Teabag

[LeoFox]

Harney & Sons Royal English Breakfast

My wife broke this bag by accident and won't brew with it. So I decided to play with the tea.

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The bag appears to be made of non compostable nylon. Based on this thread, the company is researching alternatives such as sugarcane based polylactic acid.
https://www.harney.com/blogs/news/plast ... ets-update

Apparently they were going to switch over but then covid hit. This is a quote from that page attributed to Mike Harney from 1/2021:

"While bringing nylon sachets into the US seemed like a good idea at first, we came to realize that they are not good for the planet. So we started down the road to make them compostable. We have found a sugarcane material that works and were ready to make the change when COVID-19 hit, and the Japanese techs could not come over to adjust our machines. Let’s hope in several months they will be able to make the trip, and we can switch. We are also making other packaging compostable. Of course, loose tea has less packaging, so there are fewer issues.”

Any thoughts, @mbanu?

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Now onto the tea!

Look how dusty this "loose leaf" is! The bag does a good job holding these fragments in.

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Vendor description:

A stout combination of Kenilworth Ceylon and Kenyan Milima black teas makes a smooth, full-bodied brew. Royal English Breakfast is delicious when complemented with milk and sugar.

Brewed bagless in my ~ 230 mL gong dao bei with boiling water for 4 minutes. No bag or filter! After a few minutes, almost all the bits sink to the bottom. This is proof to me that a bag is dispensable, even for fragmented leaves like these.

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Trying to be fair:


Very malty and has a slight fruitiness that reminds me of roasted oolong.

Longevity is very good- for about 2.2g of dust, I got 4x medium- strong ~ 230 mL infusions. My wife regularly uses a single bag all day. I think this is a key reason why most people would not switch out of bags.

It is not too bitter, but bitterness does build up after a bit.

Astringency? Oh yeah. Really needs milk to neutralize. Felt a bit sick (nauseous and stomach discomfort) drinking it on empty stomach. And then the caffeine is quite a painful rush.

Finish is not very lingering. It is dry and short.

Main problem: as with almost every tea from this brand, there is a weird artificial sweetener note.

Edit: ate a pancake and tried again- seems the tea goes okay with sweet pastry. I guess this is what the tea is meant for.

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Some additional details from vendor about "english breakfast":

English Breakfast Tea was never designed or formulated all those years ago. Rather teas were chosen that were plentiful and not too expensive that would taste good with milk and sugar. Something an English person would enjoy at the start of a busy day. So in the early 1800s, that tea would have been a black tea from China. Later on, many Brits drank the brisker teas from the British colonies of India and Ceylon. After the Second World War, when the colonies became independent, the source of English Breakfast for the British became Africa. Nowadays, the English drink plenty of tea from Kenya. Those teas have taken over from the teas from Assam. And what tea from Sri Lanka (Ceylon) has a better pedigree than Kenilworth?

[Ethan Kurland]

Harney & Sons Royal English Breakfast

My wife broke this bag by accident and won't brew with it. So I decided to play with the tea.

Look how dusty this "loose leaf" is! The bag does a good job holding these fragments in.

- for about 2.2g of dust, I got 4x medium- strong ~ 230 mL infusions. My wife regularly uses a single bag all day. I think this is a key reason why most people would not switch out of

there is a weird artificial sweetener note.

Thanks for being the human subject for drinking 4 x 230ml of a brew made from a teabag, Leo.

Let's commend Harney & Son for being truthful about their bags being made of nylon. Even on national television (Shark Tank), tea companies have called fancy teabags silk though their teabags are made of synthetic materials. Furthermore, Harney is using much less dust than almost all other companies. The tea looks cut, torn, or chopped with only a tiny amount of tiny bits. 2.2 grams of tea in a teabag is on the generous side but somewhat common for expensive brands. Even Tetley's British Blend goes over the most common 2 grams per bag. (Some cheap brands have about 1.8 grams per bag.)

If your wife is not using one of the fairly new & expensive versions of milk and/or sugar, then you are a lucky man. One teabag for a whole day! Such frugality!

What you taste as a weird artificial sweetener note, may sense something foul may experience it as another taste that is unpleasant. (I sense a terrible, stale fishcake flavor.)

I appreciate you reminding us that blends of teas are not a product of highly inspired, skilled planning & sourcing. Mixing what can be acquired cheaply & ingredients that sound impressive in the hope that somehow the sum of the parts is greater than.... Nonetheless, I like Harney's black currant black tea but don't buy it. They discount it sometimes for teabags but not for loose leaf which feels overpriced to me (when fruit preserves added to cheap black tea works as well).

People like their routines. Most teabag users keep using bags.

[Andrew S]

@LeoFox: I admire your pursuit of knowledge, especially when such knowledge comes at the cost of subjecting yourself to a tea bag.

If I had no choice but to expose myself to tea bag tea, then I'd probably free the leaves out of their prison before brewing them, after reading things such as this: https://www.sciencealert.com/plastic-te ... roplastics

I do not know if microplastics are actually harmful to me (or to the environment), but at the very least, I would simply prefer to avoid ingesting billions of little bits of plastic if I can help it.

Andrew