I love tea. Hot tea and iced teas are what I drink 99% of the time. When I’m home and at work, I drink from ceramic or glass mugs, neither of which are convenient to use when I need to be mobile like walking to and from meetings, etc. The MIU COLOR glass water bottle with tea infuser is an elegant solution for those times and actually any time. Let me show you.
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Package contents
MIU COLOR glass water bottle with tea infuser
Zippered cover
Tea infuser
2 cleaning wands
The 18 ounce bottle is made of high borosilicate glass which is lead free, has high heat resistant, high strength and is crystal clear. The bottle has screw on caps on both ends. These caps have an attractive satin finished stainless steel exterior with a plastic liner. From what I can tell, the plastic can not come into contact with the beverage in the bottle.
The top cap and the tea infuser both have a silicon gasket that allows a tight drip free seal. One weird thing I noticed when I removed the top cap the first time is that the silicon gasket was stuck to the glass lip. I thought it was just stuck there from being sealed too long so I pulled it off only to realize that it had been glued in that position. I have no idea why this was the case because having the gasket affixed to the area where you drink would not only be awkward, but would be very hard to clean. Removing it from the lip and putting it in the top cap where it really belongs wasn’t hard to do.
To use the bottle to make tea, you just remove the cap and infuser from the bottom of the bottle.
Then add loose tea leaves to the infuser basket. I filled the basket about two heaping teaspoons of loose tea leaves so there would be room for them to expand and steep.
Turn the bottle upside down, drop the basket in the opening, screw on the bottom cap and then turn the bottle back over to the upright position.
For obvious reasons, I advise you to add the zippered nylon sleeve before you fill the bottle with hot water. Otherwise you may burn your hand from handling the bare bottle.
A few minutes later your tea is ready to drink. The nylon sleeve helps keep the tea warm for longer than an open mug of tea which is a nice bonus.
Drinking from the bottle is very comfortable due to the smooth rolled edge. It’s also good to know that the bottle is narrow enough to fit in most vehicle cup holders. There is one gotcha with the MIU COLOR and that’s the fact that it takes two hands to remove the top cap so you can take a sip. That means you’ll have problems drinking from the bottle while driving unless you remove the lid.
I am usually able to get two bottles from two teaspoons of loose leaves which ends up being a little more than four cups of tea.
The only other thing to keep in mind with this water bottle plus tea infuser is that it takes more effort to clean it than just throwing some teabags in a bottle. There are four separate parts to wash: both caps, the tea infuser basket and the bottle itself. It’s nice that they include a sponge wand for cleaning, but that won’t help much with getting the tea leaves out of the basket. I usually just dump them into the trash can and then wash the remaining leaves down the drain. I just rinse everything and reassemble. Once a week I put everything in the dishwasher for a better cleaning.
The MIU COLOR glass water bottle with tea infuser is one of the nicest water bottles I’ve used because it’s not to big, not too small, is easy to clean and I can brew tea in it. I think it is a great accessory for tea lovers on the go.
<h3>Updates 04/02/15</h3>
It’s only been a month since I posted my review of this bottle / tea infuser, but I’m still using it, which is a good sign. I use it at my day job and have gotten into a routine of removing the basket at the end of the day and setting it my cabinet along with the bottom cap face up. The next morning the leaves have dried enough that I can just dump them in the trash. This works better than trying to get them out when they are wet. I then rinse all the parts with water, add new tea and reassemble. I had been leaving the tea in the bottle and drinking from it, but have since been pouring it into a large mug after it has steeped. This keeps the tea from getting too strong which is one of the comments made below.
Source: The sample for this review was provided by MIU COLOR. Please visit their site for more info or Amazon to order.
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What about tea over infusion ?
Wouldn’t be simplier to have the infuser on the top in order to remove tea leaves before drinking.
@Fred the infuser is upside down over the bottom cap. You don’t have to worry about tea leaves floating in the water or anything like that.
I mean over steeping that may lead to bitter-taste infusion.
You could turn the bottle upside down and remove the infuser, but if you do that you’ll have to also remove the gasket from the infuser and put it in the cap. The alternative is to drink the tea quick enough so it doesn’t get bitter 🙂
That’s why I said this bottle was poorly designed. The infuser should be on the top, you let the bottle upside down to infuse, then return it when done.
Yes, over-steeping is a problem that is not dealt with gracefully in these tea infuser. I am a tea meister so I pay attention to this sort of thing. Pretty much any kind of real tea (herbal teas are not technically tea where I came from) requires a specific amount of steeping time, and over or under steeping is as bad as over or under cooked pasta. Typically I steep my tea for 3-5 minutes depending of the kind of tea. For a travel mug, I would use a tea basket that has enough space to allow the tea leaves to expand and float some what freely, then remove the basket and put the lid on.
The only tea maker that really do a good job is one made by Breville which automatically raise the tea basket after a set amount of time to avoid overstepping. But it’s an electric tea pot and while I love Breville product, I think it’s excessive.
I think this type of tea mug with a built in infuser is more suitable for herbal tea. For real tea, I would have to wait 3-5 minutes for the tea to be ready, then drink the whole thing in about 3 minutes so that I can avoid over-steeping. That would be too stressful, then I would need to make another cup of tea to release that stress, and the cycle continue.
The very simple way I have found to deal with the potential over-steeping problem is by turning the bottle upside down and removing the filter after i have had my first cup of tea. You can completely remove the filter or [clean it and] leave it in.
Good tip!
The rubber ring may be stick to the bottleneck after the bottle was made. Please take out the ring if it is fit to the bottleneck, and then put it in the cap. This ring is made of food-grade silicone. Please feel free to use.
This tea infuser is really cool! with its handy bottle and unique style.
Do you happen to know if the tea infuser is made of stainless steel or is it aluminium?
@val It’s stainless steel as far as I know.
Quite a decent design. I got one and love it.
I bought a lot of gadgets just for drinking tea. Ans this one is definitely one of my favorite.
The cover was good, but I just hope that Miu Color can make more deigns of the cover. Always wanted to buy some cuter covers. Ha! 🙂