Good morning! Is anyone else a hot tea or coffee drinker? I like both, but I always have a cup of hot tea in the morning. I also always have scrambled eggs for breakfast every morning. But I have to have hot tea on the side or I won’t eat the eggs. That’s a different subject matter altogether, though! Having been an avid tea drinker for many years now, I thought I would do a round-up of my top five hot tea tips and tricks that I’ve learned during my 20+ year love affair with this diverse drink. Bonus: these tips apply to coffee lovers too!
1. Make your hot tea in a YETI-style cup instead of a teapot.
A lot of people make hot tea in a glass or porcelain teapot and refill their teacup from the teapot. Yes, this is the way it has been done for hundreds of years. But are glass and porcelain really the best insulators? Not compared to a vacuum sealed stainless steel YETI-style container.
I made the switch from teapot to YETI a few years ago and haven’t regretted it. The YETI cup keeps the tea hot for hours. With that said, I wouldn’t recommend drinking your tea straight from this cup because it is too hot. However, the YETI is the perfect carafe for pouring hot tea into a smaller tea cup. And it’s easy to clean afterwards.
Another up-side to the YETI-style cup is that they generally come in a 20oz tumbler-size for people like me or the original 30oz size for those who like a lot of tea. I get a good 3 pours from my 20oz rambler into a standard smaller-sized teacup . . . which brings me to another tip: If you like to take your time in the morning and enjoy your hot tea, the smaller teacup lets you work your way through the whole pour without the tea in the teacup getting too cold.
Or, if you’re like me and always seem to a have a little bit of tea left over in your cup at the end or morning, you can use the leftover tea to make iced tea for lunch. Just add ice and a little water to your rambler. The YETI will keep your iced tea cool all afternoon.
As a side note, there are a lot of affordable YETI-style cups out there, so you do not have to pay the premium price for the name-brand product. I personally have a couple of the name-brand YETI cups because I like their magnetic slider lids, and the slider lids usually come with the tumbler.
You can purchase the lids separately on Amazon (link here) and pair them with your off-brand YETI, but the lids are still a bit pricey. I recently saw these off-brand magnetic slider lids (Amazon link here) but haven’t tried them out. But plastic slider lids work too and are generally interchangeable with the less-expensive insulated cups. Just make sure you get the right size lid for the right size cup.
2. Use different colored YETI cups for guests
Want to make your overnight guests feel at home? We have a variety of colors of insulated rambler-style cups in our drinkware cabinet for guests. Because of the kids, we are usually up early and often brewing coffee and hot water for tea before guests come downstairs. I try to make extra hot water for my tea-drinking guests and have it waiting for them in their colored rambler in the morning so they can have their tea when they wake up. Same goes for coffee!
3. Have a designated tea station in your kitchen
If you are a person who drinks coffee or hot tea every morning, it makes of world of difference to carve out a corner of your kitchen for your tea and/or coffee setup. I have my electric kettle and tea supplies set up on a built-in desk in our kitchen.
Mr. L has his coffee station set up on the opposite side of the kitchen closer to the refrigerator (he likes his coffee with cream).
Everything we need to make our morning beverages is within arm’s reach.
As an aside, we recently switched from the Cuisinart coffee maker to this smaller, 5-cup coffee maker (Amazon link here):
Mr. L LOVES it. He’s a two-cups-of-coffee guy, so this makes the perfect amount of coffee for him. He also says the taste of the coffee it brews is excellent. A 5-cup coffee maker is obviously not ideal for someone who drinks coffee all day long, but it’s a good mid-size choice if you want to make more than one cup in a Keurig and less than a full-scale coffee maker.
4. Corral your tea and accessories in a basket
I found this awesome hinged basket at HomeGoods, and it is perfect for stashing my tea supply and accessories. No more digging around for teabags in the pantry. No more unopened teabags spilling out of boxes on the countertop. I open my basket, find exactly what I need and start brewing. And having everything in a basket keeps the kitchen looking neat.
Mr. L keeps his coffee beans in this handy container, which according to reviews (and Mr. L) keeps the beans fresher than storing them in the bag (Amazon link here):
He has a measuring cup in the container so he can easily scoop out the correct amount of coffee beans for freshly ground coffee every morning. We keep the coffee filters in a napkin holder next the the coffee bean container.
I found our napkin holder at a local boutique store, but this OXO-brand napkin holder has a nice, modern look:
This one on Amazon is super cute too:
5. Dirty teacup? Clean with baking soda
This last tip has been a game changer for me. I would spend a solid five minutes scrubbing my white teacup with a damp paper towel to remove the stains. But no more!
All you have to do is sprinkle a bit of baking soda in the teacup and wipe it with a wet dish rag or sponge. The stains come off effortlessly. No scrubbing required! This works for coffee stains too. Saves so much time.
What am I missing?
That’s all from me this morning. Let me know in the comments if you have any good hot tea or coffee hacks! I’d love to know what they are.
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