A tea cup set is one of the common homeware accessories found in the kitchen. Many people are obsessed with buying tea cup sets of different designs and feel it’s a good gesture to serve tea in unique tea cups. Let’s have a look at the various kinds of tea cups sets that are commonly available in the market.
Different types of tea cup set
Ceramic tea cup sets
Ceramic tea cups are prevalently available in the local markets. A Ceramic tea cup is made up of baked clay in pottery kilns. Ceramic gives an aesthetic finish to the cups. Moreover, it is scientifically proven that drinking brewed tea in a ceramic cup is good for health. The reason behind this is ceramic cups have the ability to retain heat for a longer period because it is resistant to a high range of temperature and is porous. Another characteristic of ceramic cups is it doesn’t alter the tea taste.
Bone china or porcelain tea cup sets
Most of the British tea cups were made of bone china. It is a non-porous material and has a special vitrified glaze. This vitrified glaze makes bone china non-reactive to hot drinks. These bone china or porcelain cups have an interesting feature that presents stains of tannin inside the cup. Tannin is present in tea leaves. The reason behind this is the extraordinary smoothness of porcelain.
Glass
The ideal cup for serving tea is a glass cup. This is the most common tea cup set found in every kitchen. Though there are some specifications in the case of using glass cups like heat retention depends on the thickness of the particular glass cup. Double-walled glass cups, borosilicate glass, and vitrified glass are mostly used for homeware purposes because they are comparatively less fragile. Another feature of glass cups is the inner wall retains the heat of brewed tea so the outer wall is not affected.
Stainless steel
stainless steel cups fall in the category of durable cups. But at times, scratched steel cups lead to nickel and iron leaching. There is another common issue with steel cups, these cups get heated up in no time. this makes it tough to hold. The reason is steel is a good conductor of heat thus the surface gets got as soon as it comes in contact with a hot drink.
Plastic
Plastic cups are recommended to be used for drinking brewed tea. There are many reasons why plastic cups should be avoided. Plastic cups leach out toxic chemicals when they come in contact with any hot drink. It also leads to toxic waste accumulation as plastic is not recyclable. Plastic is not an environment-friendly material.
Conclusion
There are different types of tea cup set available in the market. All types of materials are good for serving tea apart from plastic. While shopping for tea cup sets, a few things should be kept in mind such as the material of the cup should be porous, the cup surface should be moderate to allow steady cooling, the lip of the cup should be thin to ensure that the drink easily rolls inside the mouth and most importantly the cup material should be safe chemically.
