Piao I Perfect Infusion Tea Pot/Coffee Pot Save 38% Off

I''m a white boy who married a lovely mainland Chinese woman about ten years ago. Her parents also live with us. They have all been educating me about tea for the last ten years. So I now understand plenty about the proper steeping of Chinese tea. We own a second home in China, and have coincidentally returned only days ago from a two week trip there, where we bought lots of good tea!

We own FOUR of these teapots, and have used them for years. This product is quite popular in many areas of China because of the quality of this teapot and how well it steeps tea.

This teapot has an upper reservoir of about one cup capacity, which lowers into the larger body of the teapot. The bottom of the upper reservoir contains a stainless steel ball stop valve. When you press a small button on the top of the teapot, the ball lifts and tea is strained through a fine stainless steel mesh as it drains into the lower reservoir. Then you refill the upper chamber with hot water for the next infusion.

NOTE: everyone I know uses this product only for serving ONE, maybe TWO people; this teapot''s capacity is too small for serving larger groups. Typically, owners use this as a "personal teapot" (at work, or wherever), loading it in the morning and infusing off the same tea all day long. That''s how I use it EVERY day at work.

I strongly recommend this as a personal teapot for steeping LOOSE tea, for these reasons:

1) You can easily increase each successive infusion time (off the same tea as it weakens), to ensure consistent tea intensity: pushing the button quickly vents tea into the lower reservoir, effectively halting the infusion (and fixing the intensity). A glance at the tea color through the transparent reservoir tells you when the intensity is just right.

2) You should always "wash" each new batch of tea leaves, and this teapot is very convenient for that; you simply put the dry tea in and poor hot water into the upper reservoir, swish it through the tea for about 20 or 30 seconds; then vent that directly into the sink to discard that wash water.

3) This product is well designed and quite reliable. Yes, as other reviewers mentioned, it does have a minor design flaw (which is why I lowered the rating to four stars): if you shake this teapot too vigorously while washing it, the stainless steel stopper ball can become slightly jammed. An easy fix to this has never failed me: simply lift up the button (attached to its control rod) about a cm, and then shake the ball back into position. As example of the general quality of the product, the fine mesh strainer is high quality stainless steel because I''ve never seen that mesh rust or discolor. Other Chinese made tea strainers (from different manufacturers) are often seen having rusted mesh strainer after only few months. Also this teapot survived my accidentally dropping it several times (while heavy filled with tea) about four vertical feet onto a hard floor. I was amazed it survived unbroken.

4) It is absolutely true this teapot gets more tea (more infusions) out of each gram of tea, compared to any other teapot. However, keeping in mind those last infusions may easily be 20 minutes steeping time. You yield more tea per load due to the bottom venting ensures the flow of hot water is always down through the tea, also the upper chamber is small so infuses more effectively even when the tea is quite weakened by previous infusions.

This is a very nice tea pot, I really like the design, which is very functional. I use it daily at office and it is easy to clean out the tea leaves.

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I bought this because I loved the idea that I could keep re-infusing my green and white teas in the same pot so easily. Unfortunately, my strainer/infuser stopped working and I have to dismantle it with almost every use. The steel ball keeps going off-track and getting stuck. That is getting really old! I finally broke down and bought the Teavana Perfect Tea Maker, which is similar in concept but brews 16 oz. of tea with each infusion. Even though the Piao I pot is a 16 oz. pot, you can only brew 8 oz. at a time since that''s all the infuser holds. For any price, this pot is not worth it!

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The concept is great though the volume could''ve been greater, but the snag comes when they chose to use polycarbonate for the infuser. In theory, it should be able to stand boiling water, but a week after usage, I find the bottom a bit distorted, which then led to seepage of the fluid from the infuser to the pot. Then the steel ball got stuck and the filter started coming off.

On the bright side, I can use the pot still.

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This is SO easy. Put loose tea in the top. Add hot water and the tea brews. Push the button and the tea drains into the cup. No Strainer needed! Amazing. Clever gift for anyone who likes tea. Can''t believe they don''t sell these at Pete''s.

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