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on tea: added refs

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Wouter Groeneveld 2021-07-13 09:25:30 +02:00
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@ -7,7 +7,7 @@ tags:
- tea
---
We drink a lot of tea and developed a strong preference for qualitative loose leaves over the years. Most Belgians don't know what good tea is, their knowledge being limited to the well-known Lipton/Pickwick/Twinings pre-packaged teabags. Unsurprisingly, many people I know don't like tea because it's _too bitter_. It certainly is if you follow the instructions on the packaging! Even most cafés love ripping you off with bad tea for `€3` or more. It's clear that our country is a beer country, not a tea one.
We drink a lot of tea and developed a strong preference for qualitative loose leaves over the years. Most Belgians don't know what good tea is, their knowledge being limited to the well-known Lipton/Pickwick/Twinings pre-packaged teabags. Unsurprisingly, many people I know don't like tea because it's _too bitter_. It certainly is if you follow the instructions on the packaging! Even most cafés love ripping you off with bad tea for `€3` or more. It's clear that our country is a coffee (or beer?) country, not a tea one. [A 2018 Statista report](https://www.statista.com/study/46837/non-alcoholic-be8erages-market-in-belgium/) claims that the average annual expenditure per capita on hot drinks in Belgium is `€43` for coffee and only `€9` for tea.
Most "cheap" (we'll get to that) teabags are filled with what is called _dust_: there's an extensive tea (leaf) [grading system](https://ratetea.com/topic/grades-of-tea/17/), which are broken down into categories like whole leaf tea, broken-leaf tea, fannings, and dust. For instance, if you spot a packet with the acronym _FD_, it means _Fine Dust_. On the other hand, if you spot whole leaf tea marked with _TGFOP1_, it means _Tippy Golden Flowery Orange Pekoe Grade One_. I'm far from an expert at grading tea, but it boils down (ha!) to this: dust is finely crumbled leaves, meaning the tea will be much more saturated, quicker steeped, and generally speaking has an anything but refined taste. Does your teacup look black? You're doing it wrong.
@ -26,9 +26,11 @@ The Mariage Frères stock got consumed From January until the end of May when it
Suppose we drink the three cups a day with a Lipton teabag. That would require `450` teabags or `22.5` packets of twenty bags for five months, totaling at `€58.28` for the whole period.
That's a difference of less than three euros! And we've enjoyed a perhaps ridiculously expensive tea, like a true connoisseur. More modest people shopping at our local dedicated tea store [TeaStation](https://teastation.eu/) in Hasselt usually walk out the door with a variant of Earl Grey for `€7` per `100 g`. Suppose they buy three packets and drink it all up in five months. That's `€21`, which is `36%` of the price of those four hundred Lipton teabags!
That's a difference of less than three euros! And we've enjoyed a perhaps ridiculously expensive tea, like a true connoisseur. More modest people shopping at our local dedicated tea store [TeaStation](https://teastation.eu/) in Hasselt usually walk out the door with a variant of Earl Grey for `€7` per `100 g`. Suppose they buy three packets and drink it all up in five months. That's `€21`, which is `36%` of the price of those four hundred Lipton teabags![^nota]!
Funny detail: `22.5` packets multiplied by `36 g` equals to `810 g` tea dust in five months, compared to just `300 g` of loose tea: more than triple the weight of the leaves. Are you still surprised steeping those bags results in undrinkable bitter stuff?
[^nota]: This reasoning does not completely add up, as most cheaper loose leave packets such as the ones at TeaStation actually contain smaller pieces of broken tea leaves, meaning you'll unintentionally use more weight per teacup and burn through it in perhaps four months instead of five.
Funny detail: `22.5` packets multiplied by `36 g` (`5.4 g` for three cups/day) equals to `810 g` tea dust in five months, compared to just `300 g` of loose tea (`2 g` for three cups/day): more than triple the weight of the leaves. Are you still surprised steeping those bags results in undrinkable bitter stuff?
The numbers might not completely add up (I left out shipping costs) but it's scary to see that what we initially called "cheap supermarket tea" turns out to be very expensive supermarket tea. When buying boxes of [Twinings Green Jasmin tea](https://drive.carrefour.be/nl/Ontbijt/Thee-%26-kruidenthee/Thee/Twinings-of-London-Groene-Thee-Jasmijn-25-Builtjes-40-g/p/04315910), things are slightly worse: 18 packets are needed to get to `450` teabags, setting you back for `€62.10`, even exceeding our Mariage Frères `€61` cap. _Yoink!_