Become a connoisseur of fine loose tea

If you’re looking for a way to de-stress your lifestyle, loose tea works wonders. It’s more than just a beverage. The entire process, from selecting and buying your preferred tea, to serving the final product, helps enhance your sense of calm and collective control over your life. Keep reading to learn how to add quality tea to your life and subtract stress in the same equation.

Loose Tea Benefits Your Body, Your Mind and Your Environment

Tea is a natural source of antioxidants, anti-cancer properties and energy stimulating goodness. It’s nature’s way of saying, ‘Hey, there. Relax a bit, focus and feel rejuvenated.’ The trick is to stay as close to nature as possible. That means choosing quality loose tea over mass-produced, bagged tea.

Choosing your tea discerningly does a number of things. First, it allows you to procure top quality tealeaves. Of course, your ultimate purchase will depend on your budget, but the simple tea leaf allows for many more opportunities for freshness, blending and authentic regional flavors. All those options of goodness let you explore the fun side of teatime, without breaking the bank.

Loose leaf tea producers use better quality leaves than bagged tea manufacturers do. There’s a much lower cost to produce loose than bagged tea, which allows for extra room in the tea budget. Besides the lower cost, there are no bags, staples, string, paper tags, paper packages or cardboard boxes wrapped in plastic ending up in the waste system. Now you have one less thing about modern existence to feel guilty about. Stress relief already!

Fuller Flavor, Higher Concentration of Goodness

One of the leading causes of stress in modern life is feeling jaded in situations and transactions. When you go through the process to buy loose tea, prepare it and serve it, you get a feeling of great value. For less tea than what’s in a typical commercial bag, you get a cup bursting with flavor, refreshment, refinement and health.

When you use tea making tools to brew a pot of tea in the traditional manner, you have the option to forgo paper altogether. Do this with a simple loose tea strainer, widely available online and in stores local to you. You can find strainers for a single serving, or ones that are big enough to filter a whole kettle worth of tea. Tea leaves need a bunch of room to fully expand, many tea bags and small strainers don’t allow for enough. A strainer that strains a whole pot of tea is best.

The traditional loose tea strainer

When the hot, saturated tealeaves are closed off from air, they steep properly and completely release all their molecular benefits. Then, all you have to do is strain the liquid from the leaves and enjoy all the delicious benefits quality tea has to offer.

The Process is Simple, Calming and Pleasingly Habitual

Teatime is a good habit, and using a loose tea makes it even better. In its most basic form, brewing loose tea is done in three easy steps. First, bring your water to a boil, or almost boil depending on type of tea. Then, pour hot water over your tealeaves and stir. Cover and steep leaves for a few minutes according to the type of tea you’ve purchased. Once the water has absorbed all the goodness from the leaves, simply strain and enjoy.

The Zen of this process comes when you create your own personal ritual out of the entire ordeal. You choose your favorite type of tea, your favorite tea set, your favorite company and even your favorite setting in which to enjoy your afternoon delight. This habit is all about you, and it’s good for you, too. When you have something in your day to look forward to, things get easier to accomplish. Teatime can serve you as a reward, a goal or simply a break from your hectic reality.

“Once you’ve experienced your very own cup of home-brewed loose tea, you’ll never voluntarily go back to bags again.”

Slowly, you’ll begin to experiment with different blends, or temperatures. Perhaps you’ll start scanning the home goods section of your favorite stores for cute new tea mugs, saucers and stirrers. The journey into teas is just beginning.

Quality Tea is a Gateway to Tea Hobbies

When you look at a globe, do you see continents, or do you see tea-growing regions? Like coffee, tea carries its own international, multi-generational fan base. Tea aficionados delight in deciphering a specific brew and trying out new blends from around the world. Since it’s such a simple drink, tea has roots all over the globe. That gives you endless possibilities for enjoyment.

Then, one day, after you’ve added quality tea, teatime and moments of calm reflection to your days, you realize that you’re not so stressed out. Perhaps your blood pressure is even lower and you’ve begun to lose weight! Okay, that may seem like a stretch, but it’s a definite possibility. Taking time for yourself, even if only doing something like brewing a pot of tea, does wonders for your mental and physical well-being.

So, buy some high quality tea the next time you’re out and about. Once you’ve tried a few different varieties and blends of loose tea, leave us a comment below and share your favorite!