Green Tea Tasting: Comparing Teabags from Mass Market Brands

There’s no such thing as ‘just green tea’, there’s a whole world inside of those last two words. I often compare tea to wine just to illustrate how there’s so much depth in red or white wine, that it can be made of a certain grape from a certain region or a blend, and there are thousand varieties of wine, like there are of tea. So green tea can be from different regions and processed in different ways, which is why there are so many varieties and flavor profiles within its category.

Tasting side-by-side is a great exercise to discover more about tea as well as get to know different flavor profiles and understand what you like better. When you try ‘plain green tea’ from different mass market brands you’ll notice there’s not one alike the other. Each company chooses a distinct flavor profile (smokey, vegetal, grassy, etc.) for their plain green tea (this can even vary between countries for the same brand!).

For this tasting I chose to test 3 mass market brands’ ‘plain’ green tea and got some information from their customer service regarding the leaves’ origin and how they are processed. I also added a 4th tea, which was a loose leaf green tea, of better quality than the teabags, to compare with.

Before I show you my findings and observations let me give you some context: the tea leaves you find in most teabags, especially mass market brands are low-grade leaves, dust and fannings. The leaves are cut so small that the overall contact area between the leaf and the water is much larger than with loose leaf tea, resulting in a stronger but also duller brew with lack of complexity. The increased surface area allows for the leaves’ essential oils to evaporate, also affecting its freshness. Overall, from most teabags you get a strong, one-dimensional dull flavored cup (although there are many companies doing teabags/sachets made of higher quality loose leaf, basically portioned loose leaf tea!).

* Loose tea leaves vs. contents of an opened teabag after brewing

To contrast this, I chose to add a loose leaf tea to the tasting and the results were quite obvious in terms of quality, flavor complexity and also in the dullness of the cup. You’ll see there’s no competition flavor-wise here, you can get so much more out of loose leaf tea!

Having already said that, I recorded my observations on the chart below but I’ll comment further on a few points.

Process – To prevent further oxidation of the leaves (and become black/oolong tea), green tea can be pan fired (most popular process in China) or steamed (used for most Japanese teas). These processes result in very distinct flavor profiles (pan firing- more nutty, roasty while steaming- umami, sea weedy, grassy) which is up to each company to choose the flavor profile they’d like. It is important to know this and know what’s the tea’s origin and process to figure out what you like and what you’re getting.

Steep Time – As I mentioned before, smaller leaves create a stronger cup, so less time is needed for brewing. Personally I would recommend brewing it for even less time, but make sure the temperature is always between 170F (76C) and 180F (82C).

Color – The difference between the transparency of the cup was overwhelming. You won’t be able to see in the photos but the cups brewed with teabags were very dull (often a characteristic of low quality teas, can be due to faulty manufacturing or high moisture content). The loose leaf’s color was bright, clear and translucent.

Aroma – You can really smell and recognize the aromas on a good quality brewed cup. It often comes through really nicely, but it felt much harder to decipher the aroma notes on the teabag cups.

Flavor – The difference between the teabag cups and the loose leaf cup was very noticeable. It’s amazing how the first are SO flat in contrast to the last. I found it hard to notice the nuances or to even describe the flavor of some because of their flatness. The Twinings was almost smokey, but almost grassy, not much to describe and very little complexity in the cup. The Bigelow had the softest mouthfeel, and had a strong woody and smokey flavor. At least I though it had more character. The Trader Joe’s was vegetal and grassy, very much like a Japanese green but was quite astringent. The box suggests brewing at boiling temperature for 2-3 minutes, which I would DEFINITELY not do! (I steeped for 2 at 170F (76C) and it was very astringent, if you steep longer or hotter it will get bitter). Finally the loose leaf tea I used was Adagio’s Sleeping Dragon. It was quite different from the others, the higher quality stood out especially since it was way easier to recognize its flavor notes and because it was way more complex. It was vegetal but sweet and smokey with light astringency.

Conclusion

I encourage you to try different teas of the same type because not all green teas are the same. This way, you will discover what you like and by knowing their origin and how they’re processed you’ll be able to find and recognize them. Also, I will ALWAYS prefer loose leaf tea (although there are exceptions like bad quality loose or high quality individually packed loose leaf in teabags/sachets) because of all the reasons described above that makes it superior than teabag quality tea. So I guess the title of this article should have been, Green tea tasting: comparing teabags from mass market brands and why always choose loose leaf!