Loose Leaf Tea Accessories

These loose leaf tea accessories will help you get the most out of your beautiful leaves.

If you’re using one of our loose leaf teapots the tea strainer will filter out any small fragments of leaf from your cup.

Our Japanese tea accessories are crafted from sustainable bamboo in Japan and the bowls are handmade in the UK. Read more...

9 products

If you are using a teapot, even though ours all have a plate behind the spout to hold back the leaves, some small pieces will inevitably get through. This is where a tea strainer steps in. Simply place it over your cup and it will strain out the finer fragments of leaf. Of course, this will mean you will have no tea leaves left in the bottom of your cup to tell your fortune.

Tasseography is the art of telling your fortune by reading the patterns in the loose leaf tea leaves left at the bottom of your cup. If you want to try this it’s best to forgo using a tea strainer or a loose tea infuser. However, we believe that drinking Direct Trade, sustainable, delicious loose leaf tea will secure the best future for our planet, tea communities and our health and happiness.

We don’t advocate tea infuser balls, (sometimes called a tea strainer ball) unless you’re brewing something very fine cut like rooibos. The best loose tea infuser needs to be as large as possible. You’ll see ours fills the cup. Always choose a tea infuser that allows your leaves as much room as possible to unfurl as they infuse. You want as much surface area of the leaf as possible to make contact with the hot water.

The most important thing to know about making loose leaf tea is that it's easy to do and it makes the best tea. There are any number of methods and useful accessories to help you. It's not rocket science, people have been managing to make tea for millennia.

To make the best loose leaf tea all you need to do is add tea to hot water in a vessel and strain off the infusion.

If you're using one of our specially designed loose leaf teapots there is already an elegant plate behind the spout to hold back most of the leaves. Tiny particles of tea can be filtered out of your teacup with an overcup tea strainer. If you already have a teapot that was designed for teabags with nothing behind the spout, please don't worry - we have handy strainers that fit inside your tea pot spout - we call them umbrella strainers. They hold back all the loose leaf tea back - and you won't need to strain it further.

If you want to practice Tasseography - the art of telling your fortune by reading the patterns in the tea leaves left at the bottom of your cup - you will have to forgo a tea strainer. If you want to create a better future, we strongly believe that drinking only Direct Trade, sustainably farmed, loose leaf and bag-free tea will secure the best future for our planet, tea communities and our own health and happiness.

To make the best matcha green tea, a bamboo matcha whisk is the most essential tea accessory. We don't recommend a hand-held electric frother - it doesn't allow you to create the best texture. And rather than a teaspoon, a bamboo scoop is the perfect bit of kit for measuring out your matcha powder.

Since we began in 2004 Rare Tea company has never sold teabags because they don't make the best tea and they are single-use. Teabags are an unsustainable, single-serving of precious resources, industrial chemicals and microplastics that end up in a landfill. Even biodegradable and greenwashed teabags contain billions of potential microplastics through the glue that is used in their seal, among other unknown chemicals that are brewed in hot water along with your tea.

Loose leaf tea doesn't need to be held tight in a teabag or a teaball or a clip. Tea is a dried herb and needs room to rehydrate. Whole leaf teas require a lot of room for the leaves to unfurl. But for any size of tea leaf the more room it has for the hot water to meet the surface area of the leaf, the better the infusion. We recommend our mug infuser which allows the loose leaves plenty of space. It comes with a handy saucer to rest on between infusions - allowing you to make several mugs of tea from the same tea leaves.

We have lovely range of teapots, tea infusers and gaiwans available on our website.

We have handy tins to keep your loose leaf tea airtight - they are rather lovely as a tea gift themselves - but even better when filled with some of our huge selection of loose leaf teas. We also have some beautifully designed gift sets.

Or for a tea gift that doesnt need any packaging because it is a delivery sent direct through the post every month - you might want to try one of our tea subscriptions.

None of our teas need rinsing for any cleaning purpose - they are all grown under organic farming principles and free from pesticides or herbicides. However, our rolled oolongs - like our Chinese Iron Goddess and Taiwanese Golden Lily Milk Oolong or rolled green teas like Nepali Gunpowder Green and Emerald Green do benefit from a very quick rinse with hot water. This is just a flash infusion of a couple of seconds to allow the outer leaves to soften and the water to penetrate more deeply into the rolled "gunpowder" shaped tea leaves.

The most environmentally loose leaf tea accessory is one that can be used over and over again - perhaps for a lifetime or several. The least environmentally friendly tea accessory is a single-use teabag. Whatever teabags are made of, they are a waste of precious resources. It is far better to use tea accessories made of bone china, glass or stainless steel that can be used over and over again.

Our Japanese tea accessories are crafted from sustainable bamboo in Japan.