Loose Leaf Tea vs Supermarket Tea Bags: What You’re Actually Drinking
Most supermarket tea bags are filled with fannings and dust, the small fragments left over once the better leaf has been sorted into other grades. Loose leaf tea, like our Roxy Black, is whole leaf. The difference is easy to taste: whole leaf gives a rounded, malty cup with balanced depth, whereas tea dust gives something flat and bitter.
What’s really in a cheap tea bag?
Tip one out and have a look. You’ll find a small pile of brown-grey grit, closer to something you’d sweep up than something you’d brew. It is tea, technically, but it’s what’s left over once the higher quality tea has been removed.
What is CTC tea?
Most of that grit is made by a process called CTC, which stands for crush, tear, curl. Withered leaf is fed through rollers studded with sharp teeth that mince it into tiny, hard pellets. It’s fast, cheap and consistent, and it has one job: to colour a mug of hot water as quickly as possible. All those fragments have a huge surface area, so they brew quickly and release a lot of tannins. That’s why a cheap bag goes from pale to stewed in the time it takes to find the milk, and why it so often needs sugar to take the edge off.
How is whole leaf tea made?
Roxy Black is an organic Assam, made from whole leaf and processed with a lighter touch. The leaves are withered then rolled – so they twist rather than shred – and then left to oxidise until they turn coppery, before being fired to dry. It’s slower and more hands-on, and the leaf stays largely in one piece. Organic farming means no synthetic pesticides or fertilisers, which seems worth caring about in something you steep in hot water and drink.
Does it taste different?
Yes, and it shows up in the first sip. Whole leaf releases its flavour over three or four minutes, not thirty seconds, so you get a rounded, malty Assam with a bright finish and that coppery colour, without the dry bitterness and astringency of dust. Roxy Black is good enough to drink black, with nothing added, but it also tastes beautiful with a little milk added.
How do you brew Roxy Black?
Use a heaped teaspoon of loose leaf, or one tea temple, per large cup or small pot. Add boiling water and give it three to four minutes. Our tea temples are made from sugarcane and are commercially compostable, and they’re shaped so the whole leaf has room to open up and infuse properly.
Is the difference really that big?
Try it yourself! Make one cup of Roxy Black and one cup from the supermarket tea bag in your cupboard. Taste them side by side – the difference is not subtle!