the morning I pour it out without removing the strainer, so whatever dust fell through and collected in the bottom ends up getting filtered out when it goes back through the wet bits of leaf.
Celestial Seasons uses high quality ingredients, offering tours for anyone in the Boulder, Colorado area. They also use a patented pillow bag according to their FAQ:
unique pillow-style tea bag that doesn't need a string, tag, staple or individual wrapper—and as a result, we save 3.5 million pounds of waste from entering landfills every year.
> unique pillow-style tea bag that doesn't need a string, tag, staple or individual wrapper—and as a result, we save 3.5 million pounds of waste from entering landfills every year.
Anecdotally, my mother has been drinking Celestial Seasons for as long as I can remember (i.e. 20-25 years), and at any given time has maybe a half dozen to a dozen boxes of various types of it. Given that I grew up drinking it, tea bags with a string and tag have always been super weird to me.
> Do the 'pillow-style tea bag's use plastic?
Based solely on appearance/texture, they seem to me like they're some type of paper or light fabric, but it might be made from plastic.
Our tea bags are manufactured through a totally chlorine-free (TCF) process, meaning that no dioxin is released into the environment. Plus, they never contain starch or gluten, and they're completely biodegradable and compostable—making them better for you and for our planet.
"On packaging, it’s important for you to know that our tea bag paper is made of a blend of natural, chlorine-free fibers, and does not contain epichlorohydrin."
The sentence comes off as a little evasive. It would have been better if they said exactly what the bags are made of. It seems reasonable to conclude they are plastic-free but I don't think you can be 100% sure unless it's explicitly stated.
Celestial Seasons FAQ [1] says they sell 1.6 billion cups of tea per year, so this would work out to about 5 grams per serving, which seems around the right ballpark for the entire tea bag. Maybe their thinking is that without the staples, the tea bags are compostable, so they don't go in a landfill?
Not all brands, obviously, but don't assume the 'bag' itself is biodegradable.
Anecdotally, certain fancy tea bags survived an 18 month composting cycle, which I had to then pluck out by hand before spreading said compost on my vegie patch.
That number looks about right for "because of this, every one of our teabags is recycled instead of thrown out", which is obviously not true. But it could also be a supply-chain stat, where the landfill mass of those strings and staples is measured from cotton and iron, instead of the finished products.
We took a tour of Loolecondera Tea Estate aka James Taylor Tea Museum a few years back. I left with the idea that high quality tea manufacturers consider dust almost waste material.
Not all bagged tea is terrible. I usually use bags from Pickwick, which is okay. Not great, certainly not as good as high quality loose leaf, but good enough when I'm lazy or in a hurry.
I recently used some Lipton yellow label, though, and that was terrible. There's absolutely variation in quality, even among bagged tea.
