Strainer
A mesh you pour tea through, as opposed to an infuser, which is a basket the leaf sits in. The distinction matters and is constantly blurred: one holds the leaf during the steep, the other catches whatever escaped during the pour.
- Capacity
- cup-sized
- Material
- stainless steel mesh
- Origin
- universal
- Best for
- catching fines from a pot with no filter of its own
What it is
A shallow bowl of fine mesh with a handle or a rim that rests on a cup. Steel is standard; the Indian style is sized to sit on a Western mug so blended tea can be filtered straight from the pot. A cocktail strainer does the same job.
What it does to your tea
It removes fines. Whether that improves things depends entirely on the tea: high-grade teas carry a lot of downy pekoe and small fragments, and those keep extracting in the cup and cloud the liquor, so straining them out makes a visible and tastable difference. On a large whole-leaf tea a strainer catches almost nothing and is not worth the washing-up.
What it suits
Anything brewed loose in a pot with no built-in filter, anything with a lot of fines, and blended teas made from scratch, which is where the Indian style earns its place.
How to use one
Hold it over the cup and pour through. If a lot of fines collect, tap them out between cups rather than letting them build into a mat that slows the pour.
How to choose one
Fine mesh, double layer if you can get it, and a rim that actually rests on your cups rather than sliding into them. A folding handle is convenient and is also the part that fails.
Care and cleaning
Rinse from the outside in, so the fines wash off the mesh rather than being pushed further into it. Steel goes in the dishwasher.
What people get wrong
Buying one when what you wanted was an infuser, or the reverse. In German the two even ship under distinct words for this reason, Teesieb for the infuser and Abseiher for the strainer, because collapsing them is how you end up with the wrong object.
What it is made of
