These are small bits of green tea from a teabag. Still apparent that it's green tea compared to Lipton!
A great way to figure out how good a teabag producer is is by seeing whether they offer loose-leaf tea. After all, why only sell bagged teas if you have access to high quality, loose-leaf tea?
Curious whether your tea’s worth that $10 for 15 bags (ahem – Republic of Tea)?
Peep through the actual teabag to see how big the pieces of tea are. Keep in mind this is for teas that are derived from the camelia sinensis – white, green, oolong, black teas, and their variants. This isn’t a proper test if the tea isn’t supposed to be in whole-leaf form, like South African Rooibos or Japanese matcha green tea.
Another way is by re-steeping your teabag to see how similar the color and minerality is to the first brewed up. The more similar it is, the better the leaves are. Why? Because larger leaves hold more nutrients, minerals and flavors, which make it able to be steeped again in order to keep bringing out the goodness.
When doing these two tests on low quality teabags like Lipton or Celestial Seasonings, the tea consists of mere dust, and it’s a completely different beverage in the second steeping.
What I kind of like doing is buying empty tea bags which I fill to my heart’s content with whatever I like. Yes, it’s a bit tedious to do it yourself, but it shaves time in the morning! You can find them here:
60 empty bags for $6.50: http://www.amazon.com/Pursuit-Tea-Empty-Bags-60ea/dp/B00027CM5C
100 for $7.07 plus free shipping – comes in various sizes: http://www.amazon.com/Finum-100-Tea-Filters-Medium/dp/B002WB12IY/ref=sr_1_2?s=hpc&ie=UTF8&qid=1323846989&sr=1-2
Also, if you don’t mind your tea not always being piping hot, why not brew a big pitcher of tea and keep it in the fridge? This way, you get the health benefits and flavors of loose-leaf tea without the inconvenience of having to brew each cup separately.
