Teapot design advice

Hi Joey,

Is this just a concept at this point, or is it already in production?

I can just see this pot dripping all over the place. The spout will drip if it's shaped like that. At least, every single pot/cup that has this kind of round spout will drip and won't pour/finish cleanly. I know, it looks more unified with the spout being round like it is, but I'd consider changing that.

The other issue.... is that it just sounds a little too complicated using this pot to make tea. The whole string and ball thing doesn't sound very intuitive, and I can envision myself trying my hardest to put the round cylinder into the pot -- with leaves AND hot water inside! -- having to use a towel to grab the cylinder (because it dissipates heat, it must be hot to handle) and thus having a slightly less than ideal grip on it, holding it upright with one hand, and holding the handle of the pot in the other -- also upright (unless the water won't spill with the cylinder sideways without the handle -- how?). Trying to fit the cylinder into the handle, then, while it's not watertight yet (because I haven't adjusted the string-and-ball) then adjusting the ball while still holding the whole thing upright.... you get the point. That, I'm afraid, cannot be fixed without changing the design entirely.

Unless there's an opening on the top side of the cylinder that I am not seeing in the pictures that will allow you to put leaves AND hot water into the tube comfortable without doing all that, but that would mean it's not going to be watertight and thus cannot be filled to anything more than halfway, and presents all sorts of other complications. Of course, I'd imagine you can pour hot water in from the spout... but.....

Just my non ID background two cents.

MarshalN

I'm all for innovation, and good design, but I think this one kind of falls flat. Anyone that into greens/whites (myself included) will have conquered the brewing game early on. A novice may have a cup of green/white tea from a teabag, but I just don't see a novice even getting their hands on some loose green/white tea without some idea how to brew it.

I'm also not sure of your level of understanding with white and green tea, but the comment you have made about the ends being stoneware like Yixing would be a *negative* thing. Marring the delicate nature of these teas with a previously brewed different tea is very easy with these teas. Yixing is really not to even be used for white or greens, and that is even using only one tea for the life of the teapot.

I like the design, but not the functionality. Sorry, back to the drawing board. If you are a designer and by chance not familiar with him, check out Art Lebedev. Amazing stuff.

Best of luck,

- Dominic

Thank you for these extremely thorough critiques. They're very helpful to me at this point and I appreciate the time you took to go over my design.

MarshalN (btw your site is great) -Right now this is a late-stage concept that I'm about to prototype. I've tested the spout shape and it pours well without dripping- I think the critical drip-free factor is a hole at the top of the cylinder that will let air enter as liquid is poured out. Still, if people will look at my teapot and think that it will drip because of the shape, that's a problem.

Here's the way I envision making tea: put the dry leaves in the tube, put the tube in the arch/ handle and lock it with the ball. Then you pour the water through the spout, let the leaves steep and observe them slowly opening, then pour out all the tea at once (the lid-free design will make this easier I think). There would be no need at any point in the process to hold the teapot upright. There will be a mesh screen between the front of the tube and the arch, which will prevent the leaves from spilling out but will not restrict the space they have to unfurl.

Dominic, your point about porous clay being bad for greens and whites is very useful. Luckily glazing those parts with a clear white finish won't be so hard. I'm not designing Sorapot to compete with the gaiwan or traditional Yixing pot, but rather to emphasize the unique qualities of green and white tea through its physical form; to be a gift that could introduce tea to someone who loves design.

Your comments definitely got me thinking in some new directions, and I'd love to hear more.

Thanks! Joey

Well at least it seems like you are legit, I purposefully kept my critique short because I had no way of knowing if this was just some scam/spam or a serious inquiry and didn't want to waste the effort.

I would offer a couple more thoughts:

While the heatsink idea sounds good, I'd drop it. I'd also drop the white/green tea only angle. If anything just label it as a teapot and that it offers some cooling due to the design.

Again green/white tea can be very different and can vary wildly in brewing time/temp/technique. No offense is meant but it would appear that you may need to research the truth of brewing green and white teas a bit more. The screen up front means that while it is small and is supposed to dissipate heat, you are pouring *past* the tea leaves in what would appear to me to be a fairly slow pour. This is actually going to make the tea bitter and overbrewed for many teas, countering any benefit of the heatsinking, etc.

Also, once the too hot water has touched the leaves, no heatsink alive is going to repair the damage done. Again, this is why I say to drop the green/white angle since it really doesn't apply.

I'd be wary of the spout, and I think many folks familiar with teapot design would be too. It may work well as you state, but I'd almost have to see it work to buy one just from past experience. Not often the case with a product in a box on a shelf.

You almost would be better having the back 1/4 of the tube have the screen and some sort of access to place the leaves in. Then have the opening to pour in the water in the front 3/4. This would then minimize the contact of the water/tea quickly after pouring has begun and would possibly help utilize the heatsink feature a bit before the water if a bit too hot kills the tea. Just a quick thought... I have to admit I didn't put much time in so there may be a flaw in my logic.

Also, just an FYI. many people believe in keeping the "root" of green tea alive through brewing. Meaning to keep some water with the leaves and continue to add to it for subsequent brews. Again, why a serious green tea drinker might pass... and why it may be better marketed as a standard teapot.

I like the design, I like the lines, it is creative and different and I could see more of a desire from the trendy/fashionable crowd than a serious green/white tea drinker.

I'd be interested in hearing a bit about your interest and experience with tea!

- Dominic

It's a striking object to look at, but I do have one big worry about it as a brewer of good green tea. A big part of the pot's premise is to start hot and pour warm, and I worry that green tea leaves that spend any amount of time too hot will yield a nasty liquor. Were you contemplating the use of boiling water? I sure hope not, as I don't think there's any variety of green tea that would benefit from that.

/Lew

I think the design is stunning. And I'm somewhat of a traditionalist who's not that fond of industrial/modern designs..

The ability to watch the leaves "dance" in the water is appealing, as is the sensible addition of a filter so that you don't have to strain the tea. Any concerns I have were already mentioned by Dominic.

I am also interested, however, to see how well the "watertight seal" actually works. I've yet to see a pressure based seal on a drinking vessel that holds its water, as it were, that didn't involve an o-ring.

Hello Joey,

Nice design, but I have to echo others' skepticism here. Pouring water through the spout is not a step I would enjoy, unless you are designing an efficient and stunning looking funnel to complete the set. Your whole design has that industrial sophistication edge to it, though in my humble opinion anything involving tea should be kept as simple as possible. Or perhaps I'm just not the consumer in your niche market.

Phyll

snipped-for-privacy@gmail.com wrote:

That's definitely something to think about as well. I'd imagine some serious tests need to be performed -- fatigue tests to make sure the grip on the cylinder to make it watertight won't start loosening up by the 3rd month of using the pot, something like that. Once it leaks, the thing's done for.

Pouring through the spout is really not a good way to go. It invites all sorts of problems. If you, say, boil water through a regular stove kettle, where the pour is often quick, swift, and hard to control.... how do you pour carefully through the spout without some (I'd say inevitable) spilling? Someone who buys a teapot like this will not, IMHO, be the crowd who's willing to clean up spills everytime they add water.

I think others are also right that the idea is to pour warm water into the pot, rather than hot water, for green/whites. It matters not so much what temperature it comes out at, but it matters GREATLY what temperature water goes in to the leaves. Like Dominic said... if the tea is brewed with water that's too hot, it's over and the rest of the brews will be colourful but flavourless (or even nasty).

One more thing... what will the central cylinder be made of? Glass, I presume? If it's plastic... the thing will stain after a while and the stain will not be washable.

MarshalN

Dear Joey,

I must commend you on an interesting looking design. My fiancee and I were just commenting on how it looks like something you'd find off the set of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. But some comments:

Like Marsha said, the spout's gonna drip. My electric kettle's spout is shaped the same way, and it drips and leaks like a Southern politician before a Senate Review Committee. I would make the spout rounder and longer if I were you (I was thinking something more arabesque...like you'd see with traditional tea pots in North Africa for mint tea?). Though I'm not sure if this is what you want, since this would probably interfere with the "cubist" looking design you already have.

Second, I might be a purist, but I tend to forego using a teapot when brewing greens, which is very rarely since I don't like a lot of green teas. And what greens I do have, I take them with bacon. :-)

The whole point of a tea pot is to keep the beverage warm for a long period of time. When brewing more 'delicate' teas, I use a gaiwan. I really think that black and pu-erhs really are the best when it comes to tea pot brewing.

However, I'm not an engineer, and I hate physics. Maybe there is some way to design this pot for green tea while making it ergonomically simple?

Cheers!

Mike

Again, I'm floored by the quality of your responses. Thank you, this is extremely helpful for the development process.

Dominic- Positioning the Sorapot as a teapot that works with all loose teas, not just greens and whites, could be a good way to go. I do think that emphasizing all the space the leaves have to unfurl is important though, especially because in my experience, most modern teapots restrict the leaves to a small basket. I agree that pouring boiling water on green leaves will ruin them, no matter how quickly the water cools down after that. I'd never encourage people to use boiling water, and plan to include info about that in the package copy.

I've loved tea for a long time and actually posted a bit to this group back in 2000-2001:

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I still enjoy tea every day, but as you can see, my knowledge has gotten rusty.

Lewis- Thank you for you comment, and your point about boiling water is also well taken. I'll make sure to point this out in the package copy. Maybe an invitation for customers to visit this group to find out more about tea would be good.

Derek- Thank you also for your comment. You're definitely right about the o-ring. I should make this more clear in my drawings, but there is actually a natural silicone gasket that connects the front of the glass tube to the ceramic piece. The mesh screen is embedded in this gasket.

Phyll- Figuring out how people could get water into the Sorapot was one of the toughest parts of the design process. As you can see here

I wanted to use a traditional lid in the original design. That proved to be impractical for manufacturing and aesthetic reasons, so I began to work on other water-delivery methods. I designed the spout to be "funnel-like" enough that pouring won't need to be that precise. However, if just the idea of pouring into the spout is off-putting, regardless of how hard or easy it is, it's something I need to reexamine.

MarshalN- Thanks for bringing this up. There will definitely be a lot of stress tests performed before I put this on the market, for insurance reasons but mostly because I personally want this product to last a long, long time for my customers. One of the main reasons I got into industrial design was my frustration with the built-in obsolescence that characterizes a lot of products nowadays. It may help sell more units in the short-term, but it will kill the emotional connection that people develop with the everyday objects they love, it leads to pollution, and it really makes the product less successful and less admirable. I'm going to have a final prototype soon and plan to begin selling during next year's holiday season, so I'm leaving a lot of time for torture testing.

The cylinder will be made from high-grade borosilicate lab glass, which is inert and very easy to wash. I've had similarly bad stain experiences with plastic tea and coffee vessels, so there was no way I was going to go down that path.

Mike- Although my design philosophy is rooted in traditional Japanese folk crafts, now that you mention it I can definitely see the DS-9 influence. It was my favorite show as a kid, so maybe the curved, dull-colored metal mixed with brown and gray outfits on the show was more influential than I had imagined. I have always loved a contrast between sleek and rustic, which I think was a large part of the series, in terms of both look and theme.

I agree that a gaiwan is the perfect vessel for making delicate tea. I have two that I use all the time- one is white glazed porcelain and the other is clear Pyrex. Sorapot isn't designed to compete with the gaiwan- it's more focused on sharing tea with friends, gift-giving, and interesting design.

If any of you are local to NYC, I'd love to set up a meeting where I'd bring a Sorapot for you to use and discuss; probably in February or March. Please let me know if you'd be interested, and I'll make sure I have a prototype ready by then. "Drinks" will be on me of course.

Warm regards, Joey

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I think a few of us here are in the NYC area. I know I will visit the city probably sometime in March and meet up with a few people there, most likely...

I forgot one thing, Joey -- the filter/mesh will also absorb tastes from tea, if it's anywhere near conventional mesh filters that I've seen using some sort of synthetic material (I'm not sure what that stuff is). That, I am afraid, is almost unavoidable. Unless you use a metal grill... which will be better, IMHO, although I can see how that might present other problems....

MarshalN

Piggybacking...

Might not the same thing be said for the "Natural silicone" o-rings? I'm out of my area here, but how "non-reactive" is natural silicone?

And how natural is silicone?

/Lew

snipped-for-privacy@gmail.com schrieb:

Hi, I may be wrong on that, but as far as I am concerned I like my teapot to insulate rather than letting the water cool down. Then, I just let cool down the water to the right temperature and pour it over the leaves that are placed in the preheated pot. That way, the temperature stays at a well-defined temperature over the whole infusion process (okay..maybe not so well defined, but still more or less constant, depending of course on the infusion time). Still, that is what allows systematic variaton of infusion temperatures.

Joey, I, too, like your concept of design, yet I think a vast temperature drop over the infusion time, no matter what the initial temperature of the water might be, does not serve any good.

cu Patrick

Silicone is actually the perfect gasket material for a teapot because it's chemically inert and imparts no taste and is stable at up to 400 degrees F. Silicone's used directly in food preparation methods like sous-vide, and I've tested it myself for odor and taste under hot hot temperatures. One of the things I'm most looking forward to for the NYC March meeting is serving tea with the Sorapot and seeing if people who are experts at tasting tea can detect anything "funny". The taste of the tea isn't something I'm willing to compromise on.

Patrick, your comment that an insulated pot allows you more control over the steeping is a good point. The Sorapot's designed more to emphasize the process of water turning into tea in a striking way than to be a precise tool for conniseurs though- I think the gaiwan's captured that niche, and I can't see how it could be improved.

I designed the Sorapot to cool so that a host can place it in front of guests, pour on water, and then observe the unfurling and movement of the leaves without worrying about oversteeping. However, your point is very well taken, and I'm looking into insulated glass tubes as an option that customers can request.

I'm going to set up a section on

soon about the New York demonstration and discussion. Until then, if you or anyone you know might be interested, and if you know of any good locations, please shoot me an email: snipped-for-privacy@joeyroth.com

Thanks again RFDT, Joey

I've previously posted the reason I use glass pots for white,green,oolong is for rapid cooling plus the agony of the leaves which is more prominent for these style of teas. If it's glass the handle and lid can't get hot. I like pots that have interior surface volume and wall geometry that causes washing when pouring the water. The other item to note is fragility. I don't like cradles but they serve a purpose. I wouldn't be so interested in another glass tea pot but a glass tea kettle I can sit directly on an electric ceramic burner without any heat sinks like a trivet and can survive a boil down without damage to pot or electric range. My current glass pot of choice is a converted tea press where I remove the plunger and secure the filter near the top by the spout. I will say on the larger pure glass teapots in general they aren't easy pourers because of the heat and slippery glass.

Jim

snipped-for-privacy@gmail.com wrote: ...

Silicone O-rings are pretty non-reactive and it's very, very nonporous, but it will still develop a layer of residue on the outside that may affect taste.

Note that most commercial o-rings are not silicone, because silicone rubbers are too easy to tear. One small break on the surface will soon grow into a complete split. You can buy silicone o-rings for some applications where the wide temperature range is important, though.

--scott

It's made from rocks.

--scott

Ah, right, just like Da Hong Pao!

/Lew