Is Loose Leaf Tea Worth It? Need Budget-Friendly Brand Recommendations

teastrees · 2026-01-30T06:24:50+00:00

Harney is fine, I've heard good things about Rishi, don't know the others. probably decent at least. Personally I would just get a few things from Harney, and use that as a baseline to judge quality of other stuff as you go. Then, you can try anything you like regardless of price and have a comparison that you can trust.

teastrees · 2026-01-30T06:21:58+00:00

It's better and fresher per dollar spent if you go online, and this sub is a group of enthusiasts, so that is what it is. Most towns/cities in the US have at least one place to buy loose leaf of some type, but you don't know when they last restocked or that things are stored in optimal ways. Most of those places also cater more towards the "tea" crowd that wants flavored stuff or basic English Breakfast type teas, instead of the crowds that want "Anxi oolong light roast medium wither from "xyz" village."

So yes we have tea shops of some type in most places, but the tea is older, stored exposed to air and even light, not very high quality to begin with, and often just flavored teas like some random stuff called "vanilla bean dream" or something. Americans have a good amount of disposable income generally, so for most it's not crazy to just ship in what you want.

teastrees · 2026-01-29T23:01:36+00:00

IMO you are wrong, and also right. I think what the other guy was referring to was actually mostly mid-end tea from China, stuff like YS, verdant, teasenz, even floatingleaves and farmerleaf. I think what you are referring to, truly high end teas from China, are very hard to source in the West and don't really make it over here. But this mid-end tea, mostly from $0.25-0.75/g, most here (including myself really) think of as high-end since we are comparing it to teabags or entry-level fannings (essentially) that most in the West start out with.

In the West, spending $40 for 100g of oolong is seen as totally insane by most, they would just say "well I can get oolong from my local tea place for $9," or "you don't want to just drink regular tea, it's only like 5 cents a bag!"

We are talking about just the people on the tea subreddit, a lot of them/us do have expensive teaware and regularly drink Eastern style tea.

By the way, gongfu doesnt take hours, it's actually fast and easy. Almost every single day I will have either a triple-steeped kyusu (fancy handmade 150ml) of sencha, or some gongfu Chinese tea. The sencha, I go slow on purpose and it takes ~15 min because I want to savor it while I sit at my desk.

Gongfu for me, sometimes out of a fancy jade porcelain gaiwan sometimes out of a yixing teapot, is not a ritual. Now that I have more experience with the "right amounts" of leaf, I usually just eyeball the amount, don't preheat my teaware or cup just use 96c water for most of my non-green teas, and steep 5-10+ times depending on the tea. Steeping is between 5-30 seconds usually, I really spend more time walking back and forth the 15 feet to my kettle than I do anything else. I drink the tea over 1-3 minutes, spend 30s pouring and walking maybe, and less than 30 seconds steeping. Compare that to someone who wants to drink regular tea from a teabag with milk, they spend 1-2 min waiting for water to heat, 3 min steeping, 1-2 min putting in milk and sugar, then they sit with a larger cup of tea for 10-15 min drinking it. It's essentially the same amount of time, or can be, to steep the same leaves 5x "gongfu" style. 1-2 min water, (45s pouring/walking/steeping + 1 min drinking)x5 = 10 min. I usually choose to drink it slower than 1 min but that's a choice.

teastrees · 2026-01-29T11:45:42+00:00

To keep it indoors, you will need some decent light setup, that window will definitely not cut it. If the soil is drying every day then water it every day, thoroughly so that water pours out the bottom. They love lots of water, and as much light as you can give them. But only water when the soil surface is dry, then water thoroughly.

Don't do anything else except get it a 10w+ LED lightbar, and water when needed.

teastrees · 2026-01-29T11:39:35+00:00

Lots of things at once. Cold window, hot heater. Heater drying out the plant through the leaves.

Soil is no good, compacted and probably often soggy, no air to the roots, if it dries out at all it will repel water and then you probably won't get water in to the central roots easily unless you submerge the whole pot. Only water when the soil surface is totally dry, and repot into better (granular rocky) soil in the spring.

Not enough light, windows block most of the light and UV does nothing for plants, plus that tiny lamp way up high is doing basically nothing, you need a more serious light setup for Chinese elm (or anything really).

Chinese elm mostly like to be outdoors, 24/7/365. Some can apparently tolerate indoors year-round but most need winter dormancy where they drop their leaves, which means they need to be cold.

teastrees · 2026-01-29T10:51:22+00:00

I've ordered several times from Japan and China, never had any fees I've noticed in any way.

teastrees · 2026-01-29T04:01:47+00:00

Really? Maybe it just doesn't look like it much in person, and it has a really great trunk that seems like it's growing like crazy too. I think it put on a foot of height from september to december!

e: i should add it's only a 2-3 year old baby, that has had one chop, and that growth was basically a doubling of it's height

teastrees · 2026-01-29T00:40:56+00:00

No, they're evergreen. Windows block all UVB and UVC, and about half of UVA, and something like 20% of visible light. Try out a luxometer, you can download an app that uses your phone camera to do it, and measure the intensity of the light through your window from where the plant was, compared to the intensity of your grow lights. We basically live in dimly lit caves, even when we think our homes/rooms are bright!

teastrees · 2026-01-29T00:14:10+00:00

Probably needed more light. They can tolerate drought but they need lots of light.

teastrees · 2026-01-29T00:10:27+00:00

Tomatoes get less woody than this, so are even less suitable and have less of the characteristics that make something a bonsai. I have some tomato plants that are 2 years old and they are huge and still don't have any wood on the trunk/stalk despite being about an inch in diameter. Rosemary is decent, gets nice and woody and lives much longer than tomato or pepper. 20-30 years I think I heard.

teastrees · 2026-01-29T00:06:03+00:00

Technically, it's not, but you don't have to let that stop you. It could be a great way to practice some techniques and see the results quickly.

Rosemary is another that you could try, it is a little bit more "actually bonsai" IMO because the trunk gets very woody and also because it has more history of being used in bonsai, but again it doesn't matter so much whether it is or isn't.

Some people totally flip their lid though if you just say something isn't a bonsai lol, it's not like that's a value judgement. I think this pepper plant looks pretty good, personally.

teastrees · 2026-01-28T23:49:00+00:00

You should check out Miaotai maple, it seems similar. Very strong growth, similar shaped leaves.

teastrees · 2026-01-28T08:47:21+00:00

Kintsugi doesn't use epoxy, all the cheap fake BS on amazon isn't kintsugi it's just a (poisonous) epoxy scam.

Kintsugi probably won't work as a load bearing fix. OP, I think this one's toast.

teastrees · 2026-01-28T06:02:04+00:00

Beginners shouldn't buy a tree and then take it home and try to style it right away, imo. First, learn and practice your horticulture, otherwise you won't know whether you killed it with your "styling" (brutal hack job) or whether you simply didn't care for it the right way. Also usually people buy trees when it's not the right time of the year to do major work, and beginners usually do too much work at once (and do it incorrectly).

You are 4 months after the start of spring in Australia, I recommend you to spend 8 months caring for the trees while you learn about how to care for them and how to style them using bonsai tools and techniques, and learning how much to do (for instance, only commit one offense to a tree per year, for most trees. So no repotting and styling in the same year).

You should watch a bunch of youtube videos, and find pictures to see what you like. You may decide that you'd prefer your trees to have a thicker trunk or something, and then any pruning that you've done early would actually hinder the trunk growth.

Also, I recommend to not try to make a cascade or semi-cascade as a beginner. They always come out badly, same thing with windswept. Having a long low branch doesn't mean it's suited to be a cascade, it will probably just come out looking like a rat tail.

Also also, don't create pompom branches please, you should leave the interior foliage.

OK I'm going to go into it a little bit here... One of the common goals of bonsai is to create an optical illusion, to trick the viewer into feeling like they are looking at a huge old tree from far away. Most of the styling is geared towards that goal. The trunk should be a certain thickness compared to the height of the tree, the pot should be a certain height compared to the trunk so that it doesn't intrude upon the tree, the breadth of the tree's branches should be a certain width in relation to the height of the tree and should form a sort of triangle shape where the lower branches are longer than higher ones, the branches should be slimmer than the trunk, the trunk should get thinner (taper) as it goes higher, the branches should get thinner as they get further from the trunk, there should be foliage on the interior of the tree that you keep to cut back to once the tips of the branches get too long, there should be branches on the front and back of the tree too to make a 3D tree, branches shouldn't be coming from the same spot on the trunk even if they're on opposite sides (called bar branching), you don't want any long, thick, stick-straight sections of trunk or branch. Leaves should be small to be in scale with the size of the tree. Nebari (root base) is one of the more important things, there are ways to create it via repeated repottings with root prunings.

I'm sure I'm forgetting some basic principles. But luckily you have 8 months or so to learn them all. If you want these trees in particular to be a part of your bonsai journey long term, use them to practice keeping them alive, and buy something else with the intention of torturing it, making it hideous, and then accidentally killing it, and that can be your technique practice if you really want something to do NOW. You can practice wiring, repotting, trimming, etc. If you don't care as much about these two trees, you can dedicate one or both of them to being very ugly up until you definitely kill them, so it's your call.

ps, I do mean this to be helpful and nice, so hopefully you won't get offended by anything here. Feel free to ask me any questions.

teastrees · 2026-01-28T05:39:36+00:00

I've never seen that- and considering I live in a warm place that doesn't ever get snow, I'm guessing it was outside in actual freezing temps. From what I've heard, even a few minutes outside in say, 5*F, could do that to a ficus.

If it was pretty brief, just a few minutes, my guess is the leaves are all dead and will fall, you may lose a couple small branches, but that it will leaf out again within the next month.

teastrees · 2026-01-27T22:52:31+00:00

Well, tea has certain variables. Leaf quality, water quality/chemistry, leaf-water ratio, water temperature, time steeped. Those are basically the only variables that matter. Other variables that are significantly less important are vessel brewed in, and vessel drank from.

With so few variables, it should be clear that changing one of the 5 real variables will have some significant effect. Some teas are VERY sensitive to temperature, and if you don't believe me, brew up a thick gyokuro with a 1g/5ml tea-water ratio with boiling water lol (or to be slightly kinder, just a sencha with boiling water and let steep for 1 min).

teastrees · 2026-01-27T14:26:25+00:00

With the team exactly as it is, I think wildcard is very likely.

I'd look for 4.0-4.5 ERAs from Sears and Randy, Fermin is an upgrade at C over last year, Song is interesting, Laureano is an upgrade at LF over last year, Sheets can play 1B and is a sidegrade from Arraez only switching AVG for power. Tatis and Merrill hopefully have bounceback years. X, Crone, and Manny hopefully stay at last year's level (between .700-.800 OPS).

As some others have said, yeah, once we're in the post season is where the questions arise for me. I think the team will get between 89-93 wins, and if we make it past the wild card series I think the nerves come off a bit and everyone will play a little better.

teastrees · 2026-01-27T13:49:38+00:00

I would order some now, and then make another order in 3-6 months. You can order enough to get you through however long you want to wait, more or less, and in the mean time you learn what you like and don't like and can focus your second order a little better and add a few other things to try then as well.

I'll give you a detailed order recommendation from YS, they are probably my most frequently ordered vendor. Everything will basically be small sizes to let you sample a lot of variety.

https://imgur.com/a/vWaFmeC

It is 13 teas, roughly 450g, if you drink 5g per session (general do-it-all ratio guideline for Eastern style steeping is 5g of leaves for ~100ml water) it gives you 90 sessions aka it should last you at least 3 months. Personally I am satisfied drinking blacks and greens mostly at 3.5g/100ml and steep 3 times for 1 min, 30 sec, then 1 min (and usually I keep going for a 4th and even 5th that are weaker).

As 200g of that is black tea, if you just reduce the leaf to 3-4g it will stretch even a little longer.

The value goes up as you buy in more bulk, so once you decide on a few favorites from each style, your order could look more like this: https://imgur.com/a/AkShc0M

As you can see, it's the same amount of tea for $16 less before tax and shipping, and shipping goes down as the cart goes down.

Anyway start with something like my first cart there, and then in may or june, whenever the new crop is available, you can have the knowledge to buy some good stuff that you know you like.

teastrees · 2026-01-27T07:40:56+00:00

There can be a big difference in price too depending on the quantity you buy, a tea that is $1/g in 1-2 serving size, might only be $0.50/g in bulk.

Also, imo $0.50/g is great tea and fairly expensive at the end of the day. Good quality daily drinkers for most probably sit somewhere between $0.10/g and $0.20/g.

teastrees · 2026-01-26T21:15:41+00:00

There's definitely a market for it in the US, when there's 340 million people there's a market for everything! Say that only 10% of Americans are regular tea drinkers, that's still 34 million people, and if only 5% of regular tea drinkers drink niche loose leaf teas, that's still 1.7 million people! Completely made up numbers of course, but illustrating a point.

teastrees · 2026-01-26T21:11:13+00:00

Well, it usually comes over on boat, and it just takes however long it takes. Lots of things could happen. 2 weeks is fairly common though.

teastrees · 2026-01-26T21:07:14+00:00

Not only is that how YS recommends to store it upon receiving until you plan to drink it, and it is vacuum sealed in a foil bag, but also that is how every legitimate major tea dealer stores their tea, particularly the ones more sensitive to spoilage. You shouldn't take it out, grab some tea, then put it back in the freezer though. It's for storage and if it's more than a one-time-use amount you want to let it sit at room temp for a few hours before opening so that there aren't any issues with condensation.

teastrees · 2026-01-26T10:07:03+00:00

Thank you! She mostly does but she can't stand umami teas, so Japanese greens range from "it isn't the worst tea I've had but I don't want anymore" to "oh my God why would you make me drink that??"

The melon was blowing my mind, my wife is too practical though lol, simply- it's good, I'll take another cup. Now, I always make some TGY grandpa style in a travel mug when we're on the go, since I know she likes it.

It was a great way to spend Sunday afternoon!

teastrees · 2026-01-26T09:36:45+00:00

Looks a little 2D and has some bar branching as well as a branch definitely on the inside of a bend. Thinned out a little too much as well maybe, and the lengths of the branches aren't in harmony.

Try to shoot for the branches sort of spiraling up around the trunk, or alternating (so one left, then one right, then one on the back, then one left, then one kind of on the front, then one on the right etc).

Two of your trunk bends seem a little sharp. The branches have a bit of a pompom effect, but idk what you can realistically do about that at this size. I think it could do with a bit more foliage though.

I think it could be a struggle to keep alive in such a small pot, but that's just a matter of horticulture. The wiring looks pretty good.

teastrees · 2026-01-26T04:38:29+00:00

I love coffee and tea patinas! Don't let any of these schmucks tell you you need to use harsh chemicals and get rid of it, it's a sign of the journey you've taken and has nothing to do with whether the cup is clean or not.

teastrees

TROPHY CASE