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If you’re embarking on a tea discovery journey, eventually you’ll want to move on from tea bags to loose leaf tea. While there’s nothing wrong with tea bags, loose leaf tea makes for a more complex and nuanced cup. Empty Tea Bags For Coffee
Unless you prefer drinking around tea leaves (which is perfectly valid, and a great way to tell fortunes), you’ll want a tea steeper that can contain the leaves while allowing enough room for them to circulate in the water.
After over 30 hours of researching dozens of tea steepers, interviewing experts, and drinking many cups of tea made in no fewer than 15 teapots and infusers, we’ve found that the Finum Brewing Basket (the large version) is the most versatile and well-made tea steeper available..
The fine-mesh-and-plastic in-cup steeping basket allows for more water flow than other infusers, while more effectively keeping tea particles from escaping into the cup. It’s one of the only models that fit both mugs and teapots, and it’s among the easiest to clean.
Thanks to its large size and fine-mesh walls, this steeper allows more water flow between the tea leaves. It fits the vast majority of mugs and cups, as well as some teapots and thermoses.
If you prefer something without plastic, this all-metal steeper offers a sturdier build than the Finum but doesn't allow as much water to flow through. It's also shorter, so tea leaves come in contact with less water, and it's a bit more difficult to clean.
The Hario model brews three cups. The metal basket fills the whole pot, allowing for the leaves to expand fully. A short spout makes pouring easy.
Thanks to its large size and fine-mesh walls, this steeper allows more water flow between the tea leaves. It fits the vast majority of mugs and cups, as well as some teapots and thermoses.
Despite being less expensive than almost any other tea steeper we looked at, the Finum Brewing Basket was our favorite. Its tall, cylindrical shape and fine mesh facilitate water flow, for a stronger flavor, but don’t allow tea particles and residue to escape. At 4.2 inches high, the Finum Brewing Basket is a versatile steeper that you can use in a wide variety of containers.
If you prefer something without plastic, this all-metal steeper offers a sturdier build than the Finum but doesn't allow as much water to flow through. It's also shorter, so tea leaves come in contact with less water, and it's a bit more difficult to clean.
If you want a metal alternative, we also like the stainless steel Forlife Brew-in-Mug. This sturdy, well-constructed tea steeper has great user reviews. Water doesn’t flow as freely through its holes, and because it’s shorter than the Finum, there is less opportunity for tea to come into contact with water in a vessel. Tea leaves are also a bit more prone to sticking in this steeper, but it still brews a great cup.
There’s a ring of silicone around the steeper’s lid, but that part won’t be submerged in the water while brewing.
The Hario model brews three cups. The metal basket fills the whole pot, allowing for the leaves to expand fully. A short spout makes pouring easy.
For more than one serving, we like the all-glass-and-metal, 23-fluid-ounce Hario Chacha teapot. This is a delicate glass pot, so it requires more care in handling and cleaning than the Finum. It has a much larger brew-basket–to–teapot size ratio than any of the other pots we found, which means that leaves have more room to expand and release their flavor.
I have been an avid tea drinker since I was a child, when my parents would make me green tea, letting the leaves brew directly in the cup. Now I drink at least a few cups of tea a day, which has amounted to hundreds of hours of steeping different types of tea over the years.
Daily tea drinkers would benefit from using a good infuser, especially people who currently drink tea made from tea bags or tea balls.
Many tea bags today are made up of “fannings,” basically leftover tea dust. The exposed surface area of all those little pieces allows you to get a quickly brewed cup, but this often produces a stale and less-flavorful tea.
Even if you put full tea leaves into a tea bag, which more and more high-end tea companies have started to do, you’re still placing your tea at a disadvantage. Tea leaves need room to expand fully and to move freely through the water for their flavors to emerge. A bag suffocates the leaves, preventing them from expanding to their full capacity.
Switching from confined bags and balls to a larger infuser made specifically for loose-leaf tea will drastically improve the quality of the beverage you drink.
Even though you can also brew tea without any infuser at all, doing so is not always ideal, especially in larger teapots and cups where you’d want to take the tea out as soon as it’s done infusing
Tea preparation is a dynamic and variable part of many cultures, and there are many ways to brew. For this guide, we prioritized convenient, accessible tea methods fit for most tea drinkers. As such, we elected not to test methods such as single-cup gaiwan brewing.
The steeping vessels we considered came in a wide range of shapes and sizes, including over-the-cup steepers (those that brew tea in a vessel and then drip into the cup), in-cup brewing baskets (which sit inside the cup, resting on the lip), teapots with built-in infusers, tea tumblers with strainers, and electronic gadgets for automatic tea making.
But in all of them, we looked for the following:
Size and surface area: The size of the vessel and how much the steeping device lets tea leaves come in contact with water are the two most important qualities of a great infuser. The steeper needs to be big enough for individual leaves to float and expand on their own in the water during the given steeping time. Mesh infusion baskets allow water to circulate better than a solid infuser with holes in it.
Simple and easy to clean: Especially if you drink tea at least once a day, you'll want a steeper that isn't a pain to clean. It also needs to be durable and simple to use.
Materials: For in-cup infusion baskets, stainless steel is preferable to ceramic or plastics because it offers more durability, and most such models allow more water flow. Teapot materials vary from plastic to cast iron. One of the most common and sturdy materials is ceramic, which retains heat well and is often glazed so it doesn’t impart any flavor on the tea. Glass is another common, decent option that retains heat evenly. The main drawback is that glass is more delicate than other materials.
For our tests, we brewed a black tea, a green tea, and a fine herbal tea (peppermint or rooibos) in each infuser, using the specific temperatures and steeping times recommended for each tea.
We checked for how well the teas could expand and move throughout the water, and we tested for flavor. After each infusion, we cleaned the vessels and checked how easily we could dump the leaves and whether any leaves got stuck in the infusers.
Thanks to its large size and fine-mesh walls, this steeper allows more water flow between the tea leaves. It fits the vast majority of mugs and cups, as well as some teapots and thermoses.
The best overall tea infuser is the Finum Brewing Basket in the large size. This steeper is wide and tall, giving tea leaves a lot more space to expand and move around than other in-cup infusers we tested.
The Finum’s design is simple and effective. Its cylindrical shape can drop into pots or larger cups, and its heat-resistant handles make it easier to lift out of mugs.
The basket is made of a heat-resistant, high-quality plastic and an incredibly fine, flexible stainless-steel mesh. Unlike other in-cup steepers, which have a less-fine mesh or small perforations in metal, the Finum doesn’t allow leaves or leaf particles to escape into your cup, and water flows freely through the infuser. Even the bottom of the basket has mesh (most steepers don’t offer this design), which further helps circulation.
The Finum’s handy lid helps hold the water’s heat in while your tea steeps; after brewing, you can flip it over to use it as a drip tray for the basket.
It's easier to clean than most other steepers. Just dump the leaves out and rinse it with water. The Finum is also top-rack dishwasher safe.
It's the most convenient and versatile option for everyday use. It rests easily in anything with a diameter of 2.8 to 4 inches. You need nothing more than a mug and hot water.
It also works well in a small teapot, though probably not one that stands much taller than the Finum (4.2 inches), and likely not for more than three servings since the leaves won’t be able to reach as much of the water or have as much room to expand. The Finum also comes in a medium size for cups smaller than 2.8 inches in diameter.
It was the cheapest steeping device we tested. Although it's slightly more expensive than tea balls and gimmicky cartoon-shaped tea infusers, it represents a very small investment for consistently great-tasting tea.
Tony Gebely of World of Tea has called the Finum Brewing Basket the only infuser you’ll ever need. “It meets all of the requirements," he told us, "it’s large, and can be removed from the steeping vessel. It can be as simple as putting it in a coffee mug, then removing it after the steep time, or inserting it inside the top of a teapot.”
We did notice a small amount of patina develop on the mesh—specifically on the bottom of the Finum Brewing Basket—after more than a year of use. This happened when on several occasions we let the basket sit for a day with old tea leaves, which you shouldn’t do! After we ran it through the dishwasher, most of the patina cleared. Aside from our own forgetfulness with regard to cleaning, the Finum Brewing Basket has held up extremely well to frequent use in Wirecutter's test kitchen since 2014.
If you prefer something without plastic, this all-metal steeper offers a sturdier build than the Finum but doesn't allow as much water to flow through. It's also shorter, so tea leaves come in contact with less water, and it's a bit more difficult to clean.
The Finum is made of high-quality plastic, but if you prefer metal, the Forlife Brew-in-Mug Extra-Fine Tea Infuser is a good alternative. It functions in the same way as our top pick: You just put tea leaves inside and let it rest on the rim of your mug.
It feels sturdier than the Finum since it’s made entirely of stainless steel, and it comes with a stainless steel lid encased in silicone rubber.
But we found that it loses to the Finum in a few respects. The holes in the thick metal do not allow for as much water flow as the super-fine stainless steel mesh of the Finum. This model is also slightly shorter, at 3.2 inches, which means the leaves won’t come into contact with as much of the cup’s contents.
Cleaning is a bit harder, since pieces of tea leaves often get stuck in the holes of the infuser. And some user reviews complain that the metal body gets a little too hot for comfort when steeping, which isn’t an issue with the plastic Finum.
The Hario model brews three cups. The metal basket fills the whole pot, allowing for the leaves to expand fully. A short spout makes pouring easy.
If you want a brewing setup that makes more than one cup, we highly recommend the Hario Chacha Kyusu Maru. Capable of holding almost 24 ounces, this glass pot makes about three small cups, so you can share tea with another person—or you can have more tea for yourself without brewing an overwhelming amount that you won’t finish.
What makes the Hario special is its large metal-and-mesh infusing basket, which takes up the majority of the teapot. This design gives the leaves more room to expand and ensures a flavorful tea. All of the other teapots we tested had either narrow or short infusers. The Chacha is also easier to pour from than other pots we tried, thanks to its shorter, more pointed spout.
Glass teapots are more delicate than ceramic ones, so you’ll want to make sure not to bang this one around much. The infusing basket also needs a separate plate or coaster to rest in after the tea is done.
This is not a comprehensive list of everything we tested in previous iterations of this guide, just what’s still available.
The Hario Chacha Natsume has a slightly more elongated body than our pick, the Hario Chacha Kyusu Maru, and a large plastic infuser with super-fine plastic mesh. Though we love the redesigned shape and the familiar short spout, the Natsume didn’t quite beat its predecessor since its infusing basket allows less water flow.
The Breville One-Touch Tea Maker, a previous pick, heats water to preset temperatures for different types of tea, allows varying brew strengths, steeps the leaves, and keeps the tea warm in one handy glass kettle. But we think you can brew great tea at a much lower price point.
The Adagio IngenuiTea, a 16-ounce over-the-cup model, is very good at steeping tea, since the leaves float around through the water and have the entire vessel in which to expand. It’s easy to clean too. But unless you have a clear mug, you can’t see how much of the tea is pouring into the cup. In our testing, we kept having to lift the infuser to make sure tea wouldn’t spill out. At one point, we thought we had enough room in our mug but ended up with an overflow of burning-hot tea.
Forlife’s Stump teapot is basically just a small ceramic teapot with a built-in Forlife Brew-in-Mug filter. It comes in a variety of bright colors, but it has the same water flow and cleaning issues as the Brew-in-Mug infuser. It’s a highly rated teapot, and ceramic is more durable than glass, but it holds only 18 ounces—not much more than a typical mug.
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