A deep dive into quality control process in tea bag production

At FGC, the quality control process in tea bag production is always strictly conducted to provide consistent products for every customer.

Contents

Introduction

The quality control process in tea bag production is a set of procedures to guarantee that each product satisfies the requirements of consistency, taste, hygiene, and appearance. When is quality control carried out? How is it conducted? Let’s explore the quality control process in making tea bags at FGC.

Overview of tea bag production

Tea bags are small and porous packages containing tea leaves, dried flowers, fruits, and herbs. They are usually made from filter paper, silk, or nylon. By brewed in hot water, tea bags can release flavor, taste, and aroma, similar to loose-leaf tea. Tea bag production converts loose-leaf tea and herbs into convenient and easy-to-brew tea bags without the need for strainers or filters.

There are many stages in tea bag production, including selecting ingredients, processing, and packaging. Tea leaves and herbs are selected, cut, ground, and blended with other additives and flavors before packing and sealing. Quality control is conducted throughout the production to ensure a consistent and pleasurable tea-drinking experience. After each stage, tests are carried out to ensure steady quality.

Quality control steps

Quality control is carried out throughout the production process to detect problems early and solve them promptly and appropriately.

Check the semi-finished tea before producing

Before packing into tea bags, raw materials need to undergo several processing periods, including harvesting, sorting, blending, grinding, and drying. The quality of the ingredients can affect the flavor, aroma, taste, or appearance of the final products. It must be ensured that there are no impurities or foreign matter. Input quality must also be uniform in quality and size to guarantee consistency of finished products. Testing criteria include solute content, total ash content, moisture, iron impurities, inorganic and organic impurities, tea dust, tannin, caffeine, and chlorophyll.

Check the fineness of the tea

Tea and semi-finished materials that meet the requirements will go through the grinding process. They are ground to a certain level depending on the product requirements. Tea crumbs usually have d less than 1.4 mm, while tea dust’s d is smaller than 0.35 mm. However, higher-quality tea, like pyramid tea bags, often contains larger tea leaves.

tea fineness — Tea fineness is ensured before packaging

Check the bags

Before packing the tea, tea bags are checked carefully. Tea bags are made of food-grade materials, preserving the tea quality. In addition, they must be guaranteed not to be torn before reaching the consumers. The bags must be sealed and leak-proof to ensure that tea leaves do not leak to the liquor when brewing.

If tea bags contain a tag and string, ensure that it is a non-toxic white string. It does not affect the tea quality or break when soaked in water. Besides, the string’s length is also calculated carefully to be enough to hold the tea bags when brewing.

tea bag checking — Tea bags are rechecked before putting the ingredients

Check the tea after being put in bags

Generally, each bag contains 2 or 3 grams of tea, and the amount of tea in the bag should not take up more than half the height of the bag. The connection between one end of the string and the bag must be made solid so as not to be slipped off during brewing and lifting. The other end is usually attached to a tag with the brand logo. In addition to self-tying strings, other machines can use pins to close the tea bag. If using pins, make sure they are rust-resistant and do not negatively affect the tea quality and users’ health.

Check the finished tea bags

Before being stored and marketed, finished tea bags will be rechecked. Some testing criteria are sensory indicators like appearance, tea liquor, smell, taste, physical, chemical, and food hygiene indicators. Depending on the tea types, sensory, physical, and chemical requirements are different. For example, while black tea bags have reddish tea liquor, a mild aroma, and a gentle rich taste, green tea bags have a bright yellow color with a natural grassy smell and mild astringency. Regarding food hygiene criteria, the finished products must not contain pathogenic microorganisms and mold.

In addition, manufacturers must check some packaging criteria, including whether the tea bag thread is loose, the envelopes are sealed properly or over-sealed, or if the cutting and tear lines are appropriate. After quality inspections, tea bags are packed in large quantities and sent to wholesalers or retailers, ready for customer purchase.

Quality control methods

During the quality control process, there are several checking methods that are suitable for each stage.

Visual inspection of raw materials: Tea leaves are inspected for their size, color, and texture to verify that they meet the quality profile and remove the pollutants and foreign objects.

Particle size: To determine the ratio of tea dust and crumbs, samples are sieved on sieves with certain hole sizes. Then, manufacturers weigh and calculate the percentages. Dust or overly fine particles should be removed from the final products.

Blending and sensory evaluation: Tea samples are checked to confirm whether they match the specified ratios to guarantee the consistency of flavors. Besides, professional testers are responsible for aroma and taste tests. The speed of tea blending machinery also needs to be high enough to ensure uniformity.

Bag material testing: Durability and water resistance tests are conducted to ensure that tea bag materials meet standards before starting production.

Weight verification: During production, random weight checks are carried out to ensure each tea bag has a consistent amount of tea.

Packaging inspection: Random finished tea bags are chosen to check for proper sealing, accurate labeling, and appearance.

Explore tea bag production:

How Is Tea Bag Produced In A High-Capacity Automation Production Line?

Conclusion

By carrying out these inspections throughout the production, manufacturers may identify problems early and guarantee that the finished tea bags fulfill strict quality and consistency requirements.

About Future Generation Co.,Ltd

We are FGC, the leading tea and beverage exporter in Vietnam and one of the biggest tea suppliers in the world. Our tea products are diverse in types, grades, and production methods. We provide customers with Loose tea (such as Black tea, Green tea, and Oolong tea), Herbal tea (such as Rose tea, Chamomile tea, and Lotus tea), and Specialty tea (such as Matcha), RTD Tea, and Tea Bags. Our mission is to become Vietnam’s leading healthy beverage company.

We ensure stable tea sources for domestic markets and exports with vast high-grown tea farms and available herb gardens. Our tea gardens and factories also meet international standards such as ISO, HACCP, KOSHER, HALAL, etc. In addition, we constantly innovate our machinery system, strengthen production capacity, and increase productivity. We also provide private label and customized packaging services for small and medium enterprises.

If you are a tea distributor, tea importer, teashop manager, or even tea lover, we are committed to being your prestigious tea source supplier in Vietnam!