What do you brew your tea in?

If I’m making iced tea, I’ll typically use an infuser and a 2 quart pitcher. For individual glasses, I typically use a perfect tea mug from David’s or a travel mug with an infuser built in.

In whatever mug I happen to take out of my cabinet.

I use my Davids Tea Perfect Tea Mugs with infuser thingy. I like the little baskets, and I actually have 4 mugs now which means 4 baskets which is perfect for when i keep some leaves to re-steep but don’t want to do it immediately. So there’s always a couple baskets of wet leaves on my desk at work and on the counter at home, haha.

I thought about getting one of the Davidstea gravity steeper things but I don’t like that it’s plastic, and at the store you see them on the counter behind the employees, they’re all stained and grimy looking. If they were glass I’d be more compelled!

I’ve gotta try this mason jar thing!!

Iced tea: I cold brew in mason jars. I usually have 4-6 jars brewing at one time!

Hot tea: I bought a coffee maker on sale and I use this to heat up my water (don’t worry, this has NEVER had coffee in it). I usually just make a cup at a time instead of brewing a whole pot of one flavor, so I just pour the water over an infuser in a mug.

I’ve taken recently to using my larger Gaiwan for everything if I am making tea for myself. It makes a perfect classical tea cup and allows for easy resteeps. If I just want a big cup of something I do have steeping baskets that work quite well. If I am making tea to share, or a tisane to drink throughout the day, I have several teapots ( none of them are perfect yet, though ironically the cheapest one pours the best), or I use a Gaiwan. For Rooibos, I tend to use one of those glass double walled steeping glasses with the mesh wire filters you can get at Asian supermarkets. It works pretty well and filters out most of the leaf.

Usually I make tea for myself so I’ll do it one of a few ways:

a) Fill up two timolino’s with 2 types of tea so I can pour them into a little bubble cup (6oz) and sip throughout the afternoon without having to get up, and without them getting cold. I like alternating too.

b) My Perfect Mug: I used to use this all the time, until I switched to the two timolino method. This mug is great! I’ll probably go back to using it at some point too. Maybe when I’m back to work I’ll brew tea in this AND the timolino’s! :O

c) I have a little gung fu teapot from DavidsTea as well that’s great for eastern style brewing.

d) If I actually have company, I have a big tea pot that I can whip out.

e) I have an iced tea steeper for cold brewing too.

In my experience different methods work better for different teas. I use a combination of:

Cast Iron Tea Pot (Greens and jasmine) French Press (Mate, chai, or assam) Tea ball metal tea strainer (Flavored tea) Gong Fu (Oolong, puerh, fine teas) I brew gong fu style in a pyrex measuring cup (8 or 16 oz capacity). Like this one:

http://www.amazon.com/Pyrex-Prepware-2-Cup-Measuring-Measurements/dp/B0002ITQHS

I put the tea leaves in, add hot water, then pour into a coffee mug (dedicated to tea, never coffee) through a hand held strainer like this one:
http://www.amazon.com/OXO-Good-Grips-3-Inch-Strainer/dp/B001713L84/ref=sr_1_2?s=home-garden&ie=UTF8&qid=1365798420&sr=1-2&keywords=hand+held+strainer

I prefer drinking tea out of coffee mugs because if I only fill the mug half way I can put my entire nose in the cup and get the full aroma before, during, and after each sip.

I recently bought a zero teapot (580ml.) and use it for most of my black yunnans, which i mostly prefer to brew Western style.

I also use this pot to make sencha & oolong.

use my 90ml. Yixing gaiwan for pu-ehr teas.

I’ve been making tea in one of Adagio’s personalitea ceramic teapots. It comfortably hols 2 cups, but I guess it can hold up to 4, though it gets really full them.
I also have a Zarafina that I use occasionally for teas that don’t have additions like chocolate chips, marshmallows or any of the strange additions that sometimes come with the teas I buy. Lol. Or I have one of teavana’s ceramic (porcelain?) cups with the infuser insert when I want just the one cup, but that’s for the chunkier teas that I have since the holes let the finer stuff through.

One of these days I’ll get a gaiwan. XD

Gaiwan