Minimum weight

[Xavier]

What is the minimum weight of tea you were able to purchase?

[peter]

I’m assuming you mean outside of sample sizes, but I think the smallest I’ve seen available was 2 ounces (56 grams) from Teavana. They price it based on a 2 ounce quantity so I presume you can buy it that way.

The other that I’ve seen is the 4-ounce range (about 125 grams).

I’ve not seen much else – not sure there is much in it in terms of margin for the vendor to decrease minimum weight too much since it gets to the point where the package may cost more than the actual tea it contains (this also happens to be the value paradox of tea bags).

[bram]

depends on the store
Usually 50 grams. Sometimes 25gram as an exception.
There are some shops I visit where the minimum is 100 gram or even 125 gram.

[Anonymous]

Before we set up driftwood one of my own biggest frustrations when buying tea for myself online – especially when the teas were expensive – was having to pay a huge premium and then postage for sample sized bag or risk buying a larger quantity of a tea which I may or may not like.

I always thought there could be a compromise and this is why at driftwood we decided to make our standard sized bag 25g.

When I make tea I generally use 5g tea in an Yixing or Gaiwan and around 100 -140ml water. I rinse and then infuse these leaves on average 4-7 times. I would say that a 25g makes around 25 cups of tea or around the same number of cups as you would get from a box of premium branded tea bags were you only using these once.

At the moment, as a small flexible online company, we are able to offer 25g bags and for us it seems to be working and this will be something we want to continue with as we expand. I can however understand why bigger companies, with retail premises overheads etc, may want or need to sell their teas in 100g+ bags though, in my own experience purchasing non super rare teas online, 50g always seemed to be the standard.

I have to admit however to always being impressed by The Essence of Tea, and their excellent products, being sold by the single gram (though I think there is a 5g minimum).

[Author]

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