For some, home tea brewers involve a cup of water heated in the microwave and a tea bag. However, for true tea lovers making a quality cup of tea is more serious than making a cup of fancy cappuccino or latte and may take as much equipment and time. Bringing out the pure taste of the tea can be accomplished in many home tea brewers available on the market without spending every dime you own.

From automatic home tea brewers for hot tea, iced tea and from one cup to gallon-size containers, making tea has become an art of its own. Of course, the tea bag was invented to keep loose tea leaves from permeating the beverage and replaced the tea holder most often used to brew tea. This small, metal, teardrop-shaped device would hold enough dried tea leaves to typically brew two cups of hot tea, and then was easily cleaned for the next session.

However, the filtered tea bag replaced this small accessory and people are beginning to revert to the fresher flavor claimed to be available by using fresh tea leaves. Many home tea brewers use loose tea leaves and similar to ground coffee makers, use a filtering system to keep the leaves out of the water.

Ice Tea Similarly Made As Hot Tea

There are some home tea brewers that use the same process of a coffee maker, passing hot water through the tea leaves at a predetermined temperature with the amount of leaves in the filter determining the strength of the tea, and pumping the beverage into a storage pitcher, typically one-gallon size. The tea can be poured and consumed hot or placed in the refrigerator with optional ice cubes to be consumed cold.

There are many varieties and flavors of tea available in both loose and bagged style, to use in individual brewers. The home tea brewers can brew from one to 12-cups at a time in about the same amount of time as it takes to make coffee or to heat water in a microwave. Some tea aficionados insist tea leaves must be boiled with the water to extract all available flavors, even if using bags, instead of simply allowing them to steep in hot water, place them in the water as it is heated.

Many real tea drinkers describe needing adequate time for the tea flavor to completely take over the water, and will use nothing but fresh tea leaves and home tea brewers, without a bag in order to brew what they consider the perfect cup of tea.