Infusers & strainers

Hold leaf inside the water while it steeps and take it out again cleanly, which is what makes a steep time enforceable rather than aspirational.

Leaf needs two things that a small metal ball cannot give it: room to unfurl to its full size, and water circulating through the whole bed rather than around the outside of a compacted lump. It is the same argument as a coffee basket — free volume around the bed and open area in the mesh decide whether extraction is even. The second, and more operationally important, function is removal. Tea does not stop extracting when the timer sounds; it stops when the leaf leaves the water. An infuser the barista can lift out in one movement makes the steep time a real control. A pot with no removable basket, a bag left in the cup, or leaf loose in the water makes the steep time a suggestion, and the drink continues to change all the way to the table. Mesh fineness is the third variable and it follows the leaf grade: whole leaf needs open mesh so water can move, broken and CTC grades need finer mesh or they end up in the cup.

• Choose from the LEAF first, then from the service format. Whole-leaf grades need volume and open mesh or they will not open; broken and CTC grades need fine mesh or they will pass into the cup. Buying one infuser for a menu that carries both is how a bar ends up serving cloudy green tea and weak black tea from the same equipment.
• Insist on removability, and treat anything that cannot be lifted out in one movement as a fault. This is the point of the whole item. A steep time you cannot end is not a specification, and no amount of timer discipline fixes a pot the leaf cannot leave.
• Count the wash-up before you count the unit price. An infuser per cup is a labour and a sink-space decision multiplied by every tea you sell, and it is routinely left out of the comparison because it does not appear on the invoice. On a high-volume bar this is often the argument that decides between a basket and a filter bag.
• For pot service, solve what happens at the table. The basket comes out at the guest's table, and if there is nowhere to put it, it goes back in the pot and the last cup of a three-cup pot is the worst one. An inverting lid or a small saucer is a trivial cost that protects the whole drink.
• Standardise on as few infuser types as the menu allows. Every extra type is another wash-up size, another storage slot and another chance for the wrong one to be picked in a rush — the same argument that keeps a bar to one basket size on the espresso side.
• Buy stainless over plastic where the mesh will meet near-boiling water many times a day, and check that the mesh is fixed rather than glued. A mesh that lifts from its frame traps leaf in the seam, and that seam cannot be cleaned properly once it does.
• Size the infuser to the vessel it will actually be used in, not to the biggest one you own. An infuser that does not reach the water in a tall pot brews the top third of the pot and nothing else, and the fault reads as a weak tea rather than as an equipment mismatch.
• Decide cloth versus paper on which discipline your team already keeps. Cloth socks are cheaper and greener and require washing without detergent, full drying and scheduled replacement — a routine that fails quietly. Paper costs per serving and never fails quietly. Neither answer is wrong; choosing the one that matches the team you have is the decision.