tea

Featured at the House Beautiful Kitchen of the Year event in Rockefeller Plaza in New York City, the new Tassimo Hot Beverage System by Bosch fits into both the kitchen's overall theme of user-friendliness and the consumer's modern desire for convenience with class. The brewer is featured as part of a line of new kitchen products that are being showcased as a "new benchmark for kitchen design," according to a recent news release from Kraft Foods.

At first glance, the upgraded version of the Hot Beverage System looks a lot like the original, but there are … Read more

I remember the first time I saw the pod coffee machines, I thought they were ridiculous. I've worked in loose tea shops where tea bags are generally seen as over-processed cheap imitations of the real deal, and so the similarly-shaped coffee "pods" touted by the first single-cup pod coffeemakers instantly made it to the top of my "not worth it" gadget list. I'm a religious coffee drinker, and something about those tea bag-like coffee pods was very off-putting.

Fast-forward to several months later during a visit to my sister's house. After waking up … Read more

If you've ever owned a mood ring, chances are that you'll appreciate the Kenwood Response kettle. The brushed metal kettle changes colors as you heat your water from blue to red, letting you see how close your water is to being coffee-ready.

A cool feature of this kettle is that it can be set either to boiling or to 80 degrees Celsius. Why would we care about the temperature? Boiling is boiling, right? Well, not exactly. In college, I worked a brief stint at a tea shop, where I learned the hard way that using rapidly boiling water … Read more

I'm a little militant when it comes to steeping my tea. In my mind, there's nothing worse than having a much-anticipated tea break ruined by the bitter taste of leaves that have soaked too long. Unfortunately, this preference often results in fingertip burns from lifting the still-hot infuser out of my teapot once the 2- to 6-minute brewing time has elapsed.

Enter the Tea Control Teapot with Brew Stop Infuser, whose lengthy name spells out pretty much all you need to know. The heat-resistant glass pot features a built-in infuser with a handy design trick: a door that … Read more

Back on November 5 I wrote about an independent fundraising effort on behalf of the Ron Paul campaign. The occasion was Guy Fawkes Night, the commemoration of the 1605 attempt to blow up the Palace of Westminster in England. As I said at the time, this was a strange occasion for fundraising in a US presidential campaign, but at least it gave the organizers a convenient tagline for the effort: they called it a "money bomb".

Something for the tea lover and gadgeteer in your life that won't break your holiday budget.

The Tea Stick from Chiasso for $20 is a stainless steel spring-loaded stick and sieve. You use the tiny shovel to scoop loose tea and load it in the stick. The stick is completely enclosed when dunking.

They say a watched pot never boils, but with the Kenwood Response kettle you won't be able to look away. That's because the sides of the kettle are constantly changing color, from a cool blue to a hot red, as the water inside heats up. Aside from the rainbow lighting effect, the Response kettle also features a switch on the side that lets you heat water to exactly 176 degrees--the perfect temp for brewing green tea. The kettle will then hold the water at that temperature so you can always top off your cup or brew a second … Read more

Now this is our kind of alarm clock. Forget about those other ones that blow out your eardrums or fly and run away from you.

The "Jeeves" clock from Voco awakens you with one of 49 British quips from the voice of Stephen Fry himself, classically designed with Roman numerals and Ionic columns. An example from Pocket-lint: "Good morning, Sir. The prime minister phoned again. I told him you were not available. We shan't be treated like THAT again!" Indeed.

Leave it to the Brits to make tea stains fashionable.

British designer Laura Bethan Wood has designed a tea cup that patterns over time from tea stains. The bone china cups with saucer are about $69 and can be ordered directly from the designer on her Web site.

Cool Hunting says that the tea cup is meant to challenge the assumption that old is bad, as the pattern reveals itself only over prolonged use as the porous areas absorb tea.