Dustings VS Loose Leaf

Hello peoples!

Today is Sunday, and I do apologize for the late posting. I was fairly groggy today and didn't get to writing earlier on.

I have worked in a wonderful tea shop, and fell in love with the massive culture and traditions around loose leaf tea. There's a lot that I can write about when it comes to tea, hence why it gets it's own day each week to be discussed. I'll start my first Sunday posting about tea at one of the basics: the difference between dustings (Tea bags) and loose leaf tea.

While handling the tea plant in the various processes that create loose leaf tea for consumption, some pieces of the plant break off or have particulate sifted out. These small bits of plant matter are collected and put into tea bags, then sold in what a lot of people assume is "real" tea. Red Rose is a brand of tea bag that is extremely popular, but is is comprised entirely of dustings. There are a few reasons companies use dustings. First and most logically for a large company, it's cheap. Much cheaper to buy the discarded bits of a process than the actual product. It's kind of like bologna. Second, because of the makeup of dustings, they steep MUCH faster than full tea leave. They are also much less susceptible the scorching, which occurs when you use water that is too hot for a particular type of tea leaf (There will be a later post on it, trust me). Using tea bags simplifies the process of making tea, basically the same way that instant coffee affected how coffee's culture when it became popular. It was cheap, fast, and awful if you knew how to make coffee from beans.

Loose leaf tea, while requiring a bit of knowledge and proper equipment, creates a significantly more flavourful liquor (The proper term for the liquid created by steeping tea), less bitter, more money efficient in the long run, and much better health benefits. Loose leaf tea retains more significantly more polyphenols, a natural chemical in the tea leaf, it creates a "calm energy". That is to say, you get the energy from the caffeine from the tea but not the jitter or crash, because of the polyphenols. They are also what helps keep loose leaf tea less bitter than dustings because they dull the impact of tannins, the chemical that causes tea to become bitter. Tannins are the reason that a lot of tea becomes bitter when over-steeped.

There are tons of studies done to show the health benefits of loose leaf tea, specifically white or green tea. Take information on the internet with a grain of salt, but generally, drinking tea should help prevent cancers, improve various body systems, and make for a much healthier life. Plus, loose leaf tea tastes awesome.

Thanks for listening to my rant today. If you have a specific question about tea, or want to share your favourite kind of tea, leave it in the comments. I'm always looking to try new teas.

Toodles!