My experience
Having a temperate controlled kettle has greatly improved my tea enjoyment. Not just for more sensitive tea types, such as greens, but for all tea types.
When I started my journey with tea, I primarily drank black tea. I believed that I just didn’t enjoy green tea and even many of the black teas that I was trying. It turns out that I was not only over-steeping them, but also negatively affecting the balance of the profile by only using boiling water. I have since learned that some teas need a lower temperature to be in balance. Temperature control has enabled me to experience all tea types at varying temps, tweaking the balance and profile to get that perfect cup. I have found more complex and enjoyable profiles in teas that I thought were simple and harsh.
I know that temperate control is not for everyone, either due to differing preparation methods making it not necessary or maybe you are better than me at getting the temperature right on your own. For me, my kettle is my most important teaware. I’d gladly give up all other teaware to keep it.
My kettle
I have the kettle shown as the image of this post. You can find it by searching “temperate controlled goose-neck kettle” on Amazon. It must be a generic, as it has gone by multiple manufacturer names. I have 2 of these, one at home and one at work. After a few years with them, I am still happy. It is a cheaper kettle, but it still has all of the features that I want. My only complaint is that I wish it held more water, so I didn’t have to refill as often.
- Single degree temperate control
- Easy and fast to change temperature
- Mute mode
- Hold function (holds for 2 hours)
- No plastic in contact with water
Share your water preparation method and teaware!
I absolutely agree. I used to (still do, somewhere) have a Panasonic water boiler with just a few temperature settings. When I got into pourover coffee just before the pandemic, I ended up with a stove top Fellow gooseneck kettle that really changed things quite a bit. About a year ago, I got an electric kettle from Fellow, and having single degree precision was surprisingly impactful to tea. It was no surprise with coffee, where I tweak grind, agitation, and temperature to get right up against where there starts to be negative astringency. But I’m finding myself tweaking brewing temperatures of teas as well, though not to the same extreme as with coffee.
Goosenecks do pour rather slowly, though, so for anyone who doesn’t brew coffee as well, Fellow makes the Corvo that trades precision for flow rate. Though, I do like having a gooseneck around the ktichen. It’s nice having that sort of precision when I add water to something I’m cooking.
I’m happy with the pour rate of my kettle. I do mainly single serving gong fu tea, but I’m happy with it for larger uses.
Yeah, it really doesn’t bother me, but about the most I’ll brew is 14-18oz. If someone is making big pots for the family, I could see it being annoying.