TeaChat

I have been drinking tea for several years now, and I'm wondering if online tea is better than tea sold in grocery stores ( lipton, bigelow, CS, etc.). I am interested in purchasing tea online, and I'm wondering if there is a big difference between the two.

Tea-Pat

There is an amazing difference between the tea that is sold in grocery stores and the tea that you can purchase online.

Here's a crash-course in loose-leaf tea:

Grocery stores tend to sell teabags. The tea filling teabags is what's known as "fannings" or "tea dust." This is, quite literally, bottom-of-the-barrel tea. The flavor tends to be dull and flat and is often quite stale.

Tea that you can purchase online is generally sold loose-leaf (although you can buy more upscale teabags and whole-leaf bagged tea). It's much more fresh - you'll be able to tell the difference immediately.

Your homework (my suggestion to you) is to brew a cup of your regular bagged tea and then to try a sample of a quality loose-leaf tea (such as Adagio's Ceylon Sonata). Drink these side-by-side and you'll see for yourself the difference in taste and quality.

To prepare loose-leaf tea, you'll need the following:

- one cup water
- a strainer
- one tsp. of loose-leaf tea leaves

Bring a cup of water to a boil. Place one teaspoon of loose-leaf tea leaves into a liquid measuring cup; fill the measuring cup to the one-cup mark. Allow to steep for five minutes. After steeping, pour the liquid through a strainer into a mug (thereby filtering out the leaves).

It's very important that you steep for no more or less than five minutes - any less, and you won't get the full flavor of the tea; any more and the tea can oversteep, becoming bitter.

Most tea connoisseurs balk at the idea of sugar and milk/cream in tea; however, if that's how you prefer it, go ahead! (That's how I was raised drinking black tea and I've never shed the habit.)

Good luck, and I hope this was helpful!

Thank you for the info. Is their any specific place i should buy tea from online?

There are many tea vendors that have online shops. Of course, this site is an extension of Adagio, which is a great vendor. There are a few others from whom I regularly purchase:

Republic of Tea
The Stash Tea Company
Indigo Tea

Good luck!

supermarket teabags = water coloring agent, not tea.

you could just start shopping at whole foods market for tea instead of your old market. they have a wide selection of high quality loose leaf tea. The price is kinda meh. I find that i buy tea there just because its a 10 minute trip instead of waiting 4 days for shipping.

The world just became a little bit more pleasant!

Shopping in my local Sainbury's supermarket in Scotland a few days ago I came across loose leaf sencha! On further inspection it was organic and even more amazingly it was this years harvest and had a packed on the '19.07.07' stamp.

At £5.99(approx $12) for 125g I snapped it up. All things considered I'm really pleased with my purchase. It may not be the brew to knock Chip's socks off but for much cheapness and the instant gratification of the supermarket shelf I think the world might not be doomed after all.

http://www.clearspring.co.uk/japanese/teas/sencha

Felicitations Proinsias.

Tea-Pat wrote:I have been drinking tea for several years now, and I'm wondering if online tea is better than tea sold in grocery stores ( lipton, bigelow, CS, etc.). I am interested in purchasing tea online, and I'm wondering if there is a big difference between the two.

Tea-Pat

Tea Pat --

Welcome aboard.

There's a huge difference in quality and flavor. It's like you haven't been using all your taste buds and then tasting something really wonderful the first time.

Some of the tea can be pretty overwhelming to the first time buyer, though. There is as much variety to suit just about everyone. I recommend that you try samples first to determine where your tastes lie and follow the instructions these kind folks will suggest in proper method of preparation. (Boiling water and green tea don't mix).

Good luck and welcome again.

Sorry skywarrior, that first post is two years old. Maybe my fault for pulling up old threads but I don't bother starting a thread if I can find one suitable for my post, I think it's the part of my brain that used to sort CD's.....

Haha, Sky.

Don't worry about it.

It's a hard decision: Whether to resurrect a dead thread, or make a new one and get chewed out for not using the search feature(luckily nobody here really cares about the new thread thing).

FataliTEA wrote:Haha, Sky.

Don't worry about it.
.

Never mind, time for bed anyways.