Find your joy: loose leaf tea
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Tea is such a beautiful beverage, and the immense range of leaves, styles, and flavours means that you can find a style that suits you. I much prefer loose leaf for several reasons:
1. Environmental concerns: loose leaf tea has less packaging. It's simple. You have whole tea leaves that can be measured into your brewing vessel and you skip the paper, cellulose, or nylon bag.
2. Less plastic in your tea: it's small amounts, but plastic is often used as the sealant for the teabag. If you're using one of the silk pyramid bags, then the whole bag is a nylon derivative. Lindsay's article here goes into more detail. I'm happier when I have my tea with just the leaves, water, and my cast-iron tea pot.
3. Quality: yes, there are high-quality leaves that are in some tea bags, but you'll typically find the better quality stuff is sold as a loose leaf tea. Also, when brewing the leaves are able to unfurl fully, which results in a more flavourful cup.
Part of my love of tea is the simplicity of mixing hot water with a leaf (or flower/berry) and infusing it to make a warm, calming beverage. At the moment I'm loving puerh tea, which is a fermented and aged tea. It's very gentle on the stomach. T2 sell a lovely puerh-based blend that has other goodies like marshmallow root and cocoa husk, and I sometimes sip that with a bit of almond milk. I love choosing a handmade porcelain cup, which has little irregularities in it, and slowing down to brew then drink my tea.
There are wonderful tea ceremonies that you can try, and there's a tea meditation on Yoga Online where you can develop a regular meditation practice, using a cup of tea and its warmth as your focus. I find that to be an easier style for meditation than other techniques. When I do a tea meditation, I try to stick to the same type of tea each time, so that there's a consistency in my meditation practice. My mind settles in faster and the smell of that particular tea often reminds me that this is "meditation time". It helps immensely.
Do you drink tea? How do you like it and do you have a favourite time of day for your tea break?
1. Environmental concerns: loose leaf tea has less packaging. It's simple. You have whole tea leaves that can be measured into your brewing vessel and you skip the paper, cellulose, or nylon bag.
2. Less plastic in your tea: it's small amounts, but plastic is often used as the sealant for the teabag. If you're using one of the silk pyramid bags, then the whole bag is a nylon derivative. Lindsay's article here goes into more detail. I'm happier when I have my tea with just the leaves, water, and my cast-iron tea pot.
3. Quality: yes, there are high-quality leaves that are in some tea bags, but you'll typically find the better quality stuff is sold as a loose leaf tea. Also, when brewing the leaves are able to unfurl fully, which results in a more flavourful cup.
Part of my love of tea is the simplicity of mixing hot water with a leaf (or flower/berry) and infusing it to make a warm, calming beverage. At the moment I'm loving puerh tea, which is a fermented and aged tea. It's very gentle on the stomach. T2 sell a lovely puerh-based blend that has other goodies like marshmallow root and cocoa husk, and I sometimes sip that with a bit of almond milk. I love choosing a handmade porcelain cup, which has little irregularities in it, and slowing down to brew then drink my tea.
There are wonderful tea ceremonies that you can try, and there's a tea meditation on Yoga Online where you can develop a regular meditation practice, using a cup of tea and its warmth as your focus. I find that to be an easier style for meditation than other techniques. When I do a tea meditation, I try to stick to the same type of tea each time, so that there's a consistency in my meditation practice. My mind settles in faster and the smell of that particular tea often reminds me that this is "meditation time". It helps immensely.
Do you drink tea? How do you like it and do you have a favourite time of day for your tea break?