How Is Tea Graded?
Every tea drinker must know how it is really to do tea grading. So, the next time your friend says that SFTGFOP is good for your health, you can ask him to get his head examined because the tea you are drinking is FTGFOP and not SFTGFOP.
Have you ever felt clueless when your friend described the tea you were drinking as the finest grade SFTGFOP? Confused? Irritated? Perhaps a mixture of both. Confused because you have no clue about what he is saying,
and irritated because you can’t find a way to stop his snobbery. The good news is that you can relax now.
This article will give you a quick peek in the world of tea grading. So, the next time your friend says that SFTGFOP is good for your health, you can ask him to get his head examined because the tea you are drinking is FTGFOP and not SFTGFOP. For the uninitiated, SFTGFOP is Special Finest Tippy Golden Flowery Pekoe, and FTGPOP is Finest Tippy Golden Flowery Pekoe. I hope you can see the difference. So abbreviations apart, what is the difference between the two? The answer is in the grading system devised for different types of tea.
Here Is A Primer That Will Tell You How Tea Is Graded
Chiefly, tea is graded to sort out poor quality broken tea leaves from full tea leaves. Most of the flavor and oils are stored in the leaf veins and when they are cut the essence is lost. Therefore, fuller leaves fetch a premium in the market. Some of the major classifications are given below:
Dust: This is the most inferior quality of tea which is used in tea bags. They are mostly very small tea leaves. Tea dust should not be left in water for long, otherwise it will become bitter.
Fanning: This is slightly better than tea dust because it contains a few intact tea leaves. This tea is slightly more expensive than tea dust.
BOP-Broken Orange Pekoe: Now we are talking about the real stuff! BOP is mid range quality tea and contains some full leaves but no tea bud.
OP-Orange Pekoe: This contains larger leaves compared to BOP. However, they do not contain any bud.
FP-Flowery Pekoe: This is premium tea, which contains full bodied tea leaves along with bud.
Golden: Contains golden tea leaves.
Tippy: This brand of tea contains young tea buds in plenty, giving a distinctive taste when brewed.
As you can see, the bigger the tea leaves, the better the tea is. Smaller tea leaves brew quickly but do not have the flavor contained in bigger tea leaves. Bigger tea leaves take time to brew, but the result is like nirvana for brew connoisseurs.
