Tea cup vs. Coffee Mug

Which is better for tea: a tea cup or a coffee mug? Are teacups going out of style?

Tea cups are lovely, but they're mostly too darned small. I always use mugs unless serving tea at a fancy event.

China tea pots are something else I don't bother with. I have a few different insulated carafes that keep the tea warm much longer.

I love a mug - more tea!

Both are good; I usually use a mug, because it holds more, but I must say tea tastes delicious in a thin porcelain cup!

Yes, I have a lovely pottery cup and saucer that I would love to use but it seems too small. On the other hand, I almost never drink a full mug.

Tea cups every time. Hate mugs! I love old china tea cups most of all, especially with a saucer too.

>6 TheGingerDetective: A vote for tea cups!! How many cups do you drink at a time?
I think I would tend to use tea cups more often if I brewed my tea in a pot instead of the cup itself.
Best wishes and happy new year! k4k

I use a small China mug which is very fine and delicate. I do think tea tastes better in a fine China teacup but I rarely use saucers anymore. I have little trays I sit my cup and biscuit on and only drink green tea with jasmine.

I can't believe I started this conversation almost 8 years ago! I still don't use the lovely pottery tea cup I have.

I use a mug if I make tea with a bag, and a cup when I want a whole pot.

It's an aesthetics thing: mug when one needs to be fortified; cup when one has time to relax and appreciate.

A Bodum glass mug, every time. I very much like seeing the color of the tea. I got used to drinking tea out of drinking glasses when I lived in North Africa, so I suppose that has influenced my predilection as well. Another plus is that my usual pot, an IngenuiTEA from Adagio Teas, fits the mug precisely and one full pot gives me one full mug. Such precision is heartening in the morning when I'm bleary-eyed and dull!

I have a large mug with a smiley on the outside of the bottom, i.e. I seldom notice it. But sometimes one of my fellow workers notice it when we are on a video call (i.e. Teams) and ask if I also have an angry mug :-)

It made me wonder if it is possible to paint something that would be invisible or hard to see for your eyes but visible if seen through camera + a display screen :-)

>12 TempleCat: Seconding the Bodum glass mug - it's right in front of me as I am typing! I like its shape and the fact that it is easy to clean. It's perfect for everyday use. I also have small bowls that go with my teapot, as well as my late mother's teacups. They get an outing on special occasions.

I use the sort of tea mug that comes with an infuser that fits inside and a lid that covers it. I have a lovely glass one from David's Tea that has white frosted octopus tentacles stenciled on it.

I usually just use a coffee mug for hot tea. I like a large amount and that keeps me from makes multiple cups. If I need a caffeine boost, I might do small cups.

We have most of a set of old dishes from a previous family generation. My favorite way of drinking tea is in one of those cups, complete with saucer. It reminds me that the human stomach has not changed its average size, regardless of the "always bigger" dishware manufacturing trend of the last 100 years. Sometimes the old ways are best.

I like the cups to go with tea brewed in a tea pot, because the cozy keeps the tea in the pot warm, but if you pour it into a big mug, it will be cold before you get to the bottom of the mug. If you pour it in the smaller tea cup, it stays warm, and then you can pour more hot tea. :=)

At home I use thick solid mugs usually, with wider bottoms than tops, because: 20 pound clumsy cat who thinks he is tiny & agile. :) I do love delicate china tea cups for fancy teas & special moments. And i have various kinds of pots etc for different teas, serving styles, brewing styles, etc. But general “every day while i sit at my computer working” tea? Big thick unbreakable mug.

Especially during the colder months, I use lidded steeping cups to keep servings of tea hot until I am ready to transfer a serving to my drinking cup. Here is an example of that type of product:

https://teaforte.com/

Asian markets often have an assortment of lidded steeping cups.

Has anyone tried the mug warmers that I keep seeing advertised everywhere? They look like coasters that plug in. I have heard they work better with flat bottom mugs but I haven't been convinced to try one yet.

>21 genesisdiem: I have one at work and it does keep my tea hot. I will have to check whether the bottom of my cup is absolutely flat. I doubt it would matter that much. If you think of an oven, the food is cooked by hot air. This is probably true in part for the mug warmers.

>22 krazy4katz: thank you!

I have overlarge mugs but I could go to smaller ones as I tend to not finish my tea half the time. I have plenty of tea cups on a very narrow shelf which looks lovely but does tend to gather dust. Other tea cups I have in a sideboard where I have my "tea station" with kettle, tea maker, more tea, more cups, tea.

I like to use tea cups when I'm making an event of things, or just using a pot. If I'm brewing a cup straight in the mug, then it's a mug. It does stain the cup rather horribly though, so I've taken to leaving mugs just for me at places I visit a lot so I don't stain my friend's dinner ware.

>24 WeeTurtle: What? "Overlarge mugs"? Never heard of such a thing. I have a few that are just adequate, but most are horribly small :-)

>25 bnielsen: My measurements aren't as sharp as they were when I worked at a coffee shop, but I'd say these are minimum 16 ouncers.

That's fun. My current mug is 550 ml or 20 oz (according to my kitchen scale). I have no idea what an oz is :-) But the scale probably don't know if it is a fluid oz or an non-fluid oz.

The 550 ml is without depending on surface tension so I'd call it the effective volume of the mug.
I think I have larger mugs than that but they are in the back of the cupboard for the moment.

A liter is approximately 1 quart. I had to look it up, but 32 ounces = 1 quart (and yes, I am American, but as a scientist who doesn't cook very much I am more familiar with the metric system). Therefore the 20 oz seems about right for slightly more than half a liter.

>28 krazy4katz: Hmm, a quart seems like a more reasonable unit than the hubble-barn and the acre-foot that I otherwise imagine Americans use :-)

>29 bnielsen: Again, as a scientist, I am more used to the metric system for small weights and volumes. Teaspoons, tablespoons, cups etc — just glad they are labeled. I have no idea how many tsp in a tbsp or in a cup. However the switch to the metric system would probably hurt people who cook the most. Just think of all the cook books that would have to be modified.

I was lucky enough to be driving through Canada while they had speed signs in both mph and kph. I discovered that 50 mph=80 kph. I have kept that ratio in my head in case I ever need it. An acre? I have absolutely no idea. In fact, I don't know what other countries use for acres. Do they use square meters?

Hubble-barn is so funny!! I had to look it up.

>30 krazy4katz: In fact, I don't know what other countries use for acres. Do they use square meters?
Yes, or sometimes, ares (100 square meters) and hectares (10,000 square meters) - but they're not SI units.
ETA: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hectare

>30 krazy4katz: Just think of all the cook books that would have to be modified

Just think of all the cook books and online recipes from all over the world, including English speaking countries like Canada, Australia, New Zealand, UK and Ireland which also often include US recipes, which would not have to be modified!

A hectare is about 2.47 acres, so as a rule of thumb I think of it as two and a half.

Or maybe a compromise can be found, like this:

https://xkcd.com/1923/

(BTW I very rarely use those of my cookbooks with measurements only in "cups" and "spoons" and "max temperature on the oven".)

>32 John5918: this happened to me when I did a study abroad (US >UK) and it took me nearly a week to sort out how to use the oven. All of my recipes and know-how was not what matched the instructions on the boxes from the market. But I did figure it out eventually. :)

>33 bnielsen: Love this!
I generally use centigrade for stuff (again, a scientist) but every once in a while I need Fahrenheit (for cooking). I never quite get the conversion right except that somewhere — either inside or outside the parentheses — you have to add 32.

>35 krazy4katz: :-)

I learn something new everytime I dig into this. So this time around I learned that the Celcius scale ran from 100 to 0 in version 1.0 :-)
I don't yet know if something similar ever was the case with Fahrenheit (or Reamur or ... Rankine or ...)

>36 bnielsen:

I seem to recall that when I was studying physics half a century ago we were taught to use Kelvin rather than Celsius, with that inspiring term "Absolute Zero".

>37 John5918: Yes, Kelvin is nice. And conversion to Rankine doesn't involve 32 :-)

I once bought a HP calculator which had a conversion between C and F. And what really amused me was that I had to say if it was a temperature or a temperature difference that I was converting.

Ah yes, Kelvin. Fortunately we biologists don't have to go that low. :-)

I have converted all my computer calculators to perform calculations using reverse Polish notation like my very first calculator. My father was an electrical engineer and used calculators with RPN so I did too.

I discovered that I didn’t have enough mugs today. My class is having a celebration meal on Friday and we planned the menu today. Mulled cider is the beverage.
I asked the prof if the department kitchen had mugs. Not enough, so I volunteered to bring a dozen. Now at my old house, that would have been no problem. And they all matched, except for color. But I’m starting over here. I have 6 that match, but the rest were a hodgepodge.
So I hit the Goodwills. I was reaching for a cart and a lady offered me hers. She was unloading a dozen matching white mugs at checkout. Perfect! She was taking them home for a Christmas craft project with her grandchildren.
Rats! Missed that set by minutes.
But there was another set, smaller but still acceptable, scattered on the dishwares shelves. Eleven of them at 59cents each. And I had one at home that matches.
I also found a dozen cloth napkins (also 59cents) to donate to the project.

>40 2wonderY:

I've always thought that tea mugs, by their very nature, should not match each other!

>41 John5918: I know what you mean, but I grew up in a household where nothing matched. Random china, glassware, etc. I get some satisfaction from stacks of identical plates, bowls and mugs.
The staff at the Ag building seem to as well. I went to help at the homecoming breakfast they put on a couple of Saturdays ago. They served a hundred people at a sitting, and plates and good quality utensils all matched. The only disposables were drinking cups* and paper napkins. A crew of students managed the wash up, and any food waste was collected for the pig herd.

I do have a singular mug for my tea. But that’s because the duplicates I bought when I found the perfect size and shape have been broken or lost. I’m scouting for the correct replacements for when the last one inevitably meets its end.

*and these were nominally compostable. I brought mine home to experiment with it.

>41 John5918:. A non-matching vote from me too :-)

>30 krazy4katz: Teaspoons, tablespoons, cups etc — just glad they are labeled

Those are the worst, they are completely different measures on either side of the Atlantic, but everyone just assumes they are what ever they are used too.

>44 tallpaul: Totally agree! If a recipe specifies a weight (and unfortunately most don't), I pull out my kitchen scale and use that and don't worry about measures of volume. It took me a lifetime before I realized that my dinnerware tea spoons don't actually hold a teaspoon and that a tea cup actually only holds 6 ounces of liquid, not the standard 8 ounce cup measure. So, a tea cup ain't a cup and a tea spoon ain't a teaspoon! Makes the whole world questionable, doesn't it? Is reality that wishy-washy? I think I might just go back to bed for the afternoon....

>45 TempleCat: Don’t let it discourage you. As my husband always reminds me: we are all descended from archaebacteria and maybe we still have some of those traits.

>46 krazy4katz: ROTFL!

>45 TempleCat: I have some recipe books I bought in the US. A US cup, teaspoon or tablespoon is not equivalent to a UK cup, teaspoon or tablespoon. So I'm going through all my books (slowly) and pencilling in the metric equivalents.

And I use a mug for tea; one Christmas my son bought me an R2D2 mug with a top (dome) which made Artoo sounds when you lifted it. Sadly, the lid is no more so I use a silicone cover since I like to savour my tea over time and, in the tropics, it's still comforting even if it's not piping hot.

Though I do agree that tea tastes delicious poured from a pot into a thin porcelain cup when you're having high tea.

>1 krazy4katz: I am firmly on the side of mugs--for their larger size, naturally--but I do keep separate the mug I use for coffee and the one I use for tea.

Unless you're willing to scrub thoroughly between uses there's going to be a little residue in the mug and coffee mixed with tea is just yucky!

Anticipating your next question, cocoa goes in the coffee mug, cider in the tea mug.

And now I am thinking that after I sort and catalog my parents' books, I need to get Mom's fancy tea cups down from the top shelf in the kitchen cabinet...

>10 tealadytoo: I like how you think.

>37 John5918: I remember Kelvin from a physics class long ago.

A quick conversion on my cell* phone tells me that it is a brisk 48F outside right now, but a balmy-sounding 282K.

* That's "mobile" in the UK. Can't agree on that, either.

>49 Karen5Lund: coffee mixed with tea is just yucky!

Agreed. I used to work with a bloke who would make his morning cuppa by pouring boiling water through a strainer full of tea leaves into a mug which already had instant coffee powder in it. He was from Glasgow - maybe it goes well with deep fried Mars bars?

Hmm, looking for other temperature scales I find both Rømer and Newton. Probably still a few lurking in the corners.

53: There is also the Delisle scale (which resembles the original Celsius scale), but I think that's pretty much it.

Edit: Hold the press, two more - Wedgwood and Leiden.

>49 Karen5Lund: Interesting! I never thought about what mugs should be used for cocoa and cider! Is that hot cider or cold cider? I guess I always drink cold cider so it goes in a glass.

I prefer mugs that come with infuser baskets and lids, since I usually brew that way. I'll probably explore teacups someday though, when my lifestyle lends itself to a bit more decorum. If my mom chooses to downsize her enormous teacup collection, however, I will attempt to secure some patterns I like.

>54 supercell: How about Gas mark, Stufe and Thermostat while we are at it?