- cross-posted to:
- climate@slrpnk.net
- news@beehaw.org
- cross-posted to:
- climate@slrpnk.net
- news@beehaw.org
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If you have bags, you could cut one open, pop in an infuser (or reusable metal ball thing) and roll on.
Lots of people mention loose leaf tea but for people who barely know the difference between types of tea, it doesn’t seem to come out cheaper than cheapo bags.
I guess I’m a price guy over flavor lol
We started buying bulk loose leaf recently. It’s more fun, and surprisingly not much more work with the right infuser.
I looked into this a few years ago and what I found suggested that the tied or stapled bags should be fine. It’s the crimped edges bags you want to watch out for; plastic particles in the paper are how the edges are fused.
I’ve also run into tea bags entirely composed of plastic mesh rather than paper. I don’t understand why someone would think that’s a good idea.
Yeah, they called those “silk” for a while but I’m pretty sure they’ve always been plastic.
Whatever evil fuck decided to integrate plastic into something they knew was going into boiling water to save .001 cents per bag should be blasted straight into the sun.
The study tested bags that were made out of nylon-6 and polypropalene. You should be able to check with your tea brand and see what they use. The brand I drink at home says their bags are 100% cellulose… which is, at least, a polymer also present naturally in the tea itself.
The tea bags used for the research were made from the polymers nylon-6, polypropylene and cellulose.
Source. The OP article linked here is really bad, since it’s leaving our important information.
You can avoid all of this and buy loose leaf tea instead.
There are a lot of things that would make the world better at the expense of convenience.
Going loose leaf gives you access to better and more interesting teas though. And having a no-frills basic tea infuser that you’ll rinse afterwards, and a bag of loose leaf tea, at home and/or work isn’t really more inconvenient than bags.
Just like with my French press, I’m going to feel like I need to wash that every time. You also have to pay attention to how much you’re putting in there. I also don’t want more interesting teas.
You can say it’s just as convenient, but it’s not. And more importantly, it doesn’t FEEL just as convenient. I have a tea infuser. I use it. But not as often as I use teabags.
Yeah, personal preferences and feelings are what they are, no debating that.
You really don’t need to wash the infuser though. Even less than a french press. It doesn’t have that coil thing that may trap gunk, or leave scratches on the inside of the glass, just stainless steel.
And you don’t really have to pay attention to the amount of tea. Bag of tea, infuser, point bag at infuser and shake until the infuser is somewhere over bottom-covered but under half-full. Yes, you -can- get way more precise than that, but you don’t have to. And just like you learn if you want one or two bags, or steep it for a short or long time, eventually you just know.
Teabags don’t even come with their own holder. So you have to be aware of that cooling, coalescing gunk on a saucer the whole time you sip in your cup. A cold used teabag is one of the most unpleasant things in a middle-class household, whereas cold tea leaves are just wet plant stuff.
Also jin jun mei alone is 100% worth it, and the variety of oolongs doubly so.
