I know many people can’t live without tea bags for their everyday tea drinking. As a tea seller, I could make loads of money selling tea bags, but I would not be giving you the best tea you can buy.

Every week, I get enquiries relating to tea bags (particularly triangular / pyramid) – yes they are so so convenient, and cheap.

I am going to tell you why I don’t buy it, or sell it.

Firstly what is pyramid tea bags –

Pyramid teabags are a marked improvement to flat square or rectangular tea bags. They are made of Nylon or cornsilk, as far as I know, at this point of writing this article.

Advantage of Triangular tea bag –

1. Spacious bags – This is really good as tea leaves need room to expand as it is steeped. The more room for the tea leaves to unfurl means the liquid yield from dunking a teabag is a more flavourful cup comparing to traditional teabags.
2. Less chopping and dicing – The other advantage over traditional tea bag is the tea leaves inside triangular teabags are typically better grade. In fact, some are marketed with whole leaf inside. They do look pretty smart

Disadvantage of Trigular tea bag –

1. Before the mass production age, tea was made with leaf tea. Yes it was a slower process, but in this age of multi-tasking and no one can focus on anything for more than 5 minutes with all the buzzing and ding-ing in the background, isn’t it just more important to take 5 minutes in your 16 hours of daily routine to refresh without any hand-held device other than that tea cup? Don’t you deserve 5 minute break? No?
2. Typically, teabagged teas are blended for standardization. The more traditional tea bags consists of lower grade of tea. While many of the “pyramid teabags” contains better quality tea, it is “handled” more by machines to fit into tea bags. The subtler characteristics of tea, such as the aroma and some tasting notes would be gone.
3. I find the image of goo-ey cornsilk syrup in my tea a huge turnoff – ok, I am a bit of a drama queen here, because the cornsilk pyramid tea bags won’t actually melt as I steep the tea bag in my mug. But honestly, could you imagine the carbon footprint to create this dinky bag with petite leaves in them? From the strandy stuff from corn, to some hi-tech corn goo, then to become these fine silk like material to make these tea bags? No thanks!
4. Hey look, I am drinking petrol-tea! Alright, alright, no, not quite like that either, but really nylon tea bags? I don’t care how good nylon looks on legs, I am NOT having that in my tea. Nah-uh.

Ok, I am biased, because I sell leaf tea, but it is because I choose not to sell tea bags stuff and push truckloads of dusty brown stuff. It is a choice.

Our world has loads of stuff to give us instant gratification already.

Tea should be savoured. I have 5 minutes everyday I can spare for myself for a decent cup of tea. I DESERVE a 5 minute break, at least once a day. 

It is easy with a decent infuser and a cup. Not even a teapot. It is not actually HARD.

Here are a few articles on what others saying about pyramid / triangular tea bags:

• Most UK teabags not fully biodegradeable, research reveals
• there is an interesting discussion of the fancier “nylon triangular tea bags” in Steepster.

Tea bags (empty) are available at our online tea shop Teas.com.au, but go for a teapot with infuser – your tea will taste so much better!

And here is another video for giggles – round vs pyramid tea bags