Quick follow-up: I've noticed some talk about using only tea bags free of "unnatural" substances. As far as specific brands, I've only heard confirmation on Lipton bags. Anyone know about other brands? I'm hoping I can use my aging box of Celestial Seasonings stuff, but I'm willing to shell out for some Lipton if it means not keeling over...
I don't think the brand of tea is really that important. Right now I'm using a generic store-brand tea, and their bags work wonderfully for me. Heck, when I first "experimented" with this, I put myself into a mild nic O.D. trying to see if there was a difference from the first hit to the last.
Up until the point where I got no smoke at all the taste and smoke stayed remarkably the same, and no burned taste when it was dry. I won't say it got completely dry - the tea bag paper was a little bit oily when I took it out to check, but I was able to smoke considerably more than from the standard fillers.
I drink probably a gallon of iced tea a day, and almost always just buy whatever is cheapest, so sacrificing one tea bag every 2 or 3 days is easy for me. So far I've used 3 different "brands" and didn't notice a difference in taste or performance. Heck - I even washed out a teabag that I had made tea with already and had good results - with only a minimum change in taste (I kinda liked it)
The only real problem now is I seem to be smoking now more than I ever did with the analogs. Gotta switch to low nic soon...