Teacup
The vessel you actually drink from, and the one most likely to be chosen on looks alone. Some of that is fine, because appearance is a real part of the experience. But shape, size and even colour do measurable things to the tea, and the small Chinese cup and the large Western mug are answers to two different questions.
- Capacity
- 20 ml tasting cup to 350 ml mug
- Material
- porcelain, stoneware, glass, occasionally metal
- Origin
- everywhere, in every form
- Best for
- matching the cup to the brewing method rather than the other way round
What it is
Anything from a 20 ml Chinese tasting cup to a 350 ml mug. The rule that governs the useful range is simple: a cup should not hold more tea than you can drink before it cools past the point you enjoy it, and not so little that you refill constantly. Maud Cooke's 1896 formulation still holds up, that a cup should hold more than a thimbleful and less than a pint. The Classic of Tea suggests bowls of around 300 ml, which is about a modern mug.
What it does to your tea
Shape governs cooling. For a given volume a sphere exposes the least surface area, so short and wide loses heat faster at the top while tall and narrow exposes more wall; in practice a small cup cools fast whatever you do, which is precisely why gongfu cups are small and refilled. Material governs how it feels in the hand, since ceramics conduct heat roughly a hundred times less readily than metals. And colour genuinely changes what you see: a dark cup makes it hard to judge the strength of the liquor, blue-green glazes have long been prized for deepening the colour of green tea, and Lu Yu thought white and yellow cups poor choices for dark tea in the eighth century.
What it suits
Small cups suit tea you brew in many short infusions, because each pour is meant to be drunk hot and immediately. Large cups and mugs suit a single long infusion you sit with. Neither is a compromise; they belong to different brewing methods.
How to use one
Warm it, especially a small one, where the ratio of cold ceramic to hot tea is worst. Beyond that: a smooth rim is worth more than it sounds, and a lid on a travel cup keeps convection from carrying off both heat and aroma, which is a genuine trade rather than a free win.
How to choose one
Pick up before you buy. Weight, rim thickness and how the heat reaches your fingers are the whole experience and none of them photograph. If you want to judge liquor colour, choose a pale interior; if you want tea stains never to show, choose a dark one and accept that you have given up the other thing.
Care and cleaning
Ordinary washing. Tannin rings inside a pale cup lift with bicarbonate of soda. Unglazed or partly glazed cups follow the clay rules: no detergent.
What people get wrong
Buying one size for everything. A 300 ml mug makes gongfu impossible and a 30 ml cup makes a long Western steep a chore. The other one is judging a tea in a dark or heavily patterned cup and then wondering why the colour never looks like the description.
What it is made of
