Many people feel that making tea bags/tea bags is a compromise: for convenience, they have to give up the quality of tea.
Starting from the knowledge of tea bags, it seems that they have never crawled out of the mud pit of "cheap and inferior quality": when it comes to tea bags, they always look disgusted, and always associate them with the production lines of large factories, inferior broken tea, and toxic tea The bag is hooked.
So, drinking loose tea = high-quality tea, teabag = low-quality tea? !
No, today I want to clarify its name, from the origin to the raw materials, and see it all at once!
1｜so, who invented them?
It is said that the teabag was invented to save money.
In 1908, Thomas Sullivan, a tea merchant in New York, in order to save the cost of transporting tea, used silk sachets instead of tin cans for tea. Not only was the weight much lighter, the material was also cheap!
He originally thought that the customer would take apart the silk bag and make tea as usual. As a result, the other party did not open it, and threw the bag in the water!
However, some people said that tea bags were born in Wisconsin in 1901 seven years ago. The two ladies (Roberta C. Rosen, Mary Moralen) disliked the traditional tea-making method, wasting time, and it was very complicated. They used cotton cloth to make a small bag, put a handful of tea inside, and soaked it directly. In the hot water, the trouble of filtering is eliminated. In 1903, their "tea tray" invention was patented.
However, it must be admitted that Suli Wan's move has made the user experience of drinking tea a big step forward.
In any case, in those days, when people were entangled in the two things of "filtering is troublesome" and "tea dregs are so disgusting", this tea bag that turned out to be the gospel of the new century.
2｜Great teabag, seems to have a lot of controversy?
When it was first invented, teabags were still a luxury, a high-end enjoyment. But it was so convenient, the mass base became wider and wider, and later, tea bags became fast-moving consumer goods. (You must know Lipton is the baby of FMCG giant Unilever!)
Teabags are so popular that they have become fast-moving consumer goods because it solves two problems:
Quick: Unlike Chinese tea, it takes several brews to achieve the best flavor of the tea soup. One tea bag is enough. Therefore, in order to increase the contact area between the tea and water and allow the water-soluble substances to precipitate out more quickly, the tea should be finely chopped. But the problem is that if the tea is chopped, it is difficult to judge the quality of the tea from the appearance. This is the main reason why teabags are black.
The other is convenience: no one likes the feeling of a mouthful of tea leaves. The most comfortable part of the tea bag with the broken leaves is also here. Then the problem came again. The tea bags were of uneven texture, and some were sealed with bleach and staples. They smelled peculiar. If you drink it, your body won’t get sick, right?
Since it is a fast-moving consumer product, some shortcomings of the fast-moving consumer product inevitably appear in the teabag: assembly line products, rough materials, poor taste, not delicate...
Everything has two sides of a coin. Of course, teabags have many benefits, but that's how you attract black physique.
3｜So, must the teabag be cheap and inferior? of course not.
Traditional teabags, or teabags that are positioned as fast-moving consumer goods, are mostly filled with tea powder or tea powder. It is impossible to judge the quality of the raw materials with the naked eye, leading many people to think that teabags are equivalent to inferior tea.
In fact, think about it carefully, tea bags are just a way of packaging tea, except for a few special strips of tea, tea bags can be used in China.
Why can't tea bags be packed?
The material of the tea bag itself has also been evolving. There are many improvements from the shape to the material. A good tea bag will not cause too many food safety concerns.
4｜So, how to judge the quality of tea bags?
May wish to disassemble it into two aspects: 1. Tea materials; 2. Tea bag quality.
Tea material: broken tea or whole tea?
Don't see broken tea as if you are facing an enemy.
The common tea bags in China are indeed used to crush low-grade tea and leftover materials into small pieces and put them into tea bags. However, in foreign countries, the development of tea shredding technology is quite complete, and equipped with a complete quality evaluation system, high-quality tea can also be made into broken tea.
▲Comparison of whole tea vs broken tea
However, in recent years, in order to show more intuitively that they are using high-quality raw materials, it has become a trend for tea merchants to put whole leaves into tea bags. If you don't have enough confidence in your own judgment of the quality of tea, then look for teabags with the highest possible integrity. The quality is generally not enough.
Tea bag quality: look at the shape, look at the material
When buying tea bags, in addition to looking at the value and taste of the packaging, how many people pay attention to the material of the tea bags? In fact, there are many articles in it.
Generally speaking, tea bags on the market can be divided into the following categories:
According to the shape, it can be divided into round, square, w-shaped double capsule and pyramid.
▲Tea bag shape
The precipitation rate of round and square is slow, and the double-capsule w shape is the more common tea bag shape on the market now.
The pyramid shape (that is, the triangular bag we often say) is most popular with high-end tea: this shape will speed up the extraction of tea juice, forming a vortex movement, and the concentration of tea soup will be more uniform. The three-dimensional design also allows the tea to absorb water. Enough space for stretching.
According to the material, it is even more diverse: cotton, non-woven, pure wood pulp filter paper, silk, nylon and so on are common on the market.
▲Tea bag material
Regardless of the material, to check whether the tea bag is good or not, you only need to look at these: strong toughness, high temperature brewing resistance, rapid moisture after brewing, no leakage of tea powder, no peculiar smell. High-end teabags prefer expensive nylon and silk, which are transparent, beautiful and resistant to bubbles.
Separate packaging for each tea bag is also a bonus item: tea is easy to absorb moisture and odor, and tea bags are especially susceptible to moisture and taste, so if conditions permit, it would be better to add a layer of packaging.
In addition, the presence or absence of cotton thread (to facilitate dragging the tea bags out and throwing them away), whether the raw materials and brewing instructions on the tag are detailed, these details also affect the overall evaluation of the teabag.
▲The self-cultivation of a good tea bag-cotton thread, tea bag, independent packaging, tag
It is true that most top teas are concentrated in loose tea, but this does not mean that there are no outstanding players in tea bags.
5｜What are the specialties of teabag brewing? Can I brew multiple times?
The brewing time of teabag is mostly 3-5 minutes, and the effective substances can be separated out about 80-90%. Therefore, it is enough to make the teabag once, but not enough for the taste.
Good teabags have recommended brewing time and temperature, not too simple. If there must be something to be particular about, it is not difficult to remember to take out the tea bag before drinking it :)
6｜What are the hanging ear tea bags and tea sticks? Is it reliable?
Leveraging the heat of hanging ear coffee, hanging ear tea bags are also faintly emerging. However, there is still a big difference between the two: the former is brewed and uses water to extract the flavor; while the latter is brewed, the tea needs to be completely Submerge in water.
▲Hanging ear tea bag
Many hanging ear tea bags advertise that they use raw leaf tea, the original leaf itself is not as fast as broken leaves, and the tea leaves are difficult to stretch in the hanging ear bags, which further restricts the extraction speed of tea juice. The hanging ear coffee that is affected by hand flushing is naturally filtered and extracted by gravity, and the flavor is delicate and layered. Obviously, hanging ear tea bags can't do it, just wearing a similar coat.
Tea stick, also called bag stick tea. People put tea/broken tea into a tin rod with multiple filter holes, which not only has the function of filtering tea bags, but can also be used as a stirring rod to precipitate tea substances while stirring, but it is relatively small (maybe because there is no egg use ), did not become popular.
