the realm within

As most people that know me irl might know, I like tea. Correction, love tea. Especially green tea. Some of favourites include:

• Gemaicha
• China Gunpowder
• Tuareg
• Jin Xuan

Having tried many (but within a limited selection) kinds of teas, my favourite is still Hojicha. Its cheap and I just love the earthy taste and it doesn’t have a lot of caffeine in it, which means you can sip it in the evening. I used to hate black tea, but now I find it drinkable by putting honey in it. That is one of the reasons I like green tea more, it is MUCH easier to prepare them without any added sweetners or milk, lemon or whaterver else.

I started as probably most people, with teabags. I remember putting 4 teabags into a teapot and drinking the funky liquid. What I don’t remember is how long it took me to go from teabags to trying proper loose leaf tea. But oh boy, I got hooked almost immediately. At first I got a teapot from the nearest supermarket. It was fine, but after few months the glass broke.

Then I ordered a teapot from aliexpress for around 300 CZK. This teapot turned out to be perfect. The first sign of its durabillity was when the postman threw it over the fence and it shrugged it off. Granted, it was in bubble wrap, but still impressive.

The steeping chamber is probably the coolest thing about it. You put 1-3 teaspoons of tea (For the 750ml version) in it and then close the lid. When it is time to stop steeping, you just press the button and watch the tea leave the pod from its drain into the teapot, which is still cool to me, even after 3 years. See the following footage of water going through the contraption:

Then you just unscrew the pod and put the remaining amount of water into the teapot to thin the steeped tea and make the desired amount of end product.

I got it around the end of covid and it got me through many, many exams, almost trough my bachelors degree. Almost? You’re probably asking. Yes, almost. Around a month ago, I noticed a crack that formed on the bottom. This crack was small, until the second time after that when I tried to brew tea again, and it engulfed almost half of the area of the bottom of the teapot. I stopped using it after that for a few weeks. After ending my exam season, I decided to brew one last pot of tea. I chose genmaicha as its last meal. Shortly after I pushed the button to release the sweet nectar of the pod, the bottom broke away with a single crack. Since I expected this, I put it in a bowl beforehand, so still got to enjoy the last brew.

• First Crack

• The Last Straw

I’m still kind of sad about it, since liked it so much, it surving so many trips in my bag without braking. I know it had to break someday. Well, that’s it, I wanted to honor my teapot that got me so many great cups of tea. And yes, I just ordered the same model again to replace it, it should soon come in the mail.