Start Your Tea Drinking Experience with Buying Loose Leaf Tea

As more and more studies about the power of tea come into the mainstream media, it's no surprise that people are becoming much more interested in drinking tea than ever before. However, if you've only had cup after cup of bad tea, you might be a little skeptical about trying tea again. This is a very natural thing, and the good news is that it truly doesn't have to be that way at all. In fact, you truly can have a great cup of tea if you just take a closer look at the process of making good tea.

In a nutshell, buying loose leaf tea is the start of what makes a truly delightful tea-drinking experience. One reason why people don't get into buying it is that they believe that it's too hard, but that's not the case at all. In fact, it's quite possible to not only get quality loose leaf tea, but make it with enough ease to have it every day you want. Like any other food and drink decision, there are a few things you will need to keep in mind in order to buy good loose leaf tea.

First, you will want to make sure that you have the right materials. Indeed, you don't want to end up getting a great tea that really matches up to your own unique tastes and still not have what you need to really take advantage of all of it. Thankfully, there are only a few tools you'll need to get the perfect cup of tea: an infuser, a teapot, and a filter for the loose leaf tea to go in.

Next, you will want to focus on the loose leaf tea itself. It may sound like common sense that you should think carefully on what tea to start out with first, but that's exactly what you will want to do. A common mistake that ends up turning people away from tea is selecting the wrong starting teas. Of course, you're more than welcome to pick up any tea that sounds really good to you, but there are a few classics that many people stick to.

If you're concerned about having more energy, you may want to look into starting with it tea such as green tea. On the other hand, if you want to work on sleeping better through the night or just needing a way to wind down after a long day, you might want to look into getting a chamomile tea.

No matter what tea you get, you want to make sure that you get loose leaf tea from a reputable source. Despite popular opinion, there are plenty of online sites that sell quality one. Once you've experienced the convenience of ordering your own loose leaf tea, you'll be completely hooked!

All things considered, getting great loose leaf tea is just a matter of having the right tools, and being willing to try a few different teas before you settle on your signature tea. If you're willing to do that, then you should have no problem buying loose leaf tea at all!

Loose Leaf Tea Instead of Tea Bags

Tea bags are essentially a 20th century invention, though they did not take off in a big way until Tetley, the UK tea company, popularised the paper tea bag in the 1950s. The tea bag gradually changed the way that teas was drunk in the UK, tea became an instant drink - put the bag in the cup, add boiling water, a couple of stirs, out with the bag, add the milk and about thirty seconds after the kettle boils - a nice cuppa.

Or is it? It's refreshing enough but that's about all it is, it's simply a drink. Millions of people are blissfully unaware of the true potential of tea, a potential that is lost when using a commercial tea bag. For a start, the taste, then there is the aroma. Even Green tea from commercial tea bags have a neutral, bland even, taste and aroma. It is even suggested that the contents of commercial bags are the 'fannings' or waste material from the processing of high grade leaf teas. Compare the flavour and smell from green tea made using loose leaves and a tea bag - poles apart. The truth is that tea from commercial tea bags tastes pretty much the same, whatever it is, black, white, green ...

The problem is that the tea in bags is powdered, or if not, it is ground up into very small fragments. It has to be. The tea bag is a restricted space so the water cannot circulate particularly well, so the flavours and aromas are not extracted efficiently. Whenever something is ground up very finely, it presents a large surface area to the air and so it oxidises more rapidly. Even the anti-oxidants oxidise! In other words, it is stale by the time you taste it! So you are onto a loser - the taste is poor and any goodness that the tea contains will be greatly reduced too. With loose leaf teas, the leaf is left whole, so the process of oxidation is much slower as the air does not reach the centre of the leaf. Thus leaf teas stay fresher, retaining their flavours and aroma for longer and also keeping their beneficial chemicals for longer.

So why do the majority of people drink this inferior tea? Habit? Convenience? Price? Cannot be bothered with the 'faff' of making tea from leaves? The answer is probably yes to all of those. It could also be that it fits in with the fast pace of modern life. We want things fast. In the east, the tea ceremonies take slow to extreme but they do at least acknowledge that drinking tea involves all of the senses. Watching the leaves unfurl in the bottom of the cup, smelling the aroma, then the much stronger and distinctive flavors, not to mention the well-documented health aspects.

If you don't try loose tea, you certainly won't miss it, the question is, can you open your mind (and taste buds and nose) to experience the world of real tea?