Teapots & Teazer Tea Tumbler

Here are a few more interesting bits about tea - actually they're mostly about teaware and accessories - that I've run across lately. As noted in my last entry, TGS is on something like a brief hiatus while I wrap up a tea-related project.

Here's some information about teapot design from the Appalachian Center for Craft at Tennessee Technological University. It appears that they give a course in teapot design, but I'm not completely sure about that.

Speaking of teapots, here's an article from the International Herald Tribune called The Tale of a Teapot and Its Creator.

If you've ever struggled with the problem of how to have a decent cup of tea while traveling, the Teazer Tea Tumbler might be worth investigating. Here's a review of this nifty little gadget.

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Product Review - Zarafina Tea Maker Suite

(Update II)
Here's some additional perspective on the Zarafina, courtesy of Gongfu Girl.

If you've ever considered buying a Sunbeam Tea Drop Tea Maker, you might want to check out this piece, recently posted at one of the Wired blogs. Not that "Useless Piece of Garbage" is necessarily a bad thing.

(Update I)
Since reviewing Zarafina's Tea Maker Suite nearly a month ago it's become my tea brewing apparatus of choice. For some insight on how it stacks up against Adagio's TriniTEA (which I haven't tried yet), check out this review at the Tea on Tap site.

(Original Post)
Product Review
Tea Maker Suite
Zarafina

It would seem that they're onto something, these Zarafina people.

I tried to approach this review with an open mind, but I couldn't help being just a bit skeptical about the Tea Maker Suite. After all, the making of a truly good cup of tea can be a rather intricate process, one that can hardly be trusted to a mere piece of machinery, regardless of how many bells and whistles it's outfitted with.

Or can it? Actually, the Zarafina gang seems to have pulled off this rather tricky feat. I've now used the contraption to make a number of varieties of tea. Each time I raised the cup to my lips, expecting to be disappointed, and each time I was pleasantly surprised. I'm actually thinking about giving up my old way of making tea - cheap stovetop kettle and infuser basket - for the Tea Maker Suite.

Which is kind of convenient, now that you mention it. Set a few controls, add water and tea and flick a switch. No worries about over or understeeping the leaves, nor will I ever have to concern myself again with a forgotten tea kettle wreaking havoc on the kitchen (yes, it's happened).

The Tea Maker Suite has a sleek and pleasing appearance and was apparently designed by someone who "speaks" tea. It has three controls - one for loose and (if you must) bagged tea, a strength setting and a switch for choosing between white, green, oolong and black tea and tisanes.

Operation is fairly simple, with one or two cups of water going into a steeping chamber, which also holds a floating infuser basket that actually contains the leaves or bag. Snap the steeping chamber into the base of the unit, flick a switch and go about your business. A few minutes later the tea automatically dispenses into a ceramic pot (included).

Most important of all, as I've mentioned, is that the tea that results from this process is quite good - better, on the whole, than many of my haphazard attempts using the kettle/infuser method. Cleanup is relatively quick and painless too, as is steeping your leaves multiple times.

At $149.99 the Tea Maker Suite probably won't appeal to casual tea drinkers, but if you're serious about tea it might be worth your while.

For more information, including a demo video, check out the Zarafina Web site.

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Tea Timer & Cuppa

Tired of wandering off and leaving your tea to overbrew? Check out this nifty thingy from Adagio Teas. It's called the Tea Timer and it's a small computer program you can download from their site for free.

The program is simple enough. Click on the tea you're brewing and the timer is preset and ready to go. Click start when you actually begin steeping the tea. You can also access info on brewing temperatures and a description of each tea. The program comes preloaded with all of Adagio's teas and you can also customize your own.

Don't despair, Mac users. Nathanatos Software has a similar application available at their Web site. It's called the Cuppa. Check it out here.

Toaster Teapot, Electric Kettles & Drunk On Tea

If you're looking for teapots varying shapes and sizes, you'd do well to have a look at The Teapottery. Where they sell a gadget, among others, known as a Toaster Teapot. I've seen this one mentioned in a few places now and I still haven't figured out whether it's actually got a toaster function built in. Sounds a bit unsettling.

If you're in the market for an electric tea kettle, see what CHOW had to say about a few, including models from Zojirushi, Chef’s Choice, and Adagio.

While I can vouch for the fact that one can get really, really keyed up on tea, whether or not on can get drunk on it is probably a matter for debate. Imen, at Tea Obsession, says it's possible. Read more about it here.

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Gadget - Tea Bag Timer

(update)
Boing Boing and several other sites recently wrote about a gadget called a Penguin Teaboy. With that in mind I thought I'd go back and dust off this post from the TGS archives.

(original post)
You might have noticed that there are quite a few Internet sites out there that feature goofy and not altogether practical gadgets. I'm not sure why such sites are so popular, but somewhere there's probably a graduate student busy hammering out a dense, unreadable thesis on the topic.

A little while back several of the gadget sites featured a gizmo that caught my eye. The Tea Bag Timer is a wind-up powered timer that will automatically lift your tea bag out of the cup after whatever period of time you specify. If you purchase said gizmo from the Lazybone shopping site it's gonna set you back about $26, and that's before figuring in the shipping.

Dare I even say that this seems a bit steep? Not to mention the fact that it only works with tea bags.

For a nifty sort of gadget that works in a similar fashion with loose tea, refer to our earlier post on the Tea Maestro.

There's also Adagio Tea's triniTEA, a tea-making gadget of the highest order.

Elsewhere at the Lazybone site you'll find Monkey Picked Tea and Weasel Coffee. The latter is said to be "made from coffee beans that are regurgitated by weasels." And they say that like it's a good thing.

Link

Image: Lazybone

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Tea Makers

I recently got my hands on a Zarafina Tea Maker Suite (pictured) and hope to be sharing my thoughts in a review some time this week.

In the meantime, here are a few items that have to do with tea makers.

The Seattle Times recently ran a brief review of the Mr. Coffee 3-Quart Iced Tea Maker. They were not completely overwhelmed. Find out why here.

The offbeat gadget known as the Teasmade has apparently never made any kind of inroads on this side of the Atlantic, but it's said to be making a comeback in the UK. Boing Boing, who refer to it as a "frankenkettle," have a picture and some brief comments here. Here's an appreciation, of sorts, from the Mirror.

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Tefal Quick Cup & Eco Kettle

All tea drinkers must surely have lingered around the stove at some point, drumming their fingers and waiting for the water to boil. It just one of those things we have to deal with. Or do we?

According to the makers of the Tefal Quick Cup Kettle, your tea water can be ready in as little as three seconds. No, that's not a typo. That's three seconds - not minutes.

If quick isn't enough of a selling point for you, then keep in mind that the Quick Cup also filters your water and may save up to 65% in energy costs over a standard kettle. For more info, read this article in the Daily Mail or check out the Quick Cup Web site.

If eco-friendly kettles are up your alley, be sure to keep the Eco Kettle in mind. Like the Quick Cup, it's also made in the U.K. To see what Business Week had to say about the Eco Kettle, look here. The manufacturer's Web site is here.

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New & Interesting Tea Products

Here's an assortment of interesting tea-related junk I ran across over the course of the past few months.

Save Your World is the first personal care products company in the United States to launch a 100% natural personal care product line infused with a unique blend of organic Yerba Maté and organic Aloe Vera under the brands Save Your Skin and Save Your Hair.

While we're on the subject of yerba mate products that you wouldn't necessarily want to drink, have a look at Kiehl's mate-based skin care products, including lotion, toner and cleanser.

Eva Solo's Teashirt (pictured) is a tea maker that gets big points for looking spiffy, though I can't personally vouch for how it works.

Nor have I tried Tzu-Thé's T-Buddy. It looks like it might be a useful solution to the problem of drinking good tea on the go, although I'm not real keen on the notion of drinking tea from a plastic container.

ForLife (FORLIFE? For Life?) also offers some eye-catching teaware as part of their Cafe Style line.

Then there's Liquid Planet, which was referred to us by a TGS reader. They carry tea, teaware, and all manner of other nifty beverage-related stuff.

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All About Tea Robots

TGS has featured several pieces about tea and robots thus far. I thought I might as well gather them all in one place. This is it.

Some of the earliest tea robots - which might not a totally accurate term, in this case - were the Japanese Karakuri. The Wikipedia entry for Karakuri describes them as "mechanized puppets or automata from Japan from the 18th century to 19th century."

From Karakuri.info, here's a more in-depth description of the Chahakobi Ningyo, or tea-serving doll, complete with photos and a schematic, of sorts.

From Anthrobot, here's a larger version of the schematic (or you can click the one at the previously mentioned page for a larger version). Which will be even more meaningful for those of you who can read Japanese.

At The Karakuri Corner, you can actually buy your own tea-serving doll. Look here, here and here for more details.

Or check out this Tea Server Robot Kit, from the Jameco Robot Store. They also sell an assembled version.

Here's a link with more information about Karakuri and an account of a visit to a Karakuri craftsman.

Here's an account of a Chinese farmer who's been forced to sell of some of his homemade robots, including at least one that makes or serves tea. Read it here or here.

From CNN, here's a report about a clever humanoid robot developed at the University of Tokyo that can serve tea, among other things. Do you have enough faith in technology to feel comfortable with one of these critters running around the place, brandishing a container of boiling hot water? Not sure if I do.

To the best of my knowledge, there's no such thing as a tea-tasting robot. However, the New Scientist has a report here on one that can "taste" wine. We have the technology...

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Teatool Tea Bag Squeezer

Some of us have opinions about loose tea vs. tea bags, but this piece isn't going to get into any of that. The fact is that there are plenty of people out there who use tea bags. Over the course of this winter I've been hitting the ginger tea - in tea bags - pretty hard myself.

Most tea bag users probably utilize some manner of squeeze type gadget so they don't have to slop around with a soaking wet tea bag after steeping. I haven't had a chance to try a Teatool, but from what I can see at their Web site, it looks pretty nifty.

See for yourself, right here.

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Uzbekistan, Vietnam & Britney Spears

You might be wondering what Uzbekistan, Vietnam, and Britney Spears have in common. Of course, since this is Tea Guy Speaks, it's probably not too hard to figure out.

Here's an interesting article about tea-drinking and tea culture in Uzbekistan. It's not very long, but it's worth a look.

For some thoughts on the Vietnamese tea-serving art and Mr. Truong Xuan, one of the practitioners of that art, check out this article from VietNamNet. It seems that a little something might have been lost in the translation to English, but it's also worth a look.

Then there's Britney Spears. Perhaps you've heard of her. In an excerpt from an interview with the Today Show's Matt Lauer, Ms. Spears suddenly throws out the following observation - "I make good tea okay?"

Well, okay. That's all we needed to hear.

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Pu-erh Competition, Can Cleaner & More

Here are a few more of those miscellaneous type items.

Want to win some Pu-erh tea? PuerhCha.com is giving away a forty gram sample and a twenty gram sample. All you have to do is tell them how you came to be a fan of Pu-erh - and do it better than any of the other entrants, of course. More info here.

Not long after writing about green tea energy drinks I ran across another one. From the maker's of Who's Your Daddy energy drink, comes a green tea version, as well as several other flavors. Their Web site is located here.

If you're the kind of person who can't drink an energy drink or other canned beverage without worrying about bacteria and whatnot, you're in luck. Groovy Clean has come up with a little gadget to clean the top of those nasty old cans. More info and a video here.

Image: Groovy Clean LLC

tea, green tea, food, food and drink, Pu-erh, energy drink

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Expensive Teaware & Goofy Gimmicks

I've never taken part in a Japanese tea ceremony and it's not a subject I'm too well-versed in. So I guess I can be excused for not knowing what a chawan is.

A chawan, as a miniscule amount of research revealed, is a tea bowl. I bring this up because not long ago I ran across these tea bowls designed by Ogawa Machiko. They're available at the Trocadero Web site, but at about 1,800 dollars each they're not exactly what I'd call an impulse buy.

For a little more about chawan, check out this Wikipedia article on the Japanese tea ceremony.

From the Contra Costa Times, by way of Topix, here's an article on Kathleen Bailey, a California teapot collector.

On a somewhat more whimsical note, here's a brief piece from Gizmodo on the Dunk Mug, the perfect gizmo for people who like to do that dunking cookies in liquid kind of thing.

Last, but not least, is the Te'O Tea Strainer, a gadget that's clever and kind of cutesy, but also rather pricey and not terribly practical - not that you asked me.

tea, food, food and drink, gadgets, chawan, tea ceremony, teapot

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Teapot Purses & Filter Spoons

Here's a fashion accessory that's gives the words "tea bag" a whole new meaning. The aptly named Teapot Bag is available from the Sarut Group in black and silver and it'll only set you back 25 smackers.

Also from the Sarut Group, as mentioned in the Time article covered in our last post, are these clever filter/spoons. I haven't had a chance to try one out yet, but here's the lowdown from the Web site, "These soft, pliable teaspoons function as a spoon and a filter. Fill the spoon's compartment with tea, honey or sugar, stir and enjoy!"

Not the first gadget to attempt something along these lines, but this one seems to take a slightly different approach than the others.

Image: Sarut Group

tea, food, food and drink, teapot, purse, gadgets

Caffeine Reducing Gadget

I'll bet you didn't know the Japanese had a governmental entity called the National Institute of Vegetable and Tea Science. I sure didn't. Said department is described as a research entity of the National Agriculture and Food Research Organization. I'm telling you this for a reason, by the way, and not just in the unlikely event that it comes up in Trivial Pursuit one day.

Apparently the National Institute of Vegetable and Tea Science and a Shizuoka-based machinery manufacturer called Terada Production have developed something called an LCT160001. This is a device for lowering the caffeine content of green tea. It does so by washing tea leaves in hot water to reduce caffeine by more than 60% and supposedly does not reduce the amount of catechin and amino acids in the tea.

Source: Japan Corporate News Network

tea, food, food and drink, caffeine, green tea

Boston Tea Tour & Tea Gadgets

Talk about your coincidences. Boston's two big newspapers ran articles on tea on the very same day. That would be yesterday, if you're scoring at home.

In the Boston Globe we discover that tea is becoming the "hottest drink in town" and our intrepid reporter takes us on a tour of a few of the city's tea spots and merchants. Among those covered are Licorice & Sloe, White Heron Tea, Portsmouth Tea Company, Special Teas, Wenham Tea House and Signature Estates Teas. Read the full article here.

Over at the Boston Herald they ran a brief piece on tea gadgets, some of which I've mentioned in these very same pages. Among them - Sunbeam’s Tea Drop Hot Tea Maker, Adagio's triniTEA and the Cuisinart Traditional Cordless Electric Kettle. It's a quickie, but you can read it here.

Tea also made it into at least one other newspaper's Sunday section yesterday. The Express-Times, of Easton, Pennsylvania, also ran a tea article, reporting on the popularity of tea and taking it's readers to a few local tea spots. Read it here.

The paper also reprints Celestial Seasonings' Tips for Brewing the Best Cup of Hot Tea here.

tea, food, food and drink, Boston, gadgets

Gadgets - triniTEA

One of yesterday's entries was about Tea Spot's Tea Maestro, a gizmo that actually removes your tea leaves from the pot when they're finished steeping. I declared it to be a nifty gadget, but when it comes to clever tea gadgets that do most of the work for you, I'd be remiss if I didn't mention Adagio's triniTEA.

This one doesn't come cheap and I haven't had a chance to try it yet, but it's apparently quite a piece of work. You can get all the info on it at Adagio's site here and you can even watch a little video.

One thing you can't do, at least not at the moment, is buy one, as demand has apparently outstripped supply. But if you really need one you can sign up to be notified when they're back in stock. Adagio speculates that this will happen in early summer.

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Gadgets - Tea Maestro

There's certainly no shortage of tea gadgets nowadays, nor in the old days, for that matter, as I mentioned here recently. But here's one you've just gotta love - assuming that it works as promised. I haven't had a chance to test drive it yet.

Said gadget is called the Tea Maestro and it's marketed by a company called The Tea Spot. Tea Maestro looks to be a small teapot with an infuser for brewing loose tea. According to Tea Spot's Web site you simply brew a pot of loose tea in the normal fashion. But when you pour the water in you adjust a timer to the appropriate setting for the tea you're using. When the timer goes off the infuser lifts the leaves from the water.

Now that's progress, friends. I don't know about you, but I could have prevented numerous crappy cups of tea with a nifty gizmo like this. And while it doesn't quite go through enough machinations to qualify it as a proper Rube Goldberg device, I think old Rube would certainly have approved of it in principle.

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Mr. Smithers, Your Tea Kettle On Line One

Hands up. Who remembers the Internet park bench Microsoft dreamed up a few years back? Okay, put 'em down.

Hands up. Who remembers the Internet toilet - the iLoo - Microsoft dreamed up a few years back?

It may come as a surprise to find that Microsoft is not involved with a recent effort to devise a tea kettle that can be activated with a cell phone. Not to be confused, of course, with the I-Pot (which would have been a good name for the Internet toilet, by the way), a kettle with Internet capability that's used to help monitor elderly Japanese.

The gadget, the ReadyWhenUR, is a joint venture from tea makers PG Tips and cell phone company Orange. It's expected to go on sale in January.

The Nifty Gadget Post

I ran across two products recently that sort of work along the same lines. I haven't had the opportunity to try either one yet.

The Health Tea Wand is made by Wisdom Wands, Inc. and is allegedly "the most remarkable tea accessory ever invented." That's laying it on a bit thick, but like I say I haven't had a chance to try it yet. Maybe it really is.

Anyway, if you're familiar with the bombilla, an ornamental straw with filter that's used to drink loose yerba mate, then you've got an idea what the Health Tea Wand is all about. It's a clear glass straw with fine holes at one end. Brew your loose tea in a glass, stick the straw - err, wand - in and drink. The only issue that's not clear to me is how you keep from oversteeping your tea or keeping the leaves from blocking the filter portion.

The other product is the Ticolino Tea Infuser, from Serengeti Tea Company. This one looks a little bit like a straw, but is actually a single serving packet of tea that you unwrap, pop in your glass, steep and remove. Looks like an okay product too. The only potential issue with this one is that it doesn't seem like the leaves have much room to breathe and get the maximum contact with the water.

Anyway, the TTI is available in three tea and three herbal varieties, though with a minimum order of $40 I'm thinking that it's geared more toward the retail and food service trade.