My buddy used to work for Lipton. He explained that they use the cheapest grade of tea (dust) available. Also many tea companies mix non-tea additives (fillers) to their tea bags.
After hearing this I decided, if it's not full loose leaf, I don't drink it. We found that companies like Elephant Chateau (http://elephantchateau.com) deliver the 3 highest grades of tea direct from Ceylon mountain estates with the option for plant-based pyramid bags (soilon) or a free stainless steel infuser.
Bonus, the tea actually tastes like tea and is tasty enough to drink plain unlike Lipton dust. It always funny to hear people promote all the health benefits of tea then turn around and dump 100 grams of sugar into a cup to make it palatable.
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.
I really doubt you had a buddy that worked for Unilever who told you "Lipton uses the cheapest grade of tea (dust)" and that companies add non-tea additives.
This is a rumor that's swirling around sites like "Food Babe" but is pure nonsense.
Can't compare the grade of loose leaf I'm talking about to the dust Lipton sells, having tasted the difference. Even visually...it's like comparing champagne to cooking wine.
IIRC (struggling to find a source), Thomas Lipton was the guy who formalized the tea-leaf grading process for Western Europe. The "legend" goes that back in the day, all of the imported tea would be dumped onto the floor of a particular room. The first round of tea producers would come and extract the full, unbroken tea leaves for top-shelf tea. The next round of producers would extract the broken leaves for mid-grade tea. On and on.
Finally, what was left would be the tea leaves that had been so crushed, broken, or pulverized that they were little more than a tea dust. This is what Lipton would then sweep up to make Lipton tea.
Which is to say, Lipton knew what he was doing. He went for the cheapest stuff possible. And that's what you get.
3) Boil a kettle of water and prepare a mug of each. Note the varying instructions: the teabag is only recommended to steep for about two minutes, because the tea dust is comprised of smaller particles and will overextract if left alone too long, while the loose leaf tea calls for about 4 minutes of steeping.
4) Taste and decide for yourself whether you feel there is a meaningful difference between the two. If not, then great! You can continue to buy the more convenient option without feeling like you're being deprived somehow.
* I'm sure there are other brands, but Twinings was the only one off the top of my head that sells both teabags and loose-leaf of the same flavor and can be found in most grocery stores.
First, the higher surface area brews differently - faster, which is convenient, but changes the ratios of what's infused. That's not inherently bad, matcha is green tea specifically prepared to be served that way, but it's usually detrimental to a tea intended for larger leaf brewing.
Second, sitting around powdered in paper sachets means far more air exposure. This is basically the same type of difference as fresh-ground and powdered coffee, which isn't hard to taste.
If you drink tea with milk and sugar, I'm not sure it matters. But for straight tea, it matters at least as much as for straight coffee.
Indian chais are commonly made in most Indian homes with dust tea. It's cheap, produces a very strong cup, which can stand up to the milk, sugar, and spices. Chai made with long leaf teas is just awful.
I wouldn't use a dust or CTC tea if I want to drink the tea straight, though. Different types of tea for different uses.
Yep, that makes a lot of sense. I suppose if cost were no object at all, you could approach it like matcha: de-vein and powder long leaves to get a strong, high-grade brew that doesn't have time to oxidize. But I'm not even sure it would be better, since Indian chai isn't spiced with that process in mind.
I was going to say I've had chais made with long leaf tea, but I realize those were middle eastern versions that are only spiced with a bit of cardamom. I'm sure it's not an accident that the recipe has a lot less spice where long leaves are in use, but I'd love to know how that difference came to be.
There is a long history of spiced drinks in India, drunk for their medicinal value. Most Indian kids have grown up drinking turmeric milk for sore throats, and strong decoctions of pepper, holy basil, and dried ginger for congestions.
From what I can ascertain, Indian Chais appeared in the early 1900s, when British owned tea estates tried to drum up local business among Indians. The best quality teas were exported, though the teas available to Indians were still expensive. Local tea vendors boosted the flavour with spices, and eventually milk.
In the most common variety of masala chai you'll find in India, lots of freshly grated ginger is boiled in water, before adding tea leaves and finally milk. The milk must come last, since raw ginger will split milk. We have different spice blends for different times of the year. We generally avoid masala chais in the hot summers. Ginger chai is great for the rainy season, along with some piping hot fritters. Cardamom and pepper are for the cold winter months.
In Kashmir, where the cuisine is much milder, you'll find kahwah, made from powdered green tea, along with cardamom and saffron.
No, lipton tends to get the cheap crushed remnants of better tea, and only processes whats left to consistency. Others start with whole leaf, and then diliberately crush and seive it to a givin size (selling the remnants to lipton). Not to say its bad tea, just a bit cheap and oxidized. And if going cheap, luzianne (sp?) is the one to grab. Lipton is reserved for weak iced tea imho.
> Elephant Chateau (http://elephantchateau.com) deliver the 3 highest grades of tea direct from Ceylon mountain estates with the option for plant-based pyramid bags (soilon) or a free stainless steel infuser.
I bought it on Amazon on a whim and it ended up being a great purchase. Hard to go back to normal tea and we haven't found this kind of leaf anywhere else.
pg tips used to sell a tea that came in a brown/oragne box. It was rich and tasty but somehow they discontinued it. Lipton and many teas in the US taste of cardboard. It baffles me how people find anything in it to keep buying it.
I just bought a 320 pack of Lipton black tea. I don't drink it for the caffeine. To me the black tea tastes good, but I know that better tea exists. I'll have "good tea" when I visit friends but I'm just not personally interested in hunting down the store in Dalat that my friend likes to get her tea from. Lipton still tastes good to me.
It’s part of people’s morning habit and tough to break. My grandparents drank a ton of Lipton or Tetley tea. I literally didn’t realize there was anything else until college!
I've switch 10 years ago from bags to loose tea and since that moment I can't drink tea with sugar anymore - maybe all that bagged dust stuff was more palatable sweetened back then? No idea. But one thing is sure, I can't switch back to bags and each time I have to drink such, it's a nightmare - esp. the occasional Lipton cup tastes like worst thing under the sun.
This really has me wondering. I have always really enjoyed coffee but found tea was just not for me. Thinking back, I have only ever tried cheap shelf tea such as Lipton as you mentioned. Perhaps I need to try a real tea and see the difference. How is it a company like Lipton who aims to use the cheapest quality product success in the market?
It's the same principle as fast food. A McDonalds hamburger is very different from a "normal" burger - but it's cheaper, quicker, more standardized, and someone has to use the trimmings. There are a few edge cases who like burgers but hate McDonalds, but for most people it's close enough to be a suitable replacement.
I simply use loose-leaf Twinings Earl Grey, the kind that comes in the light yellow tin. It's easy to find everywhere, even in some fairly unexciting supermarkets, and the quality and price are in the tea sweet spot for me. And to your point, it has enough bergamot but not too much. Just the right amount for me.
Curiously, the world is a big place, filled with a variety of people who do things differently to each other.
I'm from 'The North' in Britain and I was raised to drink tea that would be bitter as hell if it didn't have at least a small amount of sugar and a light dash of milk in it. It's the sort of stuff that 'puts hairs on your chest' and gets me through a hard day's work, much like it did for my forebears.
I also like posh black tea on its own and I personally frown upon people who put loads of milk in the stuff, yet apparently quite a few tens of millions of people in India have it just so.
Tea + lemon + sugar is the only way to drink it. True madness is milk in tea, those two liquids should just never go together. And coffee...I guess that's why the best most delicious coffee I buy is literally whatever is cheapest at Lidl - milk and sugar make all coffee taste acceptable.
//obviously, I realize that people around the world have different tastes :P Where I am from literally no one drinks tea with milk, but adding a slice of lemon is extremely popular(I can guarantee that if you order tea at a restaurant it will be served with a slice of lemon to the side), but in the UK it's the opposite - people look at you like you are some kind of demon for adding lemon to tea.
Logically, even if milk and sugar made all coffee taste acceptable (spoiler - they don't) that still wouldn't explain why specifically the coffee you buy from Lidl is "the best, most delicious coffee you buy".
In point of fact, cheap Lidl coffee is actually weirdly really really good.
I was being facetious obviously, by trying to imply that even the cheapest coffee is "the best and most delicious" because the milk and sugar make it all taste the same regardless of coffee beans used. But yes, Lidl's coffee is actually weirdly good despite being unrealistically cheap.
I find most tea (baggies, leaves in a strainer, etc) taste the same and mainly just bitter. Same thing with coffee and alcohol, I can discern no difference between types when drinking anything containing any amount each. Tea is definitely bearable with some honey and milk though.
That's just my crazy taste buds though. The closest explanation for this is being a "supertaster"[1]. I've done the supertaster blue-dye tongue test but compared to my friends we saw no noticeable difference.
After hearing this I decided, if it's not full loose leaf, I don't drink it. We found that companies like Elephant Chateau (http://elephantchateau.com) deliver the 3 highest grades of tea direct from Ceylon mountain estates with the option for plant-based pyramid bags (soilon) or a free stainless steel infuser.
Bonus, the tea actually tastes like tea and is tasty enough to drink plain unlike Lipton dust. It always funny to hear people promote all the health benefits of tea then turn around and dump 100 grams of sugar into a cup to make it palatable.