Everything You’ll Need to Know About Loose Leaf Tea

What is loose tea NOT?

Tea comes in three different forms. Bagged tea, caked tea, and loose tea leaf tea. Bagged tea is the lowest quality tea you can find. Puer tea, or fermented Chinese tea will usually come in ‘cakes’ or ‘bricks.’ Puer, as well as anything you can find in bags, also comes in the form of loose tea. There’s quite a range of quality within the qualification of loose tea, but the highest quality teas come in loose leaf form.

Where can you get loose tea?

You can find some decent stuff in asian markets, organic grocery stores, and the like. They’ll usually come in bags ranging from a 6-16 ounces. Big name brands like Yamamotoyama you can find in a lot of asian markets.

The best place to get loose tea, however, is online. You can check out my list of tea retailers (link’s at the top of the page) for a start. My personal favorite is sevencups.

What do loose tea leaves look like?

Loose tea leaves come in quite a variety. Lower qualit teas will look rather chaff-like. Dried leaves broken up into little bits. A lot of Sencha or Bancha will look like this. The better quality loose leaf teas are actual whole tea leaves taken from the top of the plant. Tea leaves that are preserved whole preserve the flavor and quality of taste. The better a leaf is preserved without being broken at all, the better quality it is.

Taiwanese tea leaves come rolled up into little pellets, as does gunpowder tea. You could put probably from 4 to 7 of these leaves on a penny, but after you brew them, they open up to the size of mabe two pennies per leaf, but this will vary.

Some loose teas (like most of the oolongs) will like a bit twig-like (the name ‘oolong’ in Chinese actually means ‘black dragon.’ The idea being the leaves look like little black Chinese dragons).

How is loose tea packaged?

Loose tea comes packaged in various ways. The better quality stuff usually comes in the non-see through metalic-looking-lined bags. All of the high quality stuff tea I’ve bought comes in some form of bag like that. In a asian market you also might find it in the clear type of plastic bag. It will vary. I’ve also gotten loose bulk tea from an organic grocery store in which you would take however much you wanted and put it in a paper bag and pay per ounce.

How should you store loose tea?

Loose tea should be stored carefully. If you don’t store it properly, it really does lose a lot of flavor. I can attest to this from experience. It should be stored in some sort of airtight container. Ziplock bags don’t work very well for long periods of time. It’s better to have some sort of sealing container… tupperware can work, or jars with the sealing lids. The goal is to keep the tea leaves dry and cool.

I tend to be a little skeptical when people tell me such things as ‘make sure to store your tea carefully’ and they explain something like I did above. But when I don’t store my tea well, I definitely notice a decline in flavor. So… it’s definitely worth looking into some way to store your tea well.