Recent trends give reason to believe that America is slowly, but surely becoming a nation of tea drinkers, with the US market for tea quadrupling over a 20 year period since the 1990s. Though differences on the question of tea prompted division from our friends in England, it might well not be long until America gains ground on its neighbors across the pond in Britain, whose love of tea has catapulted them to the fourth rank for tea consumption among all countries.
Drawing on statistics from the United Kingdom, the Tea Association recently suggested that over 95% of the country’s daily tea drinking is powered by simple teabag. These large numbers make clear that the teabag is, for an overwhelming majority of us, the go-to option when in search of a speedy brew. The ease of a teabag allows tea brewing to keep up with our fast-paced lifestyles and speedy consumer habits around coffee consumption, beverages that are often squeezed between shifts and errands, and commonly enjoyed on the go. And with tea bag offers and a browse of a teabag online shop making their purchase easier than ever, the teabag would seem a hard habit to shake. Now, however, online shops allow you to buy loose tea online.
The Rise of Loose Tea
But just as a significantly growing American market is demonstrating a change in the primary demographics that make up tea drinkers, change at the other side of the production chain is stirring up a shift in how manufacturers are bringing our tea to us. The National Tea Day Trend Report for 2019 has stressed that tea is holding its own against many consumer’s preferences for quick cups of coffee by offering a variety of premium products that emphasize the consumption of tea not merely as a shot of caffeine to be hurriedly consumed, but as a calming experience filled with well-being benefits.
At the front of this rebirth in the tea brewing experience is the exciting and wide world of loose teas, that represents a premium but accessible brewing experience packed with additional benefits, that transform our habitual notions and behaviors around tea drinking. Perhaps the time has come to modify our morning manners, lunch-break inclinations, and home habits and approach tea differently, taking the weight off our tea bag and investing in the benefits of loose leaf tea.
A Premium Experience: a tailored tea experience
The most widely available tea bags on sale at our largest stores are often the product of streamline and cost-cutting production standards. Leftover leaf dust and fannings from the process of tea leaf harvesting will often constitute much of a cheaper tea bag’s content, and there has even been concerns over the presence of plastic parts in some tea bag products. But lower production standards in search of efficient manufacturing and products not only affect the quality and freshness of bagged teas before they hit the supermarket shelves but also their variety.
Mass produced tea bags must ultimately standardize their various blends and flavors for sale in our shops. Though you may have a favorite brand and blend, reliance on a tea bag locks away a world of tea-based experimentation. With loose leaf tea brewing, however, none of the freshness, taste, or variety is sacrificed. Loose tea from Tiesta Tea can be blended and tailored to your taste, or yet undiscovered tastes. No longer dependent on a favorite but unchanging pre-packaged blend, loose teas allow you to create, modify and refresh your own tea-time favorites. The once familiar and unconscious tea time ritual, or tea time rush, becomes a calming and creative experience. Switch from bulk buying tea bags online to carefully crafting your basket of loose teas.
Liberating Tea’s Natural Goodness: the increased healthiness of the bagless brew
On top of its variety and versatility in taste, loosely sold tea offers greater freshness than teas brewed in a bag, and this freshness brings with it a profusion of benefits to health and wellbeing. The healthy benefits of green tea over more typical varieties of bagged tea are well known, with reduced processing and fermentation, and handpicking increasing the presence of the tea’s natural healthy properties.
But despite all this work contributing to the retention of the tea of its goodness, the process of bagging, and brewing in the bag, can hinder the teas ability to impart all this goodness into your brew, reducing the teas many carefully honed properties at the very end of its long journey to your cup. So how can the most be made of the tea’s goodness?
By not being hindered by the bag, each leaf in loose tea is able to more slowly impart its combination of antioxidants that strengthen your body’s immune system and help us look and feel better. By slowing the process of the leaves steeping in water, the loose brewing of tea leaves not only brings with it heightened and more potent flavors and aromas, but an increased presence of healthy, whole-grain natural properties. Instead of immediately diving on bulk tea bag offers, there are now more reasons than ever to consider loose tea over tea bags online.
Ditching the Packaging: loose tea’s positive effects on the environment
As the world pays increasing attention to the environmental effects of our consumer choices, and notices more and the more the impact of unnecessary packaging, loose leaf teas can boast of their reduced environmental impact. A major benefit attained by purchasing loose leaf teas is freedom from needless additional packaging, with loose-leaf teas often coming in simple recyclable packaging.
The goodness at the start of loose tea’s production cycle continues not only in its flavor and healthy properties then, but into its environmental footprint. Commonly, our most popular tea bags can not be composted, and the sight of used tea bags heaped on saucers will be a familiar site to dedicated tea lovers everywhere. Additionally, recent research has found that components in some tea bags used to bind them together can end up leaking millions of plastic particles into our drinks and the environment. But with the removal of the non-compostable bag, the leftover leaves after brewing can go straight into natural recycling waste or composters, where their natural products will rapidly biodegrade unhindered by the presence of manmade waste. These overwhelming benefits might just help you consider swapping your tea bag online shop for the opportunity to buy loose tea. Kent and Sussex Tea and Coffee Company is one of the biggest online shops that offers a wide selection of loose leaf tea coming from all over the world.
