VarieTEA kettle - Review

The VarieTEA tea kettle sold by Adagio.com allows water to be boiled as hot as the type of tea one is making. I ordered mine back in late spring, taking advantage of a special dollar off amount, and using up some of my gift certificate points for purchases and selling signature blends.
It is available for sale on Adagio.com, along with a 12-month warranty plan:
http://www.adagio.com/teaware/varieTEA_kettle.html?SID=0fc02aa8965eb87ef14312bd069a40e1

I received mine a few days ago and am in heaven! I love the variety (er, sorry, varieTEA) of teas I can make with this. I've used it on all settings, but since I prefer green tea - and typically that's all I drink in the summertime - that's the kind I've brewed most lately. I use the delicate setting for a lot of the caffeine-free teas, such as Celestial Seasonings Sleepytime line. I'm surprised at how much crisper a lot of the green teas are - I can actually taste the gunpowder green in the Mint Green Tea from Culinary Teas. Also, my Awakening blend from Adagio tastes much better; I can identify the light vanilla taste with mint.

There are some quirks; though nothing is as bad as others have reported (see the reviews from Adagio). I have to watch when I set the kettle back on the stand because the black tea "212" button will light up. I can just select another tea type or turn it off. Also, the "keep it warm" feature doesn't work too well... or at all. But since I would prefer reheating the water anyway, I don't mind. (Sometimes I'm not sure which tea I want to have next, so I like the option of changing my mind.)

The price is another downside. Since I got this on a sale and using gift certificates, I didn't worry about the price so much at the time. But I thought about getting this as a gift and I'm not sold on the price tag, with as many quirks as has been reported.

Readers, if any of you have purchased this kettle, what do you think? Is it better or worse than other varieties?

Stay tuned - I'll do a review after I've had this for a month to see it is still up to par.

The Chai Investigation

This is the tea that started it all. Well, not my love of tea, but my investigation into Teavana and discovering the world of tea, tea companies and even tea fraud. (I'll get to that in another post.)

This tea is one of my most favorites on the planet, and one I have not yet been able to replicate. Anyone who shops for tea knows that Teavana may have high quality teas and tisanes - but it comes at a price. A hefty price tag doesn't work with everyone's budgets, especially nowadays.

I have searched and searched for a comparable chai to this one because $16.20 for 25 cups of tea doesn't work. But there isn't anything like it out there.

The chai blend is amazing - spicy, cinnamony and with multiple layers of flavor. It's a complicated tea. Teavana gives you some instructions like a teaspoon of tea, brew for, what, eight minutes or so and ta-da! It's ready.

But I do my own thing. Rarely do I follow instructions when it comes to tea. I'm a tea rogue. I use at least two teaspoons for my small mug (it's a Fiestaware chocolate mug), and I (wait for it)....leave the tea infusing for the...entire length of the cup. So at the end the tea filter is soggy and pitiful looking but I am enjoying a spicy sip.

Harney & Sons has a great alternative: Hot Cinnamon Spice black tea. It's decent and I like it. But it's not the Chai blend I start every workday with...

I kept on my search, looking for a cheaper version of chai - from big companies like Bigelow (Vanilla Chai, which is decent) to smaller companies like Harney & Sons. I have yet to find a comparable alternative. So I am a slave to the Teavana corporation...like many others.

To Be Continued....