Tea strainer
type of strainer
A tea strainer is a type of strainer that is placed over or in a teacup to catch loose tea leaves. Despite the invention of the tea bag, it continues to be used widely as of 2026.
Function
When tea is brewed in the traditional manner in a teapot, the tea leaves are not contained in teabags; rather, they are freely suspended in the water. As the leaves themselves are not consumed with the tea, it is usual to filter them out with a tea strainer. Strainers usually fit into the top of the cup to catch the leaves as the tea is poured.
Some deeper tea strainers can also be used to brew single cups of tea, much as teabags or brewing baskets are used – the strainer full of leaves is set in a cup to brew the tea. It is then removed, along with the spent tea leaves, when the tea is ready to drink. By using a tea strainer in this way, the same leaves can be used to brew multiple cups.
Continued use after invention of tea bag
Despite the fact that tea strainer use has declined in the 20th century with mass production of the tea bag, it is still preferred among connoisseurs, who claim that keeping the leaves packed in a bag, rather than freely circulating, inhibits diffusion. Many assert that inferior ingredients, namely dust-quality tea, are often used in tea bags.
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This entry incorporates text from “Tea strainer” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.