Tea Infusiast

What are the practical considerations to start using loose leaf tea? It’s relatively easy to use once you know a few basics! This post provide advice on how get started with loose leaf tea.

It explores: what to use to steep loose leaf tea, how much tea to use per serving, and how long to steep.

Looking for a pure tea–no flavors added–that tastes of chocolate? I heartily recommend trying Korean Balhyo Cha or Balhyo Cha powder for Valentine’s Day. This tea’s leaves have a wonderful chocolaty note. Prepared a certain way, and without adding any sweetener, the powder has vibes of grown-up, gourmet hot cocoa. Both are delicious!

Are you curious about how popular tea bags are? Tea can be sold in many ways–in bags, loose leaf, powdered, in ready-to-drink form, etc. How much is prepared in tea bags, particularly compared to loose leaf? And, I wonder if you will share my shock at two statistics that I discovered! After sharing a snapshot of the data, the end of this post I’ll tell you about an online event for people who use tea bags but are interested in, maybe, exploring loose leaf tea.

Have you noticed that some tea companies and organizations have “tea mascots?” I am using the term “mascot” loosely. By that, I mean an animal figure used as part of outreach, branding, or to engage people. Three examples immediately spring to mind—Waddy the Frog at the Charleston Tea Garden, Tippi the Tea Mouse at the East Frisian Tea Museum, and Luff (a bison) at Being Tea.

This is the time of the year when many people start thinking about how they might develop more consistency in their healthy practices and intentions and, maybe, add some new positive habits. I’ve been working to cultivate a system that motivates me and gives me a sense of accomplishment, without increasing negative feelings for missed goals. I was looking for some accountability without guilt, in other words. (And, aren’t we all, Tea Friends?) So, I ran some habit tracker experiments this year. In this post, I’ll share my reflections with you.