Tea Reviews | It's All About The Leaf

Posts Tagged ‘Tea Bags’

Earl Grey tea is one of the most popular and well-known kinds of tea in the Western world. It was named after the second Earl, Charles Grey, of Britain in the 1830s. Charles Grey was the prime minister at the time the act was passed to abolish slavery in the British Empire. This is quite an accomplishment, yet people know him for his tea instead.

Tea tasting one:

The smell of the dry tea bag is of a classic Earl Grey tea with bergamot oil.

A three minute infusion and the tasting profile are of citrus. No perfume as some EG’s tend to lean. This one needs no milk or other additives. The tea base is smooth, no astringency. Overall, a mild EG teabag with balanced notes.

Tea tasting two:

Brewed the teabag for 4 minutes. First sip and I am getting the same citrus notes as last time I enjoyed this tea. But, as I neared the bottom of my cup bitterness overtook me. The obvious observation to make from this to not overbrew this tea. Three minutes and the EG was smooth and very drinkable. Four minutes and the tea is nearly undrinkable.

I do think that Hampstead tea bags are better than what you might find at your local supermarket. These bags are filled to the brim with quality tea and make an enjoyable cuppa.

You can purchase the Biodynamic, Organic and Fairtrade Earl Grey directly from the Hampstead Tea website.

Here at Its All About The Leaf, we were recently contacted by Adagio – asking if we were interested in reviewing their new line of gourmet tea bags. Now, I have been following Charles Cain of Adagio on twitter, and on the tearetailer.com website, and on several occasions the issue of loose leaf tea vs. teabag has arisen. Often it is brought up by new “tea retailers” in a bit of a snobby attempt to differentiate themselves from other store-bought teabag companies. Claims of the non-teabag faction include:

- teabags contain only fannings – the tea “leftovers”
- the teabag interferes with the taste of the tea
- teabags are for old ladies and young children not hip middle agers
- only loose leaf tea will give you the full taste and experience of tea.

I have to admit, that at one time, I thought all of these things exactly. However, since starting this website, I have had a chance to review tea in all different forms and fashions, from teabag to loose, to dried, even baked in chocolate. And I have come to the conclusion – it is not the container the tea is in, it is the quality of tea.

And with that, I come back around to Adagios’ offering. This collection includes Jasmine Pearls, Silver Needle, Dragonwell, Wuyi Oolong, Golden Yunnan and Oolong Goddess. Each tea is packaged individually in a sealed wrapper, and in each wrapper is a teabag *GASP* containing just enough for one cup of tea. The tea bag its self is a good quality, pyramid teabag, allowing plenty of room for the tea to expand as it infuses.

Now, lets compare these teabags to the most popular claims by the anti-bag groups:

1. Teabags contain only fannings -> not here folks. The Jasmine Pearls for example, contained ACTUAL Jasmine Pearls – kind of a waste in my opinion, since it is such a high quality tea that’s neat to watch unfurl, but it is clear, that these are no fannings. The same goes with the rest of the teas – we are talking full leaf tea, not broken down old leaf.

2. The teabag interferes with the taste of the tea -> what are you, a supertaster? The fact is, 75% of people do not even have the capacity to tell the difference between good and bad tea, never mind to detect if a teabag interferes with a teas taste! I will tell you, I consider myself relatively picky with tea, that comes with the territory of drinking it daily and in great variety, and in not one single tea I had from this collection, could I taste the “teabag”.

3. Teabags are for old ladies and young children -> I am neither. Nor is my family, or friends. All of them mix teabags and loose leaf. Lets be real, how many old ladies do you know that will pay $19.00 for 30 bags of tea – not many I warrant. And kids? Rarely will they even do the buying. Lets just drop this myth entirely, it smacks of 50′s England, and I have never seen anyone in North America drink tea with a pinky out!

4. Only loose leaf tea will give you the full taste and experience of tea -> nope. That is plain old tea bigotry. Anyone who says this without qualification is either willfully ignorant, or is trying to sell you something. The reality is the quality of the TEA is what gives you the taste and experience – not the delivery mechanism. I have had loose leaf that is garbage, and teabags that sing (i.e. the Adagio Silver Needle in this collection) – it is about the tea folks, not the wrapper.

So – now that we have dispelled the myths, lets again, focus on this collection.

Jasmine Pearls – the taste is exactly what I would expect out of a good quality Jasmine tea. I enjoyed it very much, but the Pearls part is a bit of a waste since you cannot really see them unfurl. From a marketing point of view, I get it, but the same quality Jasmine tea would have accomplished the same experience. None the less – I loved it, it reminded me of my youth at home in the kitchen with my Grandmother!

Silver Needles – By far, I am a Silver Needle guy. No matter where I am, if Silver Needles are on the menu, I am buying/drinking/taking it home. I have had some stinkers, but this one is NOT! I loved every drop, and even got 3 good steepings out of it. There would have been more, but the teabag mysteriously disappeared in a whirl of kitchen cleaning…

Dragonwell – I am not a huge Dragonwell fan, but enough so that I know good green when I taste it, and again, this is it. Adagio has not skimped on the tea part of these teabags!

Wuyi Oolong – Oolong can be a lifelong study. There are so many kinds, from a greener Oolong to a dark, rich Oolong, to buttery light Oolongs. Wuyi is one of the more recognizable (see a pattern in this collection?) and is a good mid-range Oolong, appealing to a wider audience than say, a Formosa Oolong. It tasted… just as it should. No teabag flavours, no bitterness, just smooth, Oolongy goodness.

Golden Yunnan – a Chinese black “standard” – it is again, a good mid-range selection that appeals to a wide variety of palates. You get the boldness of a black tea, without the over-astringent flavours of a poor quality Black. I would have liked to see this replaced with a good Darjeeling or Assam, but to keep with the theme, it does work

Finally – Oolong Goddess. To be honest, I have not had a chance to try this out of the sampler, but I can assure you, that it will be a good example of this kind of Oolong, it will be fully leafed, and it will not suffer in the least for being presented in a teabag!

The Gourmet Tea Collections from Adagio are not meant for established, hard core loose leaf tea drinkers, nor are they meant to replace Adagios’ high quality loose leaf tea offerings. As Charles Cain has pointed out in the past, too many people are “scared” of loose leaf tea, I think because it has been made out to be too exclusive a club. These tea bag collections are intended to assist people in the transition of poor quality teabags, to loose leaf, being the intermediate step along the way. I think that they accomplish that admirably. High quality tea in a teabag is NOT a new concept, but the presentation of these in a retail environment like Adagio is doing will only serve to convert more people to good quality tea, and for that, Adagio gets kudos for a great effort, and I am looking forward to more collections just like this!

If you have gotten this far, you have probably formed your own opinion – and I am dying to know what it is! Leave me a comment, and I will reply to each and every one of them, pro-teabag or not, this website is about the everyday tea drinker – which you are! So let me know your thoughts!

You can purchase the Gourmet Tea Collection – Artisan Comfort directly from the Adagio website.

I have two tea bags with which to form a review of this tea. So, I will be sharing my thoughts on this tea as I progressed through both tea tastings.

First tea bag:
The smell from the dry tea bag is minty. The teabags from Hampstead Tea are really full, not your typical tea bag. I brewed the bag for 2 minutes, added a splash of milk and sipped. “What does this remind me of? Dirt? No, mint.” For me the tea has a mint aftertaste. Is this bad? It depends, do you want your breakfast tea to remind you of mint? I decided on this first cup that I did not want mint with breakfast.

Second tea bag:
The smell from the dry tea bag is minty. No denying the mint flavor. As I brewed for two minutes, I braced myself for the previous flavor profile. I sipped my first sip and hum…it seems better to me. Is it a tea that I would pick for breakfast? Probably not. I did read another reviewers take on this tea and they compared it to a Darjeeling. I can see that comparison now that I have drank two full cups of this robust black tea.

Overall, I like Hampstead Tea tea bags, they are full and brew up nicely. This particular EB left me wanting something else. It is just not my cup of tea.

You can purchase the Organic Fairtrade English Breakfast directly from the Hampstead Tea website.

The Blue Q company of Pittsfield, Massachusetts sells odds and ends on their internet store. Ok , really odd things such as hand sanitizers, pencil cases, chewing gum and factory seconds on insulated mugs. So right there, tea sales probably won’t be taken seriously. A business that mixes its product lines is apt to create confusion for a serious consumer of tea.

The tea is Today’s Special Green Tea Orange. It is a green tea with a heavy hand on orange peel. It is not “a playful pinch of Spanish orange peel” as suggested on the Blue Q web site. The green tea, peel, flavourings and even the tea bags are organic. There is no official organic certification mentioned however, and there is no mention of the source of the tea of its type, other than “green”. So, the only thing left to do is to boil the water and taste the tea.

By the way, the packaging is cute, very cute, with little fluffy kitties all playfully tied up in an orange ball of wool. The tea bag sleeve is foil pouch and sealed individually. On he inside walls of the tea packet there was a coating of dust. I used a damp finger to scoop some up and tasted it. It was gritty but I’m not sure from what. The smell of the tea bag was unappealing, no pun intended. That Spanish orange is probably a Seville orange, smelling slightly oily, slightly pungent, perfumy and burnt. I used a 8 oz cup and 85 degree Celsius water and a 3 minute steep. The instructions on the packet say 2-4 minutes for the steep. The smell of the orange is almost overpowering. There is no green tea smell. The liquor is golden yellow and fairly clear.

The trouble is, I find the scent of the orange too strong. I try one sip and there is bitterness from the orange and the orange oils coat my tongue and mouth. There is a bitter aftertaste that lingers. I try 3 sips and that’s enough for me.

Someone should re-think this idea of an orange and put something else inside the lovely packaging. Its a cutsey idea, a novelty product line but its not serious tea.

You can purchase the Today’s Special Green Tea Orange directly from the Blue Q website.

The sample of Sunrise in Tibet from TSalon came in a two-part clear plastic package. The lower compartment sealed in 25 grams of loose tea from the upper compartment that contained 2-10 gram servings of loose tea in organic fold-type tea bags that were also sealed to prevent the leaves from falling about. I liked the clear plastic because you can see the quality of the loose un-bagged tea. There were strands of orange-coloured safflower petals and chunks of mandarin orange peel among chopped black tea leaves and stems.

I checked the TSalon web site but found errors in the listing for this tea. The tea description promised notes of vanilla, cocoa, mandarin orange and thistle with an aroma like freshly baked cookies. Gamesters will know that Thistle Tea is used as a quest reward to immediately restore energy. As it turns up as an ingredient in Sunrise in Tibet Tea from TSalon, this may surely be a sign to drink this tea after your game quest.

I weighed the sample and the tea bags and then slipped the loose tea into another tea bag to enjoy at a later time. As I prefer my tea strong, I used the 10 gram tea bag in 400 ml boiled water at 212 F. for a 4 minute steep. As a standard measure for most flavoured black teas, use 2.5 grams in 200 ml of 100 degrees Celsius water for 3-4 minutes. I used a glass tea pot as I wanted to see the colour of the tea, and also I wanted to keep the tea warm during the full steep to ensure the flavours would be extracted. When making a flavoured black tea that requires a longer steep, use a teapot that holds the warmth well and use a tea cozy. If using glassware, set your tea pot over a trivet and candle warmer. Do not use a tea cosy near a open flame due to the risk of fire.

What does the sunrise look like? In a white tea cup, the brilliant golden-red tones of the liquor beam out at you, inviting you to sip in the good morning vibes. See photo. This is a bright cup of tea that gives off tantalizing scents of spice and vanilla. The chocolate tones were a bit lost. The taste is naturally sweet but there was a bitterness, surely not from the steeped tea? No, that would be mandarin orange and thistle bringing a tartness to this smooth in-the-mouth blend. Your taste buds will be stimulated and your taste-sight-feel-smell-senses become alert. This tea would cut through peanut butter and jam or even a bagel and cheese. There is a lingering astringency, a dryness in the mouth that would go well with the fats serves in a breakfast such as butter, cheese, home fries or bacon.

Dare I try a drop of milk in this morning brew? Yes, the bitterness rounded out and after adding sugar, I sensed a balance of sweet and bitterness. I wanted to have a Peach Danish pastry to compliment this tea.

Is there anything Tibetan to this? Probably not, but it is romantic and congers up visions of orange-red morning skylight over rugged mountains. You’d need a brisk tea to get you started in the morning there too. The thistle will certainly help get your energy going. This tea is very pleasant overall and is well suited as a compliment to a breakfast meal or with a sweet rather than as a stand-alone tea.

You can purchase the Sunrise in Tibet directly from the T-Salon website.