What's Your Cup Size?

No, ladies,  I am not inquiring about your undergarments. I am writing this friendly tip to help you get the best flavor from your tea!

Tea bags, tea balls, and infusers are typically filled with enough tea or tisane (herbal tea) to flavor a specific quantity of water (usually 8 ounces). But cups and mugs aren’t standardized: I have some cups/mugs that hold barely 6 ounces of water, while others hold almost 16 ounces.

Thus, it stands to reason that your tea is going to taste different, even when using the same brand of teabag, if you are making it in different sized mugs/cups!

Make things easier on yourself, and improve the quality of the tea you drink, by doing the following:

1. Take out all of the cups/mugs you use to drink tea.

2. Line them up by your sink and use a large liquid measuring cup to measure how much liquid each mug/cup holds when filled to a safe level (i.e. you don’t want to try drinking from a cup filled to the brim with steaming hot liquid!).

3. Don’t try “eyeballing” the cups/mugs to estimate volume: Different shapes can be deceiving. A mug that is short, but  is also wide with straight sides, can hold as much water as a tall mug that is narrow and has slanted sides.

4. If you are fond of bagged tea, you can set aside those cups/mugs that hold 8 ounces (or 16 ounces for double teabags), and just mentally brand them the “teabag cups”.

5. Change the proportion of loose tea that you use in an infuser depending on the size of a cup/mug: For example, if you have a cup that safely holds 12 ounces of water, you can then use 1.5 times the normal amount of tea in your infuser when using that specific cup.

6. Odd sized cups should be reserved for drinking tea that has been infused in a teapot.

Tagged as: cups, measurements, tea, tea cups, tea tips