Exclusively Loose Leaf

Why? Loose leaf teas are the best way to not only learn how to pour teas well and unlock their health benefits, but they are also more environmentally friendly and safer for your body. For these reasons we only source and select loose leaf teas for our personal use and sharing with you. There are several ways to steep loose leaf tea. You can use an infuser, steel mesh tea ball, tea press, or tea pot with mesh. We will even just steep loose leaf tea directly in a tea mug or cup, but this we will save for another day.

When steeping loose leaf teas it is important to pay attention to two things in the beginning. Water temperature and steeping time. Each tea will require different temperature and time. For green, oolong and white teas it is typically recommended to steep at 185F or 85 C and for about 1~3 minutes. For the rest of the tea family it is typically recommended to steep at 212F or 100C for about 3~5 minutes.

If you are interested or have already purchased the started tea set from us, we would like to suggest that these teas are steeped in a slightly different way. For our green tea we would like you to steep in a small tea pot and first add cold or luke warm water to the pot pouring directly on the tea leaves and then fill the pot to about 20-30 % of it's volume. Next you can pour boiling water over the leaves (212F/100C) and fill the remaining volume of the pot.

What does this do? By adding the cooler water first you are opening up the leaves and allowing them to absorb the lower temperature water which protects them from the heat when adding the hot water. This method is more effective to protect the leaves when steeping and produces a better flavor profile when drinking the tea. This method also decreases the amount of bitterness that comes with unlocking the compounds of tea leaves when steeping.

For our red tea we also suggest a slightly different method of steeping. In a small tea pot you can add hot water directly to the tea leaves but steep them for a shorter duration. We prefer to pout our first pot and steep it for about 1 minute and then serve the tea. We then repeat this process with the same tea leaves several times until the color and flavor depreciate. Our red tea included in the starter tea set usually allows for 4 or 5 servings of tea per pot.