The biggest thing that I can recommend to all of you is to ditch the bags. Buy a loose leaf tea that is stored in an air-tight and light-tight container and use a metal strainer.
1) The bag itself will actually absorb some of the flavor, antioxidants, and nutrients.
2) The quality of leaves in a bag are generally shit. There are some whole leaf bags out there that are okay, but most tea bags contain flaked off pieces of shit that have fallen on the floor.
3) The higher quality leaf the better. I know on the surface it seems ridiculous to spend a lot of money on tea, but the more expense and higher quality leaves generally have more more nutrients and flavor. They can also be steeped more times. For instance, at Teavana we have a number of herbal teas in the $6 for 2 oz. range. Most of the herbals are quite a bit denser because they're just fruit pieces, so that may only make about 10-15 cups and you can't resteep it because you've already extracted all of the flavor after the first time. On the other hand, our most expensive tea is an oolong that goes for $25 for 2 oz. You can probably get about 15-20 cups out of it and you can resteep it 5 or 6 times, so the cost per cup if you resteep it that many times falls to like 30 cents.
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