08_how to use a tea strainer

Hi, I'm Jemma Swallow from The Tea Box in Richmond, Surrey. I'm a tea sommelier at the specialist tea house where we serve and sell around fifty loose leaf teas. We also do corporate tea tastings and public tea tastings. Today, I'm going to show you the variety of teas, that we sell here at the shop. I'm going to show you now, how to use a tea strainer. It's quite a simple device and it involves having a teapot and a strainer, such as this, with a strainer holder. All you do is simply place your strainer on your cup. Pour your tea through it, so it strains any miscellaneous tea leaves out of your tea. You place it simply, back on your tea strainer holder. You do also get ones that you can place across your teacup without the tea strainer holder. But there are many other varieties that operate in a similar way as this. Right, so we'd simply use our tea strainer by placing it over our cup, like this. We pour the tea through the strainer, so it catches any naughty little tea leaves that might escape. A common mistake though, that people make when they first see a tea strainer, is they are to have a tendency to place the whole lot in the cup. And the bottom will drop in the cup. Don't do this. This is actually to catch your tea strainer after you've used it and leave that perfectly on your table, like that.