Life
9 Lovely Yet Practical Tea Drinking Accessories All Tea Lovers Need To Own
For people who love tea, tea is more than just a warm drink. It’s a comfort; it’s a ritual; it’s practically a religion. I first fell in love with tea while studying abroad in England. There, people offer you tea almost as often as they say “Hello.” It’s everywhere, and they have the best biscuits, and you can go to places like Harrods’s and Fortnum & Mason and get the fanciest, most delicate tea sandwiches and scones, and it’s the BEST. Tea is growing in popularity in the U.S., though many tea purists (ahem, me) will complain that a lot of coffee shops still don’t know how to make it properly, which means we just have to get really good at making our own. Fortunately, making excellent tea requires very little skill, and only a few key supplies.
Click through to see the tea-accessories you need to add to your tea-making supplies ASAP. How many of these items you actually want to have depends on how elaborate you want your tea to be. In my case, sometimes I’m happy to go the easy route with a tea bag in a mug, but, on other occasions, I find nothing more comforting than taking the time to break out a real teapot and the delicate china cups I inherited from my grandmother. It makes the day instantly more awesome.
Images: Pixabay
A Kettle (Electric or Old-School)
Good tea starts with having properly heated water, which requires a real kettle. As this 2013 Slate article points out, microwaving water for tea just won’t cut it; the water heats unevenly in the microwave, and your tea won’t steep properly, resulting in sad, crummy tea. A kettle – either the kind you put on your stove top or the kind you plug into a wall – heats water to an even temperature with a rolling boil, which is the perfect environment for steeping black tea (green tea requires slightly cooler temps).
Whether you go for an electric kettle or an old-fashioned one is up to you. In my experience, the electric kettle is handy for spaces that don’t have kitchens, like offices, and it will usually heat water faster than the stove. But I’m a big fan of my stovetop kettle for the simple reason that it will last forever, while electric kettles eventually break down and need replacing.
Image: Pixabay
A Teapot
Sometimes it’s just easiest to plop a teabag in a mug, but we shouldn’t let tea pots go the way of the dinosaur. It makes sense to use a teapot if you’re planning on drinking more than one cup of tea, or if you’re having company. You’ll save money on tea bags (because you won’t need a new one for every cup) and produce less waste. And even without that concern, teapots are simply gorgeous and awesome, and if I had unlimited space I would keep a collection of cool ones around my house as art. Teapots come in so many different amazing styles; I can’t help but want to collect them all.
Image: Pixabay
Tea Cups
I am thoroughly convinced that tea tastes best when it’s in a delicate china cup, but I’ll allow that that feeling might be purely emotional. I do think that one practical advantage of drinking tea out of a small cup, rather than a mug, is that the tea stays hotter: Your cup holds a small amount, while the teapot keeps the rest of the tea nice and toasty. With a mug, I always feel like the tea needs reheating partway through drinking it.
And, again, do we really need an excuse to buy gorgeous teacups? Teacups are my favorite things to shop for in antique stores because they’re small and they’re not usually expensive. My little mismatched collection of vintage teacups makes my whole kitchen seem happier.
Image: Chronologies/Etsy
Tea Cozy
Because you’ve got to keep your teapot warm right? Sure, you could always use a dishtowel, but why on Earth would you do that when you could have a menagerie of adorable knitted tea cozy animals instead?
Image: Wooly Chic Designs/Etsy
Tea Strainer
Tea bags are handy, but give loose-leaf tea a shot. Many argue that loose-leaf tea produces a better brew because the tealeaves have space to unfold and slowly infuse the water. You’ll also be responsible for less waste. If you want to try loose-leaf tea, you’ll need a tea strainer to strain the leaves from the tea as you pour it into your cup. You can also use a tea infuser …
Image: Fotolia
Tea Infuser
A tea infuser holds loose-leaf tea, so that when the tea is done steeping, you can easily pull it out. There are a lot of ingenious ones out there (like this dashing gentleman), so don’t be surprised if you end up with a whole tea infuser collection.
Image: Nokomax/Etsy
A Timer
You’ll need a timer to make sure you infuse your steep your tea for the proper length of time. (Steeping time varies according to the type of tea you have, but it’s usually somewhere between two and four minutes.) Sure, you could just use a timer on your microwave or phone, but would I rob you of an excuse to buy a cool, vintage-y timer? I would not.
Image: Fotolia
Flavored Sugar Cubes
How sweet are these pretty sugar cubes? (OK, I know, that pun was cheap. I’m not sorry.)
Image: Trio3/Etsy
One of these super fancy tea sandwich stands
If you’re very fancy, you can get one of these multi-tiered stands and pile it high with the essential ingredients for high tea (one tier is for tea sandwiches, the next is for scones, and the next is for little desserts). If you want to use this thing to eat breakfast off of every morning, I won’t tell anyone.
Image: TeaTimesCreations/Etsy
