The Ultimate Tea Experience

You boil the water in pan, pot or whatever you heat water in. Not the pot supplied, put tea in the pot supplied, pour water over the tea until it steeps. Then pour in a cup when it’s at your desired taste. The pot wlll filter the tea before it goes in the cup.
Remove excess tea with a wooden spoon.
Viola! You have tea.
If you wish, you can let it cool, add ice…

DO NOT heat this teapot on the stove. Boil water in a pot or kettle while warming this pot with hot tap water. Dump the tap water, add tea, pour in boiling water.

We just had some of the flowering jasmine green tea tonight. It was quite good; nice delicate flavor, no bitterness at all.

I just returned from China and in Shanghai, after bartering, your equivalent teapot (rough fired to retain flavour ove multiple infusions) would probably be between 3 bucks for a rough rubbishy one, $20 for something like this quality, but with touristy dragon patterns, to over $100 and even up to $1000 or more for ‘famous’ top artist ones.

And that’s before the tea price at from $6-10 per 50g (about 2oz).
… Never mind then the extra cost of the flowers.

Great value. Green tea is soon good for you and flower tea us so expensive! In for the Max!!!

Apparently this was sold on May 5th in sellout.woot. But I don’t know how to search for past woots.
I’d like to see if anyone wrote any opinions of this deal.
Can anyone enlighten me on how to search for past woots. Besides page by page in the community or blogs?

I have one of these already, and I’ve had no issues heating water in this pot on the stove-top. The glass is laboratory grade borosilicate, and on the website for the company that sells it, they state that it is stove-top safe.

From the website:

I purchased the “Primula” 40 oz teapot with 39 flowering teas back in April.

The tea is so so. It seems that sturdy leaves are selected over particularly flavorful leaves so the tea can withstand the handling necessary to create the blooming tea pods. I’ve had more flavorful loose tea. However, the aesthetics of the blooming tea are pretty cool. You have to let the tea steep for a good length of time to develop a decent flavor.

One problem: I was surprised when I saw that the “best by” date on the tea sent along with the teapot was September 2010. Since it was only about 4 months ago that I purchased the tea, it was a bit of a disappointment to know that the “best by” date (shelf life?) extended only until next month.

And if it’s the same lot they sold in May, it would be expired by the time it got here?

Woot wouldn’t do that to us, would they?

How long does sealed tea last?

Bought this the last time. I have many teapots and know how to use them, however this teapot didn’t pour well so I took one of the silicon gaskets (for the jars) and wrapped it around the spout this worked until the pot broke at the base of the spout. The silicon seals didn’t work on the jars themselves, it made the seal too tight which was why I tried it on the spout. I used the jars for q-tips and cotton balls. Still have the tea, lots and lots of tea…probably will give the little tubes away for Christmas this year, or Freecycle.

My first Woot!

I’ve been looking for a good tea brewing set for a long time, but never really got up the moxie to do so. Visited a Teavana store a few times, but I have to tell you, tea-brewing isn’t a cheap culinary hobby, so I was a little hesitant. The actual tea itself is where it gets insanely expensive.

Looking at this deal, the sheer amount of tea is just too good of a deal–I absolutely love green tea to begin with, and that it’s offered in flowers? That makes it an even better deal. I’m looking forward to this one.

Got this back in April for the wife.

Pros:
The teapot is actually very nice design.
The flowers are pretty cool when they bloom.
The containers have three flowers each (all same flavor sadly), which make giving as gifts nice, or if someone only wants one flower, they are individually wrapped that way as well.

Cons:
The teapot is very small.
The filter for the spout doesn’t block loose leaf tea.
One of the container lids broke from a very short fall (from top of microwave to counter top distance, very short!).
The tea has an after taste.
The best buy date doesn’t give much time to drink TONS of tea.

All in all, not a bad little package, but more fun to watch than drink. Put this on the table for guests to watch, but drink some other tea, lol!

If it came with some white flowering tea or black I would be all over this.

Is drinking fancy tea too that’s out of my social status a bad thing?

Kind of like a guy who owns a Ferrari but lives in a cheap studio apartment…

This is wrong. As I posted last time this was up, the jars are made from borosilicate glass. Adagio sells a similar glass jar for tea, and they claim that borosilicate glass blocks UV light, preventing photo-aging.

Personal nature?

I am now horrified contemplating what people must be doing with their teapots…

There are types of silicon compounds that reduce certain wavelengths of ultraviolet light, but I highly doubt these jars would block enough UV light to reduce any changes to tea leaves.

I also don’t like teapots that keep the leaves in the water. If you don’t pour it all out at once, your last cup of tea will be significantly stronger than your first.

So were we… so were we…

Can anyone that already has the tea tell me where it’s from or if it happens to be organic?
Thanks!

Great clear and useful info, but I have some qualifications!

Teapots are MEANT to be small for making good tea, if you pour it the Chinese way. They use a little hot water, but by bit, so you get the nice flavour of the tea without just steeping (and stewing) the tea til it’s bitter. We really do abuse tea in the West… only very hardy teas. like some black teas can survive more than a short time in a teapot without losing their subtlety and/or going bitter. In England we make a fresh pot if the tea has “stewed” (I suspect our teapots are bigger because we drink little green tea, which being more delicate in flavour I believe is more fragile in its reaction to hot water and time). And a lot of people make rubbish tea: some people grow up with stewed builders’ tea, and know no better, and they like the bitterness ensuing. But then some people drink Buttery Oaky Chardonnay.

A good tea, like a good wine, should have a front, middle and finish to the taste, and each tea will have a different one. Some are too bitter for me. That’s why I love jasmine, white and green teas… but not all of them.

In airtight packages, best before dates are rather arbitrary. Keep them cool and dry and they’ll keep for a lot longer than the best buy date, which is an arse-covering legal date.

Treat real tea well and you’ll never go back to tea bags.

I got something very similar to this for my girlfriend from Woot in the past and she loved it. The air-tight containers are a very good idea and she liked them very much.
I didn’t realize before, but there are more tea shops than I would have imagined. No need to worry about running out of tea, and buying new kinds is half the fun

Agreed! You MUST treat proper tea right to make it taste nice. Even though Proudhon once said that proper tea is theft.