Why We Chose Tea Bags | Used Right Down to the Spent Leaves

Inspice Chai and Vetiver Tea are not powders you dissolve. They are tea bags. Part of the aroma moves into the water; the spices stay inside the bag. That is why one Vetiver Tea bag brews about 1.5 L, and why what is left in it afterwards is still usable.

Powder you dissolve, and a bag you brew

With a powdered drink, everything in it goes into your mouth as it is. So the materials have to be milled fine, and you can only stack aroma as far as the texture allows. Once you have drunk it, that is the end of it.

Brewing is different. Only what you want in the water comes out, and the material itself stays in the bag with its shape intact. Shards of cassia, the CTC of Assam tea — they can go in as they are. After a cup, the materials are still in your hand.

We choose the bag in order to stack aroma, and in order to use everything up.

Because it brews, it brews again

Vetiver Tea Symphony No.1 is a herbal tea of only three materials. One bag makes about 1.5 L. And the same bag will brew three times: 5 minutes the first time, 7 the second, 10 the third. The times lengthen because the aromas that come easily move into the water first.

The vetiver at its centre is grown by natural cultivation in Hoshino, Yame City, Fukuoka. The butterfly pea that makes the blue and the echinacea that carries the toasted note come from Pezan Farm on the Kahokugata lagoon in Ishikawa.

Spent leaves are still spices

In the CHAInstant series, each tea bag is packed tight with spices and tea leaves — so tight, in fact, that one pass of hot water is nowhere near enough for the spices to give up all their aroma. That is exactly why one mug and about three minutes of making give you a cup that rich. (Quite a few customers seem to enjoy a second and a third brew from the same bag — if you do, we think adding sugar makes it come out even better.)

The same goes for a CHAInstant tea bag, or for the spent leaves after simmering the Chai Spice Pack. There are people who enjoy using them in baking and desserts — folded into cookie dough or a pound cake. They hold water, so they are best used the same day.

Open a tea bag and the contents come straight out. It is not a bag for throwing away; it is a bag for using everything up.

CHAInstant brews in a single mug

CHAInstant is 20 g a pack. A mug and a microwave give you 220 ml of chai. Inside: Assam CTC, cassia, cardamom, clove, nutmeg, star anise, maqaw and more. Red sugar and rock salt go in as well. The rock salt is not there to make it salty — it is there to draw the outline of the sweetness and the aroma.

The bag itself is a material too

The tea bag is Soilon. It comes from corn, and it is biodegradable.

At the workshop in Kanazawa, the contents are composed with exacting precision. There is no sense in putting something built to that precision into a bag the water cannot move through. The bag is not a container; it is part of the brewing apparatus. And once you have finished drinking, it still has a part to play.

The aroma of each material is set out in the Spice encyclopedia.

Frequently asked questions

Q. Can I use the spent leaves?
A. You can. One pass of hot water does not take all the aroma out. Vetiver Tea will brew three times from the same bag, and there are people who use what is left of the Chai Spice Pack in baking.

Q. Is CHAInstant the kind you dissolve in hot water?
A. No. It is a tea bag. One pack makes 220 ml of chai.

Q. What is the tea bag made of?
A. A material called Soilon, made from corn. It is biodegradable.