ingenuiTea

While intrepidly exploring the bowels of USENET on Saturday, August

Problem? No. Experienced it? Yes.

The infuser in the new model is easily removable for cleaning. The most common way to get leaves out of such a unit is to shake it over the trash can. This often causes the infuser to slip.

I just always make sure to get it back in place before steeping, knowing that it has a tendency to come loose.

That said, the removable infuser makes it much easier to clean than the earlier model, which I also have.

That shouldn't happen. The infuser screen keeps the leaves away from the valve. If you've got leaves around the rubber ball serving as a valve, you've got an infuser issue.

I do occasionally experience a valve that doesn't completely close. However, this isn't due to tea leaves blocking the valve. It's from not making sure the valve is seated before pouring water.

The "lifter" for the valve can sit crooked in the bottom of the device, meaning that the valve doesn't close and water goes straight through.

We only have one infuser, and it cleans out pretty well with baking soda and a little water (and elbow, or finger, grease).

If you're worried about flavoring your tea, I suggest you look into getting separate ingenuiTEAs. I periodically have to scrub the patina of black tea off the inside of our units (again, baking soda, water, finger) as we tend to the darker side of teas.

I would think that this would flavor your tea as much as the infuser, though I could be wrong.

I've never regretted our purchases, even when I've made messes with them. User inattention is my biggest challenge.

It's size. The advantage to a larger model is that you can always use less water.

It just feels very odd to me to pour boiling water into plastic device. The thing is that very nice looking (better looking imo) glass pots are available for the same price, from Jenaer, Bodum, etc. For multi-brews you can brew the leaves in full volume of the pot and pour in two cups, (if you don't have a second pot, which works even better), and re-brew in the old pot. There are ceramic pots that have straining holes on the inside of pot before the spout, or tea can be poured through strainer, losing a few leaves. If you're into tea you'll eventually end up with 2+ pots, whether you want to or not ;-).

If you don't mind plastic it looks very sweet though.

But I think they miss the point that when making tea, the trickier part is to boil water to the right temp and to infuse it for the right time, so the part of the process that they make more convenient is already perfectly convenient, and this pot doesn't address the tricky parts.

The best thing about this pot is that you don't need two pots or 2 cups for small spaces like an office, dorm, ... .

I would be more likely to empty the whole thing into the sink including the infuser, then rinse the infuser and the leaves into the disposal.

That's what I thought. I bet the infuser wasn't seated properly or came loose.

I would think that that could be detected by noticing whether the unit continues to dispense liquid after being removed from the cup. I would probably set it on the counter for a few minutes before cleaning. If there a puddle, I need to check the valve.

Yep, that's probably the right way to go. The infuser is probably less of a factor than the entire pot.

Do you know if the infusers are the same? The Adagio website does not show an infuser on the 32 oz model page, but when I selected the replacement infuser from the 16 oz page, it specifically said that it was for the 16 oz unit.

The Adagio website is not well designed. It has a lot of irregularities and incomplete information.

There are several demo videos on YouTube. Here's the best one:

Glass does "sound" safer. I don't know if it really is.

I only found a few.

Bodum has several models:

I am curious what advantages this offers. It seems much more complicated than a removeable infuser and less convenient as well.

They all have stainless steel infusers and claim to have very small holes so that no tea will escape into the cup.

Other glass teapots are by Jenaer:

and Miko

Adagio makes a glass teapot that looks like the best alternative to the ingenuiTea:

Unless I don't understand what you are saying, you can do this with the ingenuiTea as well, no?

You got me thinking. It may be that a regular teapot with a removeable infuser may actually be more versatile. I sometimes become attreacted to gadgets just because they are gadgets. The ingenuiTea is a clever design and I may have given it too many point for cleverness.

I plan to solve that problem with an electric tea kettle -- either the Digital Kettle Pro

Probably the Digital Kettle Pro because of the digital readout and its ability to hold a temperature.

But that is also true of the glass teapots, no?

For both, you need (a) a way to heat the water (stovetop kettle, electric kettle, microwave), (b) a place to brew the tea (ingenuiTea, glass teapot, etc.), and (c) something to put the tea (cup or thermos).

With a removable infuser, you need some place to put it after you take it out. Also with blacks and pu-erhs, infuser can be pretty hot, and it will drip so you have to be careful. Also you can't rebrew the same leaves unless you put the infuser in another matching pot and cover it, otherwise leaves will quickly get oxidized by air. On the other hand, with press you just press it down and that's it, and you can re-brew after a while, leaves there will be warm and away from oxygen. The problem with presses is that they do keep infusing a bit over time so you want to drink the tea fairly quickly; the leaves are not

Also, it seems that most presses don't use full volume of pot to infuse leaves, at least in most Bodum pots. Bodum also often makes them out of stainless steel which may impart metallic taste (or may not, I'm not sure.. I had one metal infuser basket that did impart taste but it wasn't well-made like Bodum ones).

I've never used a press pot that fills whole volume (except for coffee), so I don't know how good it is for tea and how long you can keep tea there without over-infusing.

Much bigger problem with them is that not full volume of pot is used to infuse tea. That's pretty important. I wouldn't brew a complex tea like that, for simpler teas it's not a big deal. Holes in these infusers are indeed very small.

They're fine except for the smallest cut teas. In fact leaving a bit of leaves in the pot after you take infuser out is not a bad idea, if the tea itself is not cut and broken, without dust, it adds body to the tea, so there are pros and cons here.

Generally I'd gladly use glass infusers if they only made them full size of the pot, like in a mono filio pots (which are too expensive and use steel mesh infusers anyway).

Small infuser is a deal breaker for me.

But you can still buy any of these pots and use it without the infuser, but one bodum pot I have which came with steel press infuser and steel lid could not be used without the infuser because lid would not go on without it. However if a pot is not a press type, the lid has to fit without infuser because you can't leave infuser in, so those are always good.

It looks exactly like jenaer pot I have, I doubt they make them, they probably licenced design and had some chinese company make a copy. Check upton and specialteas, they might have them cheaper. Might be better to get original Jenaer, their quality is very nice. Bodums are very good, too, though.

My point was that you can have same convenience without plastic parts.

I really don't see it as clever, it'd be clever if it boiled and infused tea with timer and temp settings, the only thing it does is filters tea which is exactly as easy to do with an infuser on a handle or with a pot that has infuser mesh at the base of spout, or with most good whole leaf teas you can pour a little slower and leaves will be left in the pot.

This gadget is a solution looking for a problem. At work, in a small office, maybe, but otherwise I don't see the point at all.

Not if you use it without infuser, as I do. I basically settled on using 2 pots, one ceramic to brew tea in, and a bodum glass pot to filter to and keep hot and then pour to cups as needed. The ceramic pot has strainer holes at the base of spout. When cleaning it, I just pour water in and then pour it out through a strainer with a handle.

The only trouble is that I need two pots, as I make more than a single cup of tea. For newbies who don't want to get two pots at once (as I wouldn't myself), I would recommend to have one pot and pour tea out into 2 large mugs.

Just my opinion, YMMV!

By the way, aerating water by shaking first is very important, too. I recently forgot to aerate it for one pot of one of the best teas I know - silver needles from Hou De tea shop, and the taste became flat and lifeless, completely different. I was shocked that it made so much difference. And that's on one of the most reliable, excellent teas that always comes out perfect even if temp is off or brewing time is off!! This tea is very tolerant of mistakes..

While intrepidly exploring the bowels of USENET on Saturday, August

Here's another one, just for information's sake.

I've only seen them at a tea shop in Minneapolis, and I used to use one regularly that I got from that shop. But it's 2-part construction made it ill-suited to the workplace.

I prefer the ingenuiTEA. And I find that it works well for multiple steeps.

Hell < Square Peg, You have stated that you are new to teas, and when I was really new and finding out all the stuff you will learn I really wanted to buy lots of tools. And pots, and strainers and yixing, and bone china and lovely gaiwans of many sizes and all, tea bags, tea socks, tea sets cups with strainers, glass teapots with strainers Jenaer or from the asian market or the world market. Every place has their thing, and so does each and every person. I cannot tell you how much money I have spent on utensils but know now I SHOULD have saved most of it just for nice tea. In the end.. this am I got up, went to the cabinet, chose an old coffee mug that I have hundreds of, put a mesh strainer(poly) in the cup and poured hot water in my tea, took out the strainer and put it in another cup, drank my tea and then poured new hot water into the

Interesting. That one did not turn up on any Google searches.

Yep, the ingenuiTea does seem like it would work better.

Thanks for the comments. I agree that it is way too easy to get carried away with gadgets and tools. This is coming from a recovering DIYer (do it yourselfer). For years, I could never park my car in the garage. ;-)

I started my tea adventure with a simple Chatsford 2-cup teapot with a removeable infuser. I'd heat water in the microwave or on the stove. I did a little experimenting without the infuser and then pouring the tea through a strainer.

The biggest problem was measuring the tea accurately. I decided to abandon volume (teaspoons) and go by weight because the leaf density varies so much. I had a baker's scale, but it only went to 1 g, so I bought a little tea scale that will weigh to 0.1 g. This helped a lot.

Next, I found that I preferred to sip it slowly while working at my desk. This caused a problem of keeping it at the right temperature. The tea would be too hot at first but then too cool after a few minutes. I bought one of those coffee warmers, which worked OK.

I then discovered that one cup was not enough. This exacerbated the problem of keeping it hot. My solution was a thermos bottle. I bought a 500 ml glass Thermos. The Chatsford pot was now too small, so I started brewing the tea in a 4-cup pyrex measuring cup. This worked fairly well.

The next problem was water temperature. I started drinking more greens and I had trouble getting the temperature right. I didn't think that just waiting awhile after boiling was accurate enough, so I bought a little candy thermometer. But it was still difficult getting it right, especially in the microwave. I just ordered the Digital Kettle Pro from Tea Treasures. This is the unit purchased by Natarajan and reviewed on 8/18. The alternative was the utiliTea kettle from Adagio. I chose the DKP because (a) it is digital, (b) it will hold a temperature, and (c) the good review by Natarajan.

My plan is to play with this new toy for awhile and then invest in a larger teapot. I am looking at the ingenuiTea or one of the glass teapots such as the one from Adagio. Then I need a larger thermos. Thermos makes a 34 oz stainless model that should be just right. Then I can make up to 4 cuos of tea in the morning and be good for most of the day.

So, that's about it for the gadgets. If I get a lot of free time on my hands, I may get into clay pots and the like, but I think I will be happy with this setup for awhile.