I thought I knew the magnitude of tea’s awesomeness, until I tried loose tea. And then I was done for. There’s just something about the crispness of a freshly brewed cup of tea, something to which bagged teas don’t even compare. The Tea Infuser with Base (Sur La Table, $9.95) is the perfect tea lover’s accessory, created specifically for the brewing of loose tea. See, with loose tea you have to put it in an infuser and pour hot water over the tea leaves. Tea infusers differ slightly in design, but the most popular kind sits right in your tea mug so it can brew the plain hot water into a tasty tea concoction. After you’ve gotten your tea to the desired strength, you take the infuser out. Now, this is where this infuser leaves all others in the dust: it has a stand. If you take a regular infuser out of a cup of boiling hot tea, what happens? You get a dripping mess all over your counter, which you could try to prevent by cupping your hand underneath, but then you have to remember that the dripping tea is BOILING HOT and maybe you shouldn’t do that. Instead, you could use this tea infuser with a built-in drip catching receptacle. No mess and, more importantly, no burnt hands.

Reason #85063 I love tea over coffee: I can drink as many cups as I want in a short period of time and not feel like someone has gouged a hole in my stomach lining.

5 out of 5 stars.

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