I love it when people sweat the details. The tiniest details. Even when it’s as seemingly insignificant as the spout on a teapot.
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I make a lot of tea. The British stuff to be exact. When we order tea in my house, it’s by the pound. Usually several of them.
I’ve made tea in everything from an inexpensive IKEA Tecken to the classic Brown Betty.
The hardest cuppa to make, for me at least, is the first one in the morning. It often involves squinting and the spilling of tea. That’s why we recently upgraded to The Tea Maker by Breville. It’s awesome.
It has a basket that raises and lowers automatically with lots of temperature and timing options that work for all types of tea. It also has a timer so you can have tea ready for you at a specific time.
All of the design and engineering that went in to this machine is impressive, but there’s just one tiny detail that I want to dwell on for a moment.
The glass kettle-pot itself is German Duran glass by Schott. It culminates in all of its borosilicate glory at the spout.
And what a spout it is. As a nerd pouring tea, I can appreciate the countless hours of fluid dynamics simulations that must have gone in to creating the perfect spout.
It never drips.
I’ve used this spout somewhere between dozens and hundreds of times and not once has it held on to an extra bit of tea or dripped unexpectedly. If you pour tea as often as I do, you know that this is pretty much the holy grail of spouts.
So let’s raise our cups, mugs, or glasses to the fine folks at Schott, for making what seems to be the perfect teapot spout.
This is Matt Croydon and you are listening to The Tinycast.
Music for today’s show includes Montauk Point and Ice Flow by Kevin MacLeod. Hear more at incompetech.com
You can find us on the web at tinycast.in, on Twitter http://twitter.com/thetinycast. You can also find the show in the iTunes podcast directory or in the Podcasts app. Episodes are also available at the Public Radio Exchange, PRX.org.
Music
“Montauk Point” Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/
“Ice Flow” Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/