I have finally acquired this beautiful machine about a week ago. I have yet to gave a bad cup of tea from it. Now, this may be because I already know my teas and exactly how I like them. But it is absolutely wonderful to wake up to the perfect cup of tea every morning. And because it is so easy to use and clean and the pot is glass, I’m actually able to enjoy more tea than previously with my DAVIDsTea Steeper.
Pros:
- Perfect cup of tea every time since it always has the exact right water temperature and never over-steeps or under-steeps.
- Auto-start timer so that tea can be ready for drinking at whatever time your little heart desires.
- Keep warm feature keeps your tea at temp for an hour.
- “Lower Basket” feature to steep again for any amount of time, i.e. no timer, after the steeping process is finished (see the cons section for more on this)
- Allows you to customize the water temp (in 5 degree inctements) and steep time (in 30 second increments). This is wonderful for me because I prefer to steep my black teas in 205 degree water rather than 212.
Cons:
- Keep warm feature has no beep to signal that your hour is up. The display turns off and the tea starts cooling. So you do have to pay attention to this.
- The auto-start feature can’t save the current time, so it has to be set every single time. Now, this really only takes about 45 seconds, but it’s kinda frustrating that such a magical machine can’t keep the current time in memory.
- The lower basket feature doesn’t have a timer, so it is extremely easy to over-steep the tea here. I’ve only used it once, and I don’t see it being a commonly used feature for me.
All in all, definitely worth the money!
