Tea Bags – Here’s Everything You Need To Know

Tea bags are like crackerjack for the tea world. But we often recommend avoiding them in favor of whole-leaf tea. It does not signify they do not have a room in the tea kingdom.

Tea bags are worthwhile and no-mess alternatives that induce brewing tea quicker and clearer. The common man prefers them as they are convenient and save time. Tea experts often don’t use them for quality reasons.

There is a ton of discussion about tea bag materials and whether they are a suitable option when it appears to be tea drinking.

Here, we will reveal the truth about tea bags, how to make them, and their uses for your benefit.

When Were Teabags Invented?

The invention of the tea bag drenched back to the 20th century. A tea importer named Thomas Sullivan tumbled upon the creation of the tea bag by accident. During that time, tea was highly precious and expensive per today’s standards. The standard container for all tea varieties was a container made in metal. Sullivan decided to decrease costs per year and started selling his products in hand-made muslin bags of silk rather than using expensive tea tins.

Many of his buyers saw this new packaging style and assumed it was an infusion method instead of packaging. They dipped the bags instantly into the water and got thrilled with the comfort of brewing. These buyers placed big orders, leaving Sullivan even more overjoyed than he was.

Sullivan neglected to copyright his innovation, maybe because he was late in the competition. Despite that, his retail use of tea bags started to reach the world and emerged in immense popularity nowadays.
With time, many tea bag creators started experimenting with different cloths for their tea bags, such as gauze, cellophane, cheesecloth, and perforated paper. Paper strands worked out as the best teabag stuff. Later, machine-sewn bags replaced hand-sewn ones.

In 1952, Lipton Tea company patented the flow-thru bag that has four sides. Like the pyramid bags, this method of tea bagging lets more water flow through the leaves and develops a strong drink.
The Brooke Bond tea brand introduced pyramid tea bags. These bags give 50% more space to move than a sleek tea bag. Also, this encouraged better infusion than others options.

In recent years, tea socks have become famous among full-leaf tea drinkers. These are not tea bags in the real sense. But they are of similar materials and are disposable.

Benefits Of Tea Bags

Following are the four most tea bag benefits one can get after using them:

• Comfort

The primary benefit of using tea bags is that they are readily available. It is simple to pop a tea bag into a mug of hot water and carry it on with the rest of your day. There is no need to fiddle around with tea utensils or wash extra vessels thereon. The portable attached thread makes cleanup easy, as you can only drop the tea bag into the trash or compost pile.

• No Chaos

Another advantage of using tea bags is that they create no trash. You only need to remove the bag. And an excellent cup of tea gets ready. 

Unlike in loose-leaf tea, a tea strainer is needed to discard the loose leaves. That further suggests you will have more utensils to clean. Tea bags make the tea-making process smoother than ever before.

• Excellent For Making Iced Tea

Making iced tea can be a difficult task, particularly if you are going to add fresh fruits or flavorings to it. However, brewing with tea bags makes the procedure simple and fast. And you can focus on other preparations for a big gathering or tea party.

• Other Uses For Tea Bags

There are some additional ways where you can use tea bags. These uses are:

• Reducing dark circles
• Scenting spaces in the office or home like an herb sachet
• For creating decoctions and infusions other than teas such as lavender, chamomile, lavender, and tissues.

How To Use Tea Bags?

An excellent cup of tea, as it unfolds the perfect rapport of delicious flavors, captivating aroma, and much more. Yet, there is a small room for mistakes when it arrives to brewing. But do not worry, as the following method explains precisely how to use a tea bag so you can make your tea taste better.

1. First, place the tea bag into a cup. For an energy boost, we recommend you have Slimtox Energy Tea. But when you consider getting relaxed, a delightful cup of chamomile would serve a purpose.
2. Next, pour some hot water into the cup. The tip is to find out the right proportion. Water that is too heated will burn tea leaves but too cold will provide you with a flavorless sip. To get a reasonable impact, we suggest you use water that is under-boiling.
3. After that, dip the tea bag into the water gently to prompt the release of flavor and aroma. The steeping period differs as per the type of tea. It takes two to three minutes for green tea, three to four minutes for black tea, and four to five minutes for white tea.
4. The last step is to remove the tea bag from the cup and serve. Your flavorful, strong cup of tea is ready. Enjoy!

Types of Teabags and What Are Teabags Made Of

Generally, a tea bag is a small porous packed pouch that is particularly helpful to use and carry. It enables you to brew tea without using teaware.

Today, a massive variety of tea bag types are available in the market, each having unique benefits. Tea bags are arranged in the following style considering their benefits and form:

1. Single Chamber Tea Bags

Single chamber tea bags are also called regular tea bags or stringed tea bags. These tea bags are rectangular-shaped and heat-sealable. In such tea bags, tea is in powder form and is incredibly safe and non-toxic.

These tea bags develop a slight bitterness that can change the flavor of your tea. Despite this, the mass production of tea bags does not deteriorate in terms of excellence. 

Moreover, such tea bags are opaque. That sadly restricts you from seeing the actual tea hidden inside the bag. So, what you are drinking can somewhat be tea fannings, the tiny pieces of tea left over after the high-quality tea leaves are collected.

2. Double-Chamber Tea Bags

Double-chamber tea bags are very identical to single-chamber teabags. Such teabags are powerful and can be placed in hot water for a long time. Thus, developing a most promising infusion. 

The major drawback of this kind is the tunneled space in the middle that permits moisture and water to pass.

3. Pyramid-Shaped Tea Bags

Pyramid tea presents a triangular-shaped structure and an excellent tea bag style for whole-leaf tea. 

Such tea bags are usually bigger than regular tea bags. They have enough space for the tea leaves to steep and widen. It affects a decent brew for even the nicest of big-leaf teas, thus, allowing more nutrients to bring into the teacup. You can find gourmet teas and herbal teas in pyramid tea bags.

Besides, the content is observable from the cover of such tea bags. It ultimately boosts the visual appeal of the tea.

Kinds Of Pyramid Tea Bags

• Nylon Mesh Pyramid Bags

Such tea bags are plastic-based that can be nylon or polypropylene. They are reliable as per FDA, heat resistant, and will not influence the true scent of the tea. 

Also, these tea bags are semi-transparent, which allows one to see the tea leaves inside the sachet. But nylon is a non-biodegradable fabric. That can cause an intense impact on the environment.

• Biodegradable Pyramid Tea Bags

Biodegradable tea bags are an alternative to nylon material and have a high cost. Such tea bags are made from cornstarch and can be composted only at an industrial compost facility. 

Such tea bags can be made using a by-product of sugar starch or abaca plants, a variety of banana plants.

4. Other Tea Bags Types

These include cotton and muslin silk tea bags. Such tea bags can be the other options that can create the tea-making experience more worthwhile and satisfying. However, such kinds of tea bags are not in trend much.

How To Make Tea Bags?

Handpicked tea leaves move through numerous processes, such as withering, rolling, drying, cutting, and blending. The outcome and extent of each procedure vary according to the kind of tea. Following is the detailed process of how tea bags are made:

1. Harvesting

First, the tea leaves get plucked from the tea estate. Then it is transported to the manufacturer for the withering process.

2. Withering

Withering processes involve the manual spreading of leaves in thin layers. After that, they expose such layers to the open air for about 18-20 hours.

Nowadays, most factories place the leaves in penetrated drums, troughs, or shafts and uncover them to mechanical blows of hot air. This method oxidizes the polyphenols, or tannins, the necessary vital component. Due to this, the tea leaves turn to copper.

3. Crushing

The tea leaves get crushed by hand or in rotating tables called rolling machines. Both methods twist the leaves and eventually get torn into smaller pieces.

4. Drying

Under this, they mechanically dry the tea leaves using a high-temperature method. This process helps to seal juices and flavor into the leaves. This procedure bends the leaves to their standard black color.

5. Milling

After that, they bring the leaves to a mill room, where they cut them with a rotating blade into varying grades of fineness, depending on the type of tea. The cut-up leaves further improve by draining them through mechanical sieves with meshes of varying degrees. The tea in tea bags gets crushed into small pieces because they need a short brewing time.

6. Blending

According to the recipe, the company blends the teas to achieve the right taste and texture. Most teas are a mixture of 20-40 kinds of tea leaves. Then they store refined tea leaves in hoppers that can carry up to 800 pounds or 363 kgs of tea. Flow tubes relate each hopper to a dosing wheel.

The dosing wheel is similar to a Ferris wheel with tiny chambers in the place of seats. The air lifts the leaves through the flow tube into the wheel, then segregates the tea into the chambers. It occurs in pre-measured quantities, usually 2 grams.

7. Assembling And Packaging For Tea Bags

In the entrance wheel, two large rolls of filter paper are fed over the top and underneath. It releases the tea onto the bottom sheet of paper as it moves with a conveyor belt. The top sheet of paper gets twisted onto the lower layer. Every part of the tea is definitely between the two sheets.

Storage Of Tea Bags

Tea is dry and absorbs moisture fast. The absorption of moistness can considerably change the flavor of the tea, notably single and double-chamber tea bags. Such tea bags are a composition of filter paper rolls and are more prone to moisture.

These tea bags require special boxes, known as mono boxes, for storage which need a good amount of expense.

Cost

The tea-making machine takes a lot of time to process. Also, the production process depends upon the tea variants you order, like hibiscus tea or rose green tea. Such teas take time to process in the machines.

Another thing is two different teas cannot be produced at one time. As flavors and aromas of both teas get mixed. So, first of all, one variant is produced, then the machine is properly cleaned and gets available for another tea production. So minimum order quantity depends upon the variants to be ordered and the production efficiency of the machine.

Another consideration is also the storage process of tea bags. Tea bags are first stocked in sachets then these sachets are kept in mono boxes. This storage process involves a considerable amount of time and money.
So for a small number of orders, the price to be made will be more. While if the client makes a huge number of orders, the cost will be less than that. For more details, please check our Wholesale page and enquire with us.