Why are British loose leaf teas so heavily ground/crushed?

Here is a question from a guy on Reddit r/tea. I think it’s interesting, so I am writing it here after obtaining the person’s consent. And try to record what I know.

What is ground/crushed tea? Why are they so common?


Technical reasons

Broken tea or powdered tea has three advantages that make them very common:
1)Tea manufacturers can quickly oxidize fresh tea leaves to make black tea;
2)Brand vendors can process large amounts of herbal tea or make tea bags;
3)Finally, consumers can quickly brew the taste of tea.

Why can finely ground tea help large amounts of processing? The main reason is that the finely divided tea leaves have a single taste, are easy to control, and are easy to use for tea blending.
To make up for the bland taste of a single broken tea, tea merchants usually buy different teas from various tea gardens; after fine crushing, analyze the flavor, coordinate the ratio of various teas, and make the final teabag product.

Historical reasons

As a tea-consuming country in the United Kingdom, these practices have been implemented for many years and have become industry inertia. This is also the reason why there are more broken teas on the market.
Also, with a long history and the influence of an empire that never sets in the past, the British tea market further leads other tea markets, with crushed leaf tea/powder tea as the mainstream.

How about eastern tea merchants?


This method is a technique that Western tea merchants are proud of;
In contrast, Eastern tea merchants retain the original flavor of the tea. And through the mastery of tea, experienced tea masters can make a tea of ​​different flavors in the same tea garden and the same season.

We will explain how we do it in a separate article; please continue to pay attention to us.

Good day, and have a good tea.